—AMANI AL-KHATAHTBEH
Amani kept MuslimGirl going beyond high school. She worked on the site while a student at Rutgers, all while serving as the opinions editor of the student newspaper—the first Arab Muslim American to hold the position. After college, she worked for a nonprofit in D.C. She left when she landed her dream job working in media in New York City—but the company collapsed before she started. She moved to New York anyway and turned her focus to building MuslimGirl as a full-time job. The site saw a 90 percent increase in traffic that year alone. By 2017, it had 1.7 million page views a year.
Today MuslimGirl has a team of more than forty people and produces content “at the intersection of Islam and feminism,” which Amani sees as complementary; she’s trying to help others see it that way, too. The platform Amani built took on new relevance during and after the 2016 election, when Islamophobia spiked once again, this time stoked by (first candidate then) President Trump. She and her staff published a “Crisis Safety Manual for Muslim Women,” and she spoke out against Donald Trump’s attacks on Muslims. “His comments perpetuate the Islamophobic attitudes that compelled us to advise Muslim women at the time to carry their phones charged at all times, know which numbers to call or apps to use to record a hate crime, and consider less conspicuous hijab styles in areas of extreme threat,” she said.
Even in this hostile environment, Amani has preserved MuslimGirl as a place that celebrates her community. Recent headlines range from “Stop What You’re Doing and Bake These Bars for Your Next Iftar Party” to “How a Quote from the Qur’an Affected My PTSD” to “So What Does an Abnormal Period Actually Mean for Your Fast?” On March 27, 2017, she launched Muslim Women’s Day, which has been celebrated every year since by elected officials, activists, artists, and more.
In 2016, I met Amani at the Clinton Global Initiative University. She took part in a discussion on having “The Courage to Create,” which explored what it takes to move from having a great idea to making that idea a reality. As Amani spoke, her courage was evident—as was her passion to share why she believed anyone could create something meaningful, disruptive, and powerful, as she had with MuslimGirl.
That courage was again palpable when I read the autobiography she published later that year, Muslim Girl: Coming of Age. It chronicles her upbringing and her personal struggles with feelings of not being enough—struggles that were amplified by formative years spent experiencing acute Islamophobia and racism.
In May 2017, Amani and I were on a panel together in Washington, D.C., at the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) national conference. The conference’s theme was “Now More Than Ever,” and we spoke about the many challenges that girls and women face today. We discussed how those of us with a platform have the obligation to share it, to give a voice to the historically voiceless. I was impressed by Amani’s continued willingness to take on difficult subjects, knowing that sometimes her job is to force everyone, including her own readers, to question their own views. “We published a conversation from a transgender Muslim woman convert about what her experience has been,” she said in an interview. “She referred to God as ‘She’ in her article and everyone just went haywire.”
As Amani’s work has reached bigger and bigger audiences, and more and more people have wanted to feature her, she has stayed true to the values that led her to start MuslimGirl in the first place. In her writing and on social media, she tackles the new challenges that come with being recognized, including tokenization. “There have been a lot of times where different outlets have wanted to use me as an ornament, to tick off that box where a Muslim woman is included without having to speak, and that’s important for me to consider,” she has said. She openly addresses the privilege that comes with being beautiful, Western-educated, and lighter-skinned. She lives her values, even when it means passing up a chance to be publicly celebrated: When Revlon wanted to give her an award for her advocacy in 2018, she turned it down because she objected to the views of another nominee.
Amani has never been the kind of person to wait for public opinion to shift or our political climate to get better. Instead, from the time she was a teenager, she has taken it upon herself to carve out a space where she can create the world she envisions—the world that Muslim girls, and all girls, deserve.
Elected Leaders
Bella Abzug
Hillary
Bella Abzug was always herself. Every day of her long, active life, she never tried to be anyone else—she stuck to her principles and brought her passion and fearlessness to everything she did. As a result, when the history is written about what women in America have done, what they have said, and how they have stood up for themselves, Bella’s name and accomplishments will rank up there with the best of them.
The trailblazing politician was born in the Bronx in 1920, the year women won the right to vote. (I always have this image of her saying, “No, I’m not arriving on the scene until I can be part of this great moment.”) She gave her first soapbox speech in a subway station at age eleven. After she graduated from Columbia Law School she became a lawyer, fighting for women, people of color, lesbians and gay men, and working people—those who were, in her words, “on the outside of power.” She stood up for civil rights and represented people who were targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt. In 1970, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served three terms. Her slogan was unforgettable: “This woman’s place is in the House,” she would declare. “The House of Representatives!”
