Off the Sidelines

by Kirsten Gillibrand

  Down on the Senate floor, the debate began. Our stalwarts—Senators Barbara Boxer, Jeanne Shaheen, Mazie Hirono, Chuck Grassley, Dean Heller, and Rand Paul—all made impassioned pleas. Richard Blumenthal and Ted Cruz would have spoken, too, if we had more time. I closed the debate with my best two minutes, telling survivors’ stories and expressing in their own words why the system was broken and needed this reform. Then they called the vote. We lost two supporters and we gained two. That left us with fifty-five votes for reform—five short. I was devastated.

  I looked over to the group of senators standing together to my left in the back of the chamber, all people I count as close friends. I was afraid to hug Senator Heidi Heitkamp, because I thought I’d start to cry. But I managed to hold it together and embraced her, Joe Donnelly, and Amy Klobuchar, and then I started to shake the hands of supporters and opponents alike. Many said, “You couldn’t have done more!” or “Next time.” I was grateful for their goodwill, but I was wrecked—physically and emotionally depleted.

  Moments after the vote, I texted Jonathan to tell him what happened and to check on Henry, who was home sick with a fever. Jonathan had taken an earlier train than usual back from New York to provide moral support. He wrote back immediately: “Well done, bunny—sorry about the people you work with.” He was waiting to catch me as I collapsed when I walked through the door, dinner already made and on the table.

  Days like that, when I feel most defeated, I start to question whether I should be a senator at all. When I can, I try to shift my focus from work and onto small, doable things: reading my children stories, getting them to bed by eight o’clock, turning in by eight-thirty myself and reading a few pages before I turn out the light. This battle bores deep into my soul. There’s so much suffering, so much failing, the worst of human nature on display. I wish I could say that I can pull myself out of these depressions with a phone chat with my sister, Erin, or a great squash game. But I can’t. It’s not that easy. The injustice is too devastating. The rate of suicide and PTSD among sexual-assault survivors is too high.

  But walking away from the fight is not an option. Not fighting means the greatest failure of all. When morale among my staff sinks and they feel sure we’re going to lose, I tell them the same thing: We will keep fighting, without question, because fighting is the right thing. Men and women are getting brutally raped, and military leaders aren’t doing enough to change it—we cannot sit idly by. Other people on Capitol Hill might think we’re crazy for taking on a losing battle and not letting go, but so what? There is no question about our commitment. We will fight to the end.

  During my very darkest moments, when not even cuddling Henry and Theo can make a day feel a little brighter, I look to my faith. Raised a Catholic, I’ve always enjoyed attending church, and I look back very fondly on the period in my twenties and thirties when I was involved in my Bible study class. Each week, we would read a passage and write down answers to a few questions about it. Then we’d come together in a church around 60th and Park, not far from my office, to share our interpretations and ideas. That study group was the antidote I needed to an uninspiring job at a corporate law firm (suffice it to say, it wasn’t God’s work). I’m so thankful for those years of study now. Whenever my life feels out of my control or when I question whether I’ve chosen the right way, faith offers me deeper meaning and guideposts.

  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of Esther. For those who don’t know that story—and at risk of oversimplifying for those who do—Esther was a young woman chosen by King Ahasuerus to replace his first wife, from whom he’d become estranged. Esther was Jewish, but the king didn’t know that. Nor did the king know that one of his advisors was corrupt and planned to kill all the Jews.

  Esther’s uncle learned of the advisor’s plan and pleaded with her to intervene. This was no small request. If Esther approached the king without being summoned, she risked being executed. If she didn’t approach the king and the advisor carried out his plan, her people would die. The uncle did his best to persuade Esther to act, to use her unique position for the greater good. Perhaps a higher force had put her in that place at that time for this reason, Esther’s uncle told her (Esther 4:14, New International Version): “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for a time such as this?”

  Those last six words—“for a time such as this”—resonate with me to my core. I believe that in certain situations, we each have a moral responsibility to act. We all have unique opportunities that derive from our unique circumstances, and we have a duty to take them. Esther, of course, rose to the occasion. Smart woman that she was, she orchestrated a way for the king to learn the plans of his evil advisor and save the Jews.

  Rewriting the law on sexual assault in the military is my unique opportunity. It demands that I use all of my powers: my legal background, my seat in the Senate, my empathy, my tenacity. We’ve had setbacks, but I’ve kept going. You know that old saying “When God closes a door, he opens a window”? That phrase is as important to me as “for a time such as this.” It’s so true. Just when I’m positive we’ve hit an insurmountable roadblock, we find a new source of strength. I just got off the phone with a survivor to thank her for her advocacy. Her words of humility, gratitude, and fearlessness reminded me again why I am here.

