Harris vice presidency marks several 'firsts'

When Alyson Holt pursued a degree in electrical engineering, she was keenly aware of how few fellow students looked like her.

“Women were 6% of the students,” said Holt, 48, of Murrysville.

Holt came from a family full of technology careers — both grandfathers were engineers, and her grandmother and mother were mathematics majors — but said her studies were daunting with so few female classmates.

She is hoping it won’t be that way for her two elementary school-aged daughters — and a big part of that will include Kamala Harris, who on Wednesday became the first woman and first person of color to become vice president of the United States.

“I’m just really thankful that a woman in the second-highest office in the land will just seem normal to them, just as an African-American president is normal to us all now,” Holt said.

Tracy Baton, 57, of Pittsburgh’s Park Place neighborhood, started a National Organization for Women chapter at Pittsburgh Allderdice High School when she was 16.

“We were laughed at,” said Baton, a Fulbright scholar who identifies as Black and queer and is a social worker with Community Empowerment Association in Homewood. “The idea that we could be leaders, let alone president, was a dream back then.”

Harris, a former U.S. Senator and attorney general of California, is “everything we were told we couldn’t be,” Baton said.

“She doesn’t just embody the fact that women can be leaders, but that womanhood can truly rock,” Baton said. “She’s not afraid to cook a meal and take on somebody in a Senate hearing the same day. It’s not a simplistic move to femininity or an abandonment of femininity.”

The Rev. Felicia Brock, an attorney and pastor at First Baptist Church in Tarentum, said Harris is the embodiment of the ideals she tried to foster in her own daughter.

“I raised her — she’s 26 — telling her she could be whatever she wants to be, that all she needs to do is work hard,” Brock said. “And the best thing about the millennial generation is they believe it!”

Harris also is the first person of South Asian descent to hold such a high post in U.S. government. Her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was born in Madras (now Chennai), India.

For Ajapa Mukherjee of Murrysville, that made the inauguration an exciting time.

“I spent the first part of my life in Kolkata, West Bengal, a state in the eastern region of India,” said Mukherjee, 52. “From a very young age, I saw women in power and politics. Indira Gandhi was the prime minister of India in the ‘70s and she was my idol when I was 5 years old.”

Given that upbringing, Mukherjee said Harris’ elevation to vice president is a long time coming.

“My grandmother used the analogy, ‘A hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,’ and she would use Benazir Bhutto and Margaret Thatcher as examples,” she said. “Never did I think that in a first-world nation that boasts of equality, it would take until 2021 to see a woman in power of this magnitude.”

Priya Iyer, 42, of Murrysville is part of three generations of Indian women who waited to see someone like Harris be sworn in.

“My mother came here as an immigrant,” Iyer said. “Coming from a similar background as Kamala’s parents, she is in awe to see what this country has to offer. My daughter will be 10 in April, and my son Aryaman is also extremely excited to see a woman vice president.”

Kelly Anker, 49, of Penn Hills, said it’s “about time we’re getting a woman in there.”

Anker remembers former U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, elected in 1979, was the first woman to run for vice president, during Walter Mondale’s 1984 campaign.

“Being a young woman then, I was definitely told you could be anything you wanted to be,” Anker said. “So for it to take all these years, it’s a huge deal, especially for it to be a woman of color. That’s amazing.”

The Women & Girls Foundation in Pittsburgh hosted a virtual watch party for Wednesday’s inauguration. Throughout the month, foundation members will highlight the significance of Harris’ new position and the potential impact that a Biden-Harris administration could have policies impacting women and girls.

“My great-grandmother Mary fought, as a suffragette, for women to achieve the right to vote,” said Heather Arnet, CEO of the foundation. “Her daughter, my grandmother Vivien, saw over 50 women run for president in her lifetime. It has been a long road to get us to this point.”

Brock said that her personal pursuit of work in both the legal and spiritual professions shows how difficult it can be for women to rise to a position of prominence.

“In my years of practice, countless numbers of times, I’ve gone into litigation and had judges discount me before I even open my mouth,” Brock said. “It’s very disheartening. And that’s part of what helped me endure enough to become a female pastor.”

Seeing a familiar face in Harris as she ascends to the country’s vice presidency, “you know as an African-American female, what she faced to get there, and that she was strong enough — as was Hillary Clinton — to fight against what people say and how they treat us,” Brock said. “I can’t express enough how really proud of her I am, and how excited that additional doors are opened by her elevation.”

A few other ‘firsts’

While she is the first woman to win the vice presidency, Harris is not the first to pursue it. Former U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro did that in 1984, as did Sarah Palin in 2008.

Here are some other regional “firsts” for women:

• Sophie Masloff was Pittsburgh’s first and only female mayor, from 1988-94, beginning her public career as a clerk in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas before serving on Pittsburgh City Council en route to the mayor’s office. Among other accomplishments, Masloff is credited with vastly improving navigation within the city, establishing the blue street signs that mark Pittsburgh’s roads to this day.

• Veronica Grace Boland, who hails from Scranton, the same town as Joe Biden, was the first Pennsylvania-born woman to serve in Congress, when she completed the term of her late husband Patrick J. Boland. Her tenure was largely ceremonial, however, since she was not seated until Nov. 19, 1942, less than a month before Congress adjourned on Dec. 16. She served only two months.

• While not a Pennsylvanian, Victoria Woodhull, from Homer in nearby central Ohio, is widely considered to have been the first woman to run for U.S. president in the 1872 election. Her candidacy is somewhat disputed due to the fact she was technically too young to qualify as a candidate — she would turn the constitutionally-mandated age of 35 the following year.

• The first group of women elected to Pennsylvania’s state House was in 1922. All Republicans, the group included Sarah Gerturde MacKinney, Alice M. Bentley, Rosa S. DeYoung, Sarah McCunde Gallagher, Helen Grimes, Lillie H. Pitts, Martha G. Speiser and Martha G. Thomas. In 1923, Bentley served as speaker pro tempore, the first woman to do so.

• Anna M. Brancato was the first woman Democrat to be elected to the state House, in 1932.

• Sandra Schultz Newman was the first woman elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in 1995.

• Kathleen Kane was the first woman elected as Pennsylvania Attorney General, in 2012.