When President Donald Trump joked to the victorious U.S. Men’s Olympic hockey team about his disinterest in inviting the U.S. women to the White House, were any of us surprised? The teams achieved the same victory. The women, like the men, have done so repeatedly — as many gold medals as the men in a quarter of the time. Yet their win was seen as less worthy.
Sometimes, it feels as if nothing has changed at all.
We represent two different generations, but we are both frustrated at what continues to go on. We are the outgoing (Kiana) and incoming (Lauri) presidents of the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington. One of us wrote her doctoral dissertation about the 2016 presidential election. One of us was the victim of sexual harassment on Capitol Hill 30 years ago and later worked in the Clinton administration. It was a time when women were thrilled by what appeared to be great progress, with our dismal number of female U.S. senators (two) going to a whopping six in “The Year of the Woman.” Now, women make up more than a quarter of lawmakers in Congress.
Many of the barriers that then kept women, especially women of color, from full participation in elected leadership are still in place today, and are present in and beyond politics. It is mostly men who run our hearings and create our laws. While men share the weight of family care more than they once did, the scales are still deeply unbalanced, forcing many women and families to make choices about workforce participation that hamstring their earning power, career ambitions or financial independence. While there is some progress on wage parity, women still earn less than men for equal work. Women are still fighting, in many ways, for equality. That’s part of why electing women matters.
The National Women’s Political Caucus and our Washington State chapter were founded to advance political equality. Women in Congress, state legislatures and city halls across the country have introduced, fought for, and won legislation to eliminate sex discrimination and advance greater equality for all. When women are in positions of power, everyone benefits.
We focus on electing women and nonbinary candidates around the state who support reproductive freedom, gender and racial equity, and policies that support women and families. In the last decade we have endorsed 1,172 candidates seeking statewide, legislative, local or judicial office across our state. For many down-ballot candidates, such as those running for city councils and school boards, we may be their only opportunity for candidates to seek endorsement from a statewide organization that supports reproductive freedom without partisan alignment. Our track record of success for our endorsed candidates is impressive: 76% of the 145 candidates we endorsed in the 2025 general election won, including 82% of our endorsed candidates of color.
We are invested in the long game. We have to be. Both of us have daughters. We can’t imagine the world they will inhabit, just as Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and Fannie Lou Hamer couldn’t imagine where we are today. Will our daughters be represented by leaders who look like them? Will their workplaces be fair and equitable? Will policies protect them from harassment and discrimination? Will men around them laugh, perhaps unintentionally diminishing their accomplishments?
Celebrating Olympic hockey is not the same as electing women to political office, but both are indicators of how our society sees women. We believe in the words of Team USA captain (and Seattle Torrent captain) Hilary Knight, who said the controversy was an opportunity “to really focus on how we talk about women, not only in sport but in industry. Women aren’t less than, and their achievements shouldn’t be overshadowed by anything else other than how great they are.” That is what leadership looks like.
We hope our daughters will live in a world where there are more women in office, including in the White House. It will be clear then, as it should be now, in the halls of legislatures and on ice rinks and yes, in locker rooms, that women aren’t less than. And when a women’s team wins at the Olympics, they will be treated with respect. And when they return to their professional teams, they’ll be paid as much as the professional male athletes.
A girl can dream.