  In battling the status quo, I’m constantly inspired by my friend Gabby. Most of us think of her and curse the darkness. So much cruelty in the attack against her, so much loss in its wake. For the first year after the shooting, that was my focus, too. I dwelled on Gabby’s losses: her speech, her ability to move her right side, her capacity to serve in Congress. I dwelled on the death of nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who had gone to see her favorite congresswoman that day. Today I spend more time in awe of what Gabby has gained: the strength to take on what might be the toughest status quo of all in our country, America’s zero-sum view on guns. Gabby has such confidence and conviction now. She knows she was put here “for a time such as this,” that this is the battle she was meant to fight. Her husband, Mark Kelly, the decorated astronaut, looks at her with so much love and respect. They are on a mission, working together to build a network to support gun reform, and they’re fully aware of the unique position they’re in. They are the right people at the right time. They know they can save lives.

  What do you do when an issue finds you? First of all, don’t feel like you have to attack it on your own. Regardless of what you’re fighting for—speed bumps on your block, more-nutritious lunches in schools—know that you will find allies. These allies may not be obvious from the start. Often you won’t see who they are until you’re out on the field. The same is true for seeing the best course of action. You can’t always visualize the path to victory from the sidelines, but once you’re in the game, it becomes clearer and clearer with every twist and turn. And, second, remember that the most worthwhile achievements in life never come easy. With every setback, you gain strength, resolve, a tougher skin, and new insights.

  This fight has taken everything I have and given so much back to me, too. It’s shown women the importance of getting involved in politics. It gives me a powerful sense of purpose every day. Along the way, I’ve found moral support everywhere. My general counsel, Michele, shares my love of inspirational Scripture and sends me readings by email when she knows I’m struggling. My chief of staff, Jess, always says, “Armor of God!” when I’m nervous or intimidated before a big meeting—it’s both a serious piece of Scripture and our personal, funny war cry. My colleague Senator Barbara Boxer is always there when I need a boost, too. Just the other day when I was feeling demoralized, she said, “Kirsten, don’t give up now. You have to keep fighting. These men and women need you and our efforts.” She put me right back on track.

  Naturally, I turn to Jonathan, too. He encourages me when I�
�m hopeless and absorbs the emotional brunt of hearing stories about some of the worst in humanity day after day. But it’s often the strangers in uniform who buoy me the most. Last year, at the White House congressional Christmas party, a young woman in a naval uniform who was staffing the event approached Jonathan and me and said, “Senator Gillibrand, I can’t tell you my name, but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your advocacy for us service members. It’s making a difference.” She had tears in her eyes, and a moment later, Jonathan and I did, too.

  “Bunny, you have to keep fighting,” he said to me. “Don’t ever give up.”

  Chapter 12

  Get in the Game

  When Henry was in daycare, I’d often walk into his classroom at the end of the day and find him playing trains with his friends. Just one of those plastic Fisher-Price sets, with the station and the bridge and the round little humans. One day I found him in his usual spot, the train up on the table, playing with a girl named Sadie. He was moving the train on the track, reporting where it was going. She was moving the people, explaining where the men, women, and children were headed and what they’d do when they got to their destinations.

  I asked Henry to please collect his coat and backpack. We still needed to pick up Theo from tae kwon do, and I wanted to get home and make dinner before it got too late. But later that night, after dinner and baths, my mind drifted back to Sadie and Henry playing with the train at school and where their dreams might lead them from there. I knew that when he grew up, Henry planned to become either the mayor of D.C. (so he could fix the roads near our house) or a train engineer. Those childhood aspirations made sense. Jonathan is an engineer, as is Jonathan’s father, so neither a career in politics nor one in engineering seemed all that far-fetched. But I started wondering if Sadie dreamed of being an engineer, too—if her creativity and imagination would take her from playing on the table in daycare, thinking about the individuals and their relationships to one another, into a future where she worked to make sure that the trains took people where they needed to be, so they could do what they wanted to do with their lives. More than anything, I didn’t want her to see her role as ancillary, her interests relegated to the side of the tracks. I wanted her to see herself and her pursuit as central and her point of view as necessary. I wanted her to take her questions and interests—“Where do people need to go? And with whom?” “What will their experiences be like?”—and run with them. I wanted her to grow from a girl playing Fisher-Price trains with Henry into a powerhouse of urban planning.

  “Because we’re women.” I think about that phrase all the time. There’s so much in it. So much talent, so much potential. And yet we still have so far to go before women’s ideas, voices, and concerns are heard as loudly and clearly as men’s.

  I was lucky enough to have strong women inspire me at important moments, starting with my mother and grandmother in childhood, my squash coach, Aggie, in college, and Hillary Clinton when I was a young lawyer looking to make more of my life. We all have windows in time when we are especially impressionable, when the right words or actions can cause us to pivot in meaningful ways. A girl in Henry’s prekindergarten class, Irina, has a father who does science experiments with her at home. And guess what she wants to be when she grows up? A scientist. Even at age five she dreams of building and creating something beyond herself, of having a career that will impact the world.

