The primaries are over and California has made one decision with certainty: for the first time in thirty years, the Golden State will not send a woman to the Senate.

Welcome to Women’s History Month 2024, where even in California, progress feels like finding

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in the public bathroom, and then realize they are the kind without the hose.

For those fortunately not following the election results, it appears that Adam Schiff or Steve Garvey will join Alex Padilla as our representatives in the Upper House of Congress.

No hatred towards any of them. Gender obviously shouldn’t be the determining factor for who we vote for, despite what the “no balls to scratch” gentleman in a certain MSNBC viral video thinks.

But in an age where gender rights are being eroded, this gives pause.

Especially when you add in the fact that leadership in the state legislature has gone completely on the Y chromosome. A few weeks ago, former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), who in 2018 became the first woman to ever hold that job, resigned due to term limits and gave it to the very capable Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg ). That leaves McGuire and Assemblyman Robert Rivas in charge.

Atkins was the only queer woman at the time to hold both top positions in the Legislature. Her leadership was marked by mutual respect, a strength and wisdom that only a lesbian from the mountains of Appalachia could muster in a place known for rivalries as intense as they are petty.

If you don’t know Atkins’ backstory, it’s a lot like Dolly Parton’s smart but poor kid in a backwoods cabin, with no running water, few prospects, and lots of courage.

She has guts, as they say, and she doesn’t hoard it for herself. Atkins empowered other women by giving them leadership positions on key committees and helping them rise up.

“Toni has shot more arrows in the chest than we will ever know,” recently elected Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) told me, yet she is “still willing to include you even if you become like the other seen.”

Now, of course, Atkins is running for governor and trying to become the first woman to hold that office in California (just like Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and former Comptroller Betty Yee).

Which brings me to the real point of this column.

It’s not about the number of women in power. It’s the quality.

Fortunately, California has quality, the kind of women who not only fight to win, but fight for change.

You certainly won’t find many Marjorie Taylor Greenes with their Jewish space lasers around the Golden State, in office.

Instead, you’ll find Oakland Democrat Buffy Wicks who broke the boundaries of motherhood in 2020, four weeks after a C-section, and brought her newborn daughter to the General Assembly meeting to vote while her colleagues refused to let her do so. to give up.

“What should I do, leave her at home?” she joked recently when I asked her about it.

You’ll see Karen Bass the first black mayor of Los Angeles, the first black woman to chair a state legislature, not just California.

And, Atkins told me, one of the first people to reach out to her when she became a speaker herself, telling Atkins she knew what it felt like to be the only woman in the room.

“We are still friends today,” Atkins said.

You’ll find women like Wahab, the first Muslim and Afghan American elected to the Senate. She grew up in a foster home after losing her parents (her mother died when she was young, her father was murdered in a robbery).

Those early experiences left her acutely aware of the connection between generational trauma and public policy, and of the belief that “it makes no sense for me to waste time, power, and privilege on fear.”

You’ll find veterans like Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who in her spare time, from reforming the justice system and protecting children on social media, worked with colleagues to change what it meant to have a woman in the legislature are, because as she says, “We have some catching up to do.”

About ten years ago, the few women under the umbrella, less than twenty at the time, decided that they wanted to accelerate this catch-up process and set themselves the goal of getting more women elected, not just women from their own party or background.

So the women’s party, of which Skinner was a member of a formidable group, began not only recruiting other women but also vetting candidates to make sure they could win. That didn’t mean you had to guard the gate for a certain type, it just meant you had to take care of it

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were “viable,” Skinner told me.

Money, baby.

The caucus began helping candidates with mentorship and fundraising support, even from skeptical donors who were still more comfortable with cigars than children.

Because before the vote there is the campaign, and if you can’t pay for it, you can’t win. And men didn’t want to give money to women because they didn’t believe they could win, a circular logic that kept women out.

“Whether consciously or not, there was some kind of bias that female candidates couldn’t raise the money,” Skinner said.

But women like Skinner and her group see viability differently than the establishment. That is it

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Not only for more women in office, but also for diverse women.

Fast forward fifteen years, the effect of that deliberate focus of the women’s party is clear.

There are currently a record number of women in the state legislature, 50 of a total of 120 possible seats. That’s about 42% female, in a state where half the population is female.

Organizations like Emily’s List use the same approach to ensure female candidates have funding, and across the country the percentage of women remains nearly the same.

However, other states have done better than California. Believe it or not, Nevada is the only state with a female-majority legislature. Thirty-two states have elected female governors, sometimes more than once.

And almost everywhere, it’s still controversial to show up with a baby, or be a woman with a woman, or in some places, even like Missouri recently suggested showing your shoulders.

“It’s great to see,” Atkins says of the progress in California, and the progress of women in general.

But still, “The room doesn’t always behave like we belong there.”