The Women's March: New York, January 21, 2017

Written two days after the women's march in New York on January 21, 2017, this essay—a guest column in Common Knowledge—describes the event and emphasizes two aspects: its multi-issue focus and its response to the denigration of women's expertise represented in much of the hostility to Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Comparing the widespread resistance to Donald Trump's proposals in early 2017 with recent single-issue protests, the author suggests that it is a strength of the current moment that women confront a wide range of issues, from sexual harassment to gun violence to reproductive choice to immigration restriction. She also argues that a pernicious and often unrecognized denigration of female voices and female expertise forms an undercurrent of contemporary political debate that needs to be much more widely resisted. She writes out of forty years of personal experience with women's issues, hoping that the progress made earlier will continue but predicting an uphill battle.