After a year that began with a rally in Washington and closed with a backlash against sexual misconduct, leaders expect ‘dramatic changes’ in 2018

Women's March and #MeToo leaders see progress – but 'we're in a hell of a fight'

For the leaders of this year’s feminist protests, 2017 has been marked by moments of clear progress and painful revelations.

A year that started with the march on Washington DC protesting about Donald Trump’s election win ended with the period of reckoning over sexual assault and workplace harassment. And along the line there has been a national dialogue around issues of sexism, gender equality and sexual harassment.

“We’re in a hell of a fight – probably, for most of us, the fight of our lives – but we are seeing victories. We are seeing progress,” said Tamika Mallory, co-president of the Women’s March.

On 21 January, the day after Donald Trump took office, women gathered on the National Mall in Washington and in cities across the country and around the world to deliver a roaring rejoinder to his presidency.

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Trump has denied accusations by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct, and won office over Hillary Clinton, a woman with decades of political experience.

“We saw a confluence of blatant misogyny and sexism on the national stage in this campaign for the presidency,” said Bob Bland, a co-founder of the Women’s March. “Not that we don’t all see it in our lives every day constantly but to see it on such a big scale, pounded into our faces for 18 months, was something that really permeated the American psyche in a way that primed us for what happened next.”

Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, said the march had “set the tone” for the year. And when the New York Times and the New Yorker published allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, a door was opened for thousands of women to come forward and share accounts of sexual violence and harassment in various industries.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Burke, a longtime activist who started the #MeToo movement in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence. “I’ve been saying: this is a movement, not just a moment. We’re still watching it grow.”

Burke was featured as one of Time Magazine’s people of the year, a group of women it named the “silence breakers” for their role in starting a global dialogue.

Yet she says the conversation is still too exclusive and must expand to include the experiences of marginalized women.

“In some regards, when some women are successful we are all successful but in other regards it doesn’t always trickle down to all of us,” she said. “So I don’t know that women of color will say that for them, this year has been as powerful.”

All the leaders agree that women of color are underrepresented and are working from within their movements to change that. Mallory said 2017 offered some signs that voters were open to a “changing of the guard”.

As examples, she pointed to the election to the Virginia house of delegates of Danica Roem, who became one of the country’s first openly transgender state lawmakers; the election of Keisha Lance Bottoms, a black woman, as mayor of Atlanta; and the defeat in the Alabama Senate race of Roy Moore, who faced accusations of sexual assault and child molestation. Moore denies wrongdoing.

The Women’s March has also been credited with helping to inspire more women to run for office. Emily’s List, an organization that supports pro-choice women running for office, said 25,000 women contacted the group about running for office in 2017, more than 25 times the number of women it heard from during the 2016 election cycle.

“We always wanted to see that collective power on the streets be converted into political power,” Mallory said.

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The 2018 congressional midterms are the next major test of the so-called resistance’s political power. On the anniversary of the Women’s March, organizers will launch Power to the Polls, a national voter registration and mobilization campaign targeting swing states.

This year of the women will end, perhaps fittingly, with Burke literally ringing in the new year. On 31 December, she will press the Waterford crystal button that starts the ball drop in New York’s Times Square.

“I predict that we’re going to see some dramatic changes in 2018,” she said. “And that will be because of this momentum that we’ve built up in 2017.”

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