On July 21, Rep. Ted Yoho verbally attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York’s 14th congressional district, in front of Capitol Hill by calling her a “disgusting.” When confronted, his hurtful words were masked by indirect apologies and outright denial,  instead of attempts to understand the damage he had done.

While it may have just been a heat of the moment remark in the eyes of Yoho, for women all over the world, this behavior is something that occurs on a daily basis. Whether it is exhibited in front of a fast-food restaurant or even the steps in front of the White House, women periodically have to deal with degrading and unwarranted behavior in the form of sexist remarks and harassment.

Needless to say, the stigma of women has been ingrained throughout history. This stigma has appeared since the 18th century when all men could be “equal”; to the 20th century, where civil protest has brought a new era of representative civil rights movements; to now, the 21st century, where support for gender equality has reached an all-time high. However, as we take one step forward in representation, we take five steps back, with opposition continually increasing from the fear of breaking history. 

  “Starting in the 60s, that’s really when women started actually like speaking out […] and that’s when everyone realized, like, oh, you guys used to be silent. Now you’re using your voices. How do we deal with that?,”  Rebecca Joseph,  the Founder of Women in Politics,  explained.. “So people were used to women just being pretty objects or something that took care of us as a motherly figure as a wife, daughter, grandmother, but not as an independent person with a view.”

This opposition highlights the pressing need for more female representation in politics. 

Xiaoling Shu, a UC Davis professor of sociology, estimates that “women represent 23% of the House of Representatives, 25% in the Senate, and overall remains less than a third of all elected officials in the nation in 2019.” 

These staggeringly low numbers mean that men dominate the current political atmosphere, and thus, make most of the decisions for how women live their lives. 

“We need more women to be represented so that we can have that opinion and they can actually represent what we as a gender and society want, because right now we’re being dictated by men. Men obviously don’t understand what we need and what we want, so we need those women to be there to represent us,” Katherine Bronov, the Vice-Director of Women in Politics, explains. 

In many cases, men and women in office can collaborate to create bills that will garner support but also protect women’s rights. 

An example of this is the Women’s Health Protection Act, where both men and women discussed abortion. Congress representatives such as Judy Chu (D-CA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), and Marcia Fudge (D-OH), and Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), all discoursed about a prominent female topic. 

However, even with this beneficial collaboration, equal representation is something that will not come easily. The inevitable oppression women face from the sexist gender roles has been a part of our society for centuries. 

“I don’t exactly think that we can change an old mindset because it’s already deeply rooted into everything that their lives were based upon, like our grandparents and ancestors and everything they were based on. They grew up on the fact that women stayed at home, “ Bronov said .

But apart from this, we need to realize how the break off of these stereotypes actually will benefit society. A Pew Research Center poll found that women valued the qualities of compassion, empathy, cooperation, and civility more than men. They also stood up for their beliefs, resulting in additional political successes. 

According to the same study, putting women in top positions of businesses and governments would improve the quality of life for 69% of Americans, with 77% of women’s lives improving and 57% of men’s lives improving. 

People need to realize that women are making active solutions to combat our political climate’s current issues. Their policies and their presence will help thousands of Americans’ lives. 

An example of this is of the bills passed by Judy Chu, the United States Representative for California’s 27th congressional district. For example, she is “an original cosponsor of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a comprehensive bill to protect workers’ rights to join unions and collectively bargain.”

However, women also have to take reality into consideration. Although women’s voices have been much more recognized recently, they are still going to be deliberately misinterpreted by their peers. 

“It’s as if when a man reacts, a woman equally overreacts,” Bronov states Bronov. 

The overarching impacts that female politicians have made affect the everyday lives of regular women. Female politicians take into consideration the immediate actions, which results in fixing first-hand issues.