When Hillary Clinton was declared the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in June, she acknowledged the historic nature of that moment. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person,” she said in a speech in Brooklyn. “It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.” Though the fight for gender equality is hardly over, within the past 100 years, women have successfully fought for the right to vote, to own property, to access safe and legal abortions, and to have protections against workplace harassment and discrimination.



In Clinton, many women of her generation and older, especially, see a mirror of the struggles they faced and the progress that society has made in gender equality. Over the past few months, Cosmopolitan.com reached out to 10 women across America over the age of 75 who are ardent Clinton supporters and asked them to share their perspectives on the election. Six female photographers shot portraits of the women in their homes.

Kathleen Kamphausen

[As a child, I remember when] it was coming out that the women were going to get the right to vote. I was in the barn with the hired man, and [he] and Dad were talking, “Oh, it’s going to be the end of the world ... They don’t know what they’re doing.” I can remember when I wanted to get a credit card, I couldn’t, because I had to get it in my husband’s name or in my father’s name, so a loan company refused me. I wanted to buy a piece of land where I could make some money, but I couldn’t get a mortgage because I was a woman. The young people don’t even realize that women couldn’t vote, they couldn’t get a credit card, because everybody has one now! I followed [Hillary Clinton] from the beginning since she was first lady. They would ridicule her because she couldn’t make cookies, she was going to make something different, and I thought, Good thing, she’s going someplace. [If Hillary is elected,] I think we’ll see more women in office. I think Hillary’s going to be very considerate of all races and colors and denominations. There’ll be more health care for women — [women] should make up their own minds if they should have an abortion or not, or if they want to space [out] their children. And many of these old Republican men, they just can’t stand having a woman being superior than them.

Joyelle West

Katherine: My first mentor was Jill Ker Conway, the president of Smith College. She hired me as the dean of the School for Social Work. I probably would’ve had a reasonable shot of being the president of Smith College if I hadn’t been known as being a lesbian. I felt that I hit the glass ceiling in relation to being an out lesbian more so than in being a woman. [Earlier in my career,] when I moved out to Arizona, I was chosen to be the superintendent of a new facility for juveniles. I did not come out publicly in Arizona because they were on a witch hunt about me out there to begin with, with people trying to figure out whether or not I was a lesbian and therefore should be fired from the institution I was running. [Hillary] and Bill were in the same law school at Yale as [Nancy Bekavac], who was the president of Scripps College, and so I saw them some through that social acquaintance. That was when Hillary was first lady. But she always maintained her own work ethic and interests, and was tied to a fascinating group of women through all that time, some who were lesbians and some who weren’t. She’s gone through some extraordinarily difficult times in her life, and been battered and bruised and knocked around by them both personally and politically, and she has stood there, and maintained her sanity and her reason and her dedication in spite of all of the odds.

Eunice: My mother was a traditional housewife and my father learned how to be an upholsterer. He escaped from Russia during the time of a great deal of anti-Semitic activity. I remember wanting to trek across the country when I was 14 and my mother told me I couldn’t do that because I was a girl. I think really my whole life was rebelling against limitations on what I could and could not do. And that carried through as dean of the Graduate School of Social Work [at the University of Utah], where they had no woman deans there before me. I was never out as a lesbian. So I was there as a woman who normally should not have been there rather than as a lesbian. I have the cover of the children — that helped me — but I simply went about my life partnering with women, and if people knew about, they knew about it, and if they didn’t, they didn’t. [I support Hillary Clinton because] first and foremost, she shouldn’t be doing what she’s doing. She’s doing something that was male territory, and she is moving into it in a beautiful and very exciting way. She has always been involved in making life better for children, in families, in issues of poverty, in justice. It has been something that she has done all her life, and when she was working in child welfare and I was in social work, it was just natural to know that she was there and what she was doing, and she has never stopped.

Paola Nazati

I was born in China and when I was 10 years old, with my 6-year-old sister, we left when the Japanese were invading. I was able to get a scholarship to study art at the Art Institute. When I first started out [to] work, I was faced with both sex and race discrimination. They gave me the worst assignment and sometimes no assignment at all. One guy told me I was taking away a job from a man who needed to take care of his family. Later on, I was hired by a woman at the Dallas Morning News, an amazing art director and trailblazer. [My husband and I] moved and I started to work for the Washington Post as an advertising artist. The Washington Post was also headed by a woman: Katharine Graham. She gave opportunities to the best and the brightest. I was fortunate to work at places led by a woman. Hillary not only understands the issues facing our country but those of everyday women, who are struggling to support our families. I feel so lucky to live and see an African American president. One of the best presidents we’ve ever had. Now I want to be able to help elect an outstanding woman like Hillary.