I first heard about Bella in 1970, when she was elected to Congress. I would sit in the law library and read the newspapers, where she was constantly featured. She stood out for many reasons—not just her ever-present hats—and I especially admired her for her anti-war stance. Legend has it that she once accepted an invitation to the White House from President Nixon. She waited patiently in line, and when her turn came to shake hands with the president, she announced for all to hear that she was there on behalf of her constituents, to demand withdrawal from Vietnam. At the time, even though I was interested in politics, I never pictured myself running for office. Bella inspired me because she was one of the few women who was in the thick of political and policy decisions. In the midst of the crisis in our democracy with eerie parallels to our current moment, Bella was the first member of the U.S. House of Representatives to speak out in favor of impeaching Nixon.
In Washington, they called her “Battling Bella,” a style that came naturally to her. As Life magazine said, “She arrived in Congress… and began shouting.” It was true: She let you know exactly how she felt, to the point of yelling. But she was also a savvy behind-the-scenes politician. Publicly, she would be throwing off those great one-liners she became known for; meanwhile, she managed to become a favorite of some of the very members of Congress who epitomized the good-old-boy network. She had a strong, effective presence. She knew how to play the game. But she never lost sight of whom she was fighting for. She unapologetically delivered for her constituents and for anybody who needed a champion. Bella used her tenacity to coauthor historic pieces of legislation, including Title IX, the Freedom of Information Act, and the first law making it illegal to prevent women from opening a line of credit in their own name simply because of their gender. After Congress failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, Bella didn’t sit around wringing her hands; she got together with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mildred Jeffrey, and Betty Friedan to form the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971.
“I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prizefighter, a man hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I’m impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I’m any of these things or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am—and this ought to be made very clear at the outset—I am a very serious woman.”
—BELLA ABZUG
After her three terms in Congress, she became the first woman to run for the U.S. Senate from New York. She lost by less than 1 percent of the vote. Next, she became the first woman to run for New York City mayor. She loved politics, and she never apologized for that. “I’m a politician,” she said simply. “I run for office. That’s my profession.”
As first lady, often when I walked into a room of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or sat at an international conference, I could count on seeing Bella. She was usually the one who organized the women’s caucuses at these conferences and fought to ensure that women had a seat at the table at all. (“First they gave us the year of the woman,” she said. “Then they gave us the decade of the woman. Sooner or later, they’ll give us the whole thing.”) During her last years, her health started to fail. But Bella wasn’t going to give up; she kept moving. When I saw her at the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, she was in a wheelchair but still battling away. The Chinese government had placed the NGO conference at Huairou, which was far from Beijing. It was raining cats and dogs, and there was a lot of mud. But that didn’t stop Bella. She was there, proving that no sickness, no obstacle, nothing could ever dampen her fighting spirit.
She never stopped organizing; she never stopped demanding results. Near the end of her life, I saw her at a ceremony at the White House, where we were giving out awards for successful microcredit efforts—a commitment we had announced at the Beijing conference and something Bella cared deeply about. She came up to me afterward and didn’t spend a moment celebrating the victory she had helped fight so hard for. Instead, she took a deep breath and began: “Okay. Now here’s what we’ve got to do next.” She never let anybody forget that no matter how much we thought we might have accomplished, there was so much more to be done.
Years later, I wound up running for the same Senate seat she had run for. As her daughter Liz recently pointed out to me, Bella was the first woman to try, and twenty-four years later, I was the first woman to succeed. I thought a lot about her and other women pioneers in New York. I thought about how tough it had been—and still was—to break into statewide politics. Mostly, I was sorry she wasn’t around. Just about everywhere I went during that campaign, I met people who would say: “The first woman I ever voted for was Bella Abzug, and I’ll vote for you, too.” Whether it’s Central Asia, Africa, or anywhere else, I still meet women who introduce themselves by saying, “I’m the Bella Abzug of Russia,” or “I’m the Bella Abzug of Kazakhstan,” or “I’m the Bella Abzug of Uganda.” What they’re really saying is that they, too, are pioneers; they, too, are willing to take on the establishment in their society to demand equal rights for women.
In 1998, I spoke at Bella’s memorial service. Nearly everyone there that day wore a fabulous wide-brimmed hat, just like the hats Bella famously wore. She had started wearing hats after being mistaken for a secretary at the beginning of her career. “When I was a young lawyer, I would go to people’s offices and they would always say: ‘Sit here. We’ll wait for the lawyer.’ Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously,” she explained. Later, when she came to Congress and realized her male colleagues wanted her to take off the hat, she made up her mind once and for all: The hat stayed.
