The Reality of Women’s History

This is not the Women’s History Month post we expected to write. We thought we’d tell uplifting stories about women in the GFA community who elevate other women and whose work reminds us what public service looks like in action. Instead, we’re once again condemning a violent attack — this time against Asian women in Atlanta — and the deep and pervasive history of anti-Asian racism, xenophobia, and violence against women that it rests on.

Anti-Asian sentiment is entrenched in the present and history of the United States. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, white supremacy and hateful rhetoric drove up anti-Asian hate crimes by 150% nationwide, with women reporting hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Japanese Internment camps, past policies codified hate and caused decades long repercussions for Asians and Asian-Americans across the country. We’ve seen this manifest in media, policy, and our day-to-day lives. Asian-Americans — many of them women — have long fought for workers' rights, immigrant rights, and civil rights alongside Black civil rights leaders.

Much has changed over the last century, and this month brought many intersectional firsts for women’s representation at the highest levels of government: Katherine Tai confirmed as the first Asian American and first Women of Color to serve as US Trade Representative; Deb Haaland as the first Native American Interior secretary and first Native American cabinet secretary; and Cecilia Rouse, the first Black person to chair the Council of Economic advisors.

It is hard to hold space for these dual realities — to celebrate progress in the same systems that have failed to prevent and often perpetuated violence and discrimination against women (particularly BIPOC women), non-binary, and transgender folx.

Representation matters when it changes people’s lives — when proximate leaders use their voices to make policy and change outcomes in our public systems that protect and uplift our communities, and when our solutions center the needs of the people most impacted.

Until then, we have work to do.

— Manjot Chabra and Team GFA