Anna Jones

I was born in Southern Minnesota. We all grew up as small kids during the Depression, then the war came and the possibilities for everything kind of dimmed out. An awful lot of [the men] had been in the service, and the idea was now they were home, and you shouldn’t take a job that they did just as well or better than you did, and your place was in the home taking care of the children. My first exposure to knowing that other women had probably felt like I had and would have liked to have done something professional was when I finally read Betty Friedan’s book. I had had 2 1/2 years of college before I was married, which was fairly unusual in those days. Then, 20 years later, after we’d had three children, we lived only about two miles from a liberal arts college, and I went back to school. I began teaching fifth grade the very summer I finished college, and then I taught for 19 years. I feel [Hillary is] probably the most knowledgeable person that’s probably ever ran for president, if she would only get credit for being such a hard worker and just such a super-bright person. But I have found it, frankly, just unbelievable that all women don’t support her. I don’t think they have really explored her life or what a devoted person she’s been her whole life to the causes of children and women, and not just in the U.S. but all over the world.

Translated from Farsi by Effat’s daughter, Navid Rezvani.



Diana Mulvihill

Gol: I had an older sister that played violin, which was unheard of in those days, and there was no objection from my father. He wanted us to go to school and study, and education was important, because he didn’t have education himself, so he believed that girls and boys are equal, and we were raised that way. I came here to be with my children and near them, so my husband and I migrated 32 years ago. I always liked [Hillary Clinton] when Bill Clinton was the president. What I think she will do for the country is, as a woman, she will provide more opportunities for women. I think it’s time for things to change here. In other countries, they do have women prime ministers, so we just want, in my country here, to have a woman as the president.



Effat: I was born in a very large family where we had lots of boys and girls, and my father really told us that as a girl, we can get to wherever we want to get to if we tried our best. But there wasn’t as much freedom [in Iran] and I couldn’t really continue my education beyond the point that I would really like to. My children were here after the revolution in Iran, and I was able to come here for freedom of speech and to make sure that I have a voice here. I became a citizen in 2007. I started to really lean toward Hillary Clinton when I started to look at some of the ads on TV. Also, when I heard her opponent really put Muslims and other people, and especially Iranians, down. I have daughters, I have granddaughters, and I want to be able to tell them, “You too can be the president of the United States.”

Kathleen Kamphausen

I don’t remember ever being not disabled. It started, like, when I was 2 1/2 years old, and I stopped walking when I was about 4 1/2. My mother would take me places and they would not allow me in because they said I would be a fire hazard. When I went to business school, it was, not, “Who’s going to hire me?” “What kind of job?” I had to worry about "Is the entrance accessible?” “Can I use the restroom?” “Is there a lunchroom, a cafeteria, in the building?” When I moved [to New York City], it opened up a whole new life for me. I met other disabled people because I was, in my [old] neighborhood, the only [disabled] kid in the block. I said, “Well, I can’t cry anymore. I have to put this energy and anger to good use.” I have been with ADAPT, a disability rights activist group. I have been arrested. We have — oh my god, how many times? — blocked the doorways, blocked the elevators, but not let people come in, not let them out. Also, we have chained ourselves to the fences at the White House. As far as disabled people go, if [Hillary Clinton] hasn’t made a law, she has put her comments on a law that involves us. Also now, on her website, she includes disabled people. I don’t know anybody else who’s ever done that. [Donald Trump] is disgusting. Did you see how he insulted a person with a disability? If anybody who’s disabled sees that and votes for him, they should be out of their minds. Hillary Clinton has been in politics a long time. She is steady. She is sturdy. What she says about the country and her plans make sense. I’m so happy in my lifetime that there’s a woman running for the presidency.

Paola Nazati

In 1945, segregation had the doors locked, and I was 180 miles from the only black college around for miles and miles around. My parents couldn’t afford it. But I educated myself along the way by attending educational sessions, and I attended a couple universities, and I attended a college in West Virginia. I just attended, I didn’t complete. There’s been a lot of barriers broken, but there’s still segregation in America. [I noticed Hillary Clinton] when she and Bill were first in the White House. I saw then that she was an organizer and a leader. I want her to do what she promised to do, to find jobs. These kids need jobs, we need to get them off the street. And we don’t need to fill any more jails; we need to build schools. As a senior, I feel that she has a lot of experience, that I have lived through some of what she has come through. It will mean the world to me to see [her elected president], because it will be a giant step for us women in America. We have come a long way, and it’s all because we put a fight for everything we earned, and she will prove to us that we can, that we will.

Candice Lanning

I was born in a little town called Huandacareo in Mexico. I got married at the age of 19 [and] moved to Chicago in 1951. I didn’t have a very good life because [my husband] was not a good person and not a great father. So I had to go through all the things that a single mother does with five children. I was on welfare. I remarried later and moved back to Houston, Texas. And it’s when I found out the disparity between men and women on the job. I raised my children going to secretary work, and then at night, I had to go and clean houses. I listened to both candidates, and I know that I want Hillary Clinton to win. Hillary Clinton has been a mother, and she has been discriminated [against] and all that. I think she will do something for all women that are not having the same treatment as men. I think [Trump] is saying things that don’t make any sense and he contradicts himself. Like he went to Mexico to visit [Mexican president Enrique] Peña Nieto, and then he comes back and starts the same thing all over again. No, no, no. I will never vote for him.



Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled Doris Harper Allen’s surname. Her last name is “Allen," not “Allan."

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