Building a Movement Block by Block

Nancy Cohen, historian and author, published Breakthrough, the Making of America’s First Woman President this year in advance of the election and appears this week at the Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee to talk about the results. Her writings on women and American politics have appeared in mainstream publications like the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Republic. Having taught at Occidental College, Cal State Long Beach, and UCLA, she sits on the Los Angeles County Commission on the Status of Women. Susan Rose asked Cohen about women’s role in politics in advance of her talk on Thursday.

The question your book asked, is America ready for a woman president, was answered for now by the election of Donald Trump. Did you believe that 2016 would be right for a woman? A few years back, my 9-year-old daughter asked, “How many girl presidents have we had?” I laughed, but then realized that she assumes women are equal, because that’s the world she sees.

It made me very curious about the long road women in politics have traveled. We couldn’t vote until 1920, and here we were, on the cusp of a historic milestone. Were we ready to elect a woman? If so, how — and who — had made possible? Would the double standard still be too powerful? And ultimately, would it matter? Which gets to whether women lead differently. I interviewed over 100 people — senators, governors, Democrats and Republicans, voters and experts, women and men — to find out. My goal in Breakthrough was to take you inside the room with these women leaders to see how it’s done.