Bella didn’t just change laws and policies; she changed opportunities for women in public office. Men in politics have always come in all shapes, sizes, and rhetorical styles. Women, too often, are still expected to fit into a preexisting mold. Bella broke that mold. She carved out a place for herself and, in the process, made room for generations of women who have come after her.
Shirley Chisholm
Hillary
Long before I ever dreamed of running for office myself, there was Shirley Chisholm. She was a woman of tenacity, ingenuity, and pride. When she became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972, her campaign slogan defiantly proclaimed: “Unbought and Unbossed.” Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1924, she stood tall at a time when women, and black women in particular, faced more shut doors than open ones in nearly every corner of American life.
I was in college when I first heard about Shirley, and I avidly followed her career. The daughter of immigrants, she started out in the 1950s as a nursery school teacher and rose in the ranks to become the director of two day care centers. Because of her expertise in education, she would go on to consult with the city of New York on day care programs. In 1968, when redistricting efforts added a new congressional district in her neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Shirley decided to throw her hat in the ring. She campaigned on her deep roots in the community. During her campaign, she would drive through the district in a sound truck, announcing: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” She beat three candidates in the primary. In the general election, she faced an opponent who argued that the district needed “a man’s voice in Washington,” not a “little schoolteacher.”
CHELSEA
If anything, we need more teachers and early childhood education specialists in Washington. That was true then and it’s true today.
During her campaign, Shirley went door-to-door, meeting families in housing projects and speaking to people in fluent Spanish. She won the general election and became the first black woman ever elected to Congress.
Some suggested that breaking that barrier was enough—that once she was in Congress she should stay quiet, keep her head down, and not make waves. Shirley wasn’t interested in that at all. Above all else, she was a legislator who got things done—an attribute that inspired me then and still does. If it meant saying the unpopular thing, well then, she’d say the unpopular thing. People called her brusque, pushy, impolitic—the kind of things people have always said about strong women. None of it stopped Shirley. “I have no intention of just sitting quietly and observing,” she said. And she didn’t.
From her first days in office, she fought for the rights of workers and immigrants, poor children and pregnant women. In 1971, she worked on legislation along with Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota to provide federal funds for child care for the first time. Though the bill was vetoed by President Richard Nixon, it sent a resounding message. The next year, she was instrumental in creating the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to make sure “poor babies have milk and poor children have food.” The Children’s Defense Fund, where I worked during law school, supported both bills and considered Shirley a champion for children. I did, too.
She fought successfully to extend unemployment insurance and minimum-wage protections for domestic workers because, growing up in Brooklyn, she saw how “domestics” worked themselves to the bone and were often exploited or left destitute if their job disappeared. She was a champion for Title IX because she knew from her own life how hard women had to fight for their education—and because, as a teacher, she believed education was the key to just about everything.
“At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.”
—SHIRLEY CHISHOLM
Shirley didn’t just leave her mark on America; she left her mark on Congress. She cofounded the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus, because she knew firsthand how hard it was to be both a black person and a woman in Congress. She wanted to make sure everyone who came up after her wouldn’t have to struggle quite as hard as she did. She saw that as a sacred responsibility. And as one of those people who did come up after her, I will always be grateful for that.
CHELSEA
The first elected women I ever remember my mom telling me about as a very young girl were Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro. She wanted to be absolutely sure I grew up knowing women could be and do anything, and so could I.
Shirley’s run for president in 1972 was surprisingly effective given her meager fund-rais
ing, the logistical difficulties of waging a national campaign, and the resistance she faced as a black American and a woman. She received 152 first-ballot votes at the Miami Beach Convention, coming in fourth behind George McGovern, the eventual nominee. Years later, Shirley said she ran for president “In spite of hopeless odds… to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.” She was also very clear about the obstacles she faced as a woman in politics. “When I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.”
I thought about Shirley often when I was out on the campaign trail. It’s not easy running for president. But even my hardest days were nothing compared to hers. She ran in the face of unimaginable discouragement and hostility. But she kept going. It was as if all that hostility only fueled her fire. “If you can’t support me and you can’t endorse me, get out of my way,” she’d say. A lot of people did end up supporting her. They knew no one would work harder.
At the end of her life, Shirley knew that she had made history. But she didn’t want to be celebrated just for the barriers she crossed. That felt secondary to her. “I don’t want to be remembered as the first black woman who went to Congress. And I don’t even want to be remembered as the first woman who happened to be black to make the bid for the presidency. I want to be remembered as a woman who fought for change in the twentieth century. That’s what I want.”
Well, Madam Chisholm—you got it.
The Book of Gutsy Women Page 31