  Irina and all the girls who dream big give me great hope for the future. Each of us, at all stages of our lives, needs to be open to inspiration. Just as important, all of us, as a collective, need to encourage each other’s dreams. We need to aim high and stretch our shared vision of what seems possible. We need to believe in each other’s best selves. We’ve made lots of progress in creating a just and equal world, but we have a ways to go. We need to make sure that girls like Irina are not exceptions because eight out of nine of the fastest-growing industries require proficiency in the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). We need to guarantee that some of our children don’t drift away from the tracks while others charge ahead, steering the train.

  You matter. Your frame of reference is a strength. When women contribute and rise to positions of power, we bring our unique experiences and priorities with us, and we make the world a better, richer place. Beth Mooney is a perfect example. She started her career as a bank secretary, earning $10,000 a year. Now she’s the chairman and CEO of KeyCorp—and the first woman among the top-twenty bank chiefs in America—and she runs her company differently from others because of who she is. In 2005, she supported her Key colleague Maria Coyne in starting a program called Key4Women to support female entrepreneurs. Women often have a harder time securing capital than men do, in part because few banks and venture-capital firms are managed by women. Over the years, Mooney and Coyne have lent over $6 billion to women-run businesses. Would a pair of men have made the same effort? I doubt it. Similarly, Denise Nappier—the first African American woman elected to the office of state treasurer in the United States, and the first female treasurer in Connecticut history—has dedicated herself to ensuring that women and minorities serve on the boards of directors of corporations in which she invests the state’s pension funds.

  You don’t need to wait until you control a bank to start making a difference. Among entrepreneurs, women who follow their passions can galvanize others to do the same. In 1989, Missy Parks, a former Yale University tennis, basketball, and lacrosse player, took her love of sports and her desire to find athletic gear that really worked for her and started the women’s sports-apparel company Title Nine. The first year was far from great. She sent out thirty-thousand catalogs and received only fifty-six orders. But she persevered, never losing faith in herself or her mission, and Title Nine has grown 15 percent year after year since. She now carries pretty much everything a female athlete might need (including about a hundred different sports bras). Title Nine has also launched the Starting Block, a not-for-profit program that gives grant money to grassroots organizations committed to getting girls “off the sidelines and onto the fields.” This is especially meaningful to me, as, according to a recent study, the single greatest predictor of whether a woman will run for public office someday is whether she played competitive sports as a kid.

  Supporting women is not just good for women. It’s good for everybody. When you look at the economy as a whole, the companies with the greatest number of women on their boards outperform the companies with the fewest. The number of women on a board correlates positively with social responsibility and reputation. The more women, the better the corporate governance.

  Right now, it’s not easy for women, particularly women with young children, to get where they need to go in their professional lives. Yes, women are trying hard to raise themselves up economically, and, yes, they’re earning more college and advanced degrees than men. But our society doesn’t support them. Daycare is too expensive; pre-K is not guaranteed; family leave is a pipe dream; the minimum wage is too low; and still women do not earn equal pay when compared to men. Leadership at companies big and small in America is largely male, and it shows. A recent study from Harvard Business School found that executives, both male and female, see the Gordian knot of combining work and family as a woman’s problem, not a problem for everyone.

  We can’t sit around and wait for other people to solve those issues. We must work to solve them ourselves. I often think back to what Geraldine Ferraro said in her 1984 convention speech, when she was the Democratic nominee for vice president: “It’s not what America can do for women, it’s what women can do for America.” At the time that she said those words, I had just graduated from high school and I didn’t really get it. But I do now. Women have so much talent, intelligence, and expertise—we need to make sure America gains everything we have to give.

  We can start by demanding that we have a broader public conversation, one that’s not just about having it all or not having it all, or leaning in or leani
ng out, but one that includes a plan for lifting women up off the sticky floor. For that, we need structural change. We need new and better policies that support women and allow all women to rise. We need to end the cycle of women studying hard, starting careers, climbing through the ranks, taking time off to care for children, and never again finding a job as good as the one they left. We need to end the cycle of women working to support their families, getting a toehold on the American dream, and then losing their jobs and financial security when their children become sick, because they have no paid family leave. Women represent 62 percent of minimum-wage workers, whose earning power, adjusted for inflation, is at an historic low. Families with children under five years old spend more than 10 percent of their household budgets on childcare. Women continue to earn just seventy-seven cents on the dollar for what men earn, and even less for Latina and African American women. How can women and their families get ahead when they’re getting undercut and shortchanged?

  We need to use the power we have as women to shape a country that supports all of us. We need to vote for elected officials who understand all of our issues. We need to hold our representatives accountable once we’ve elected them. I hate to say this, but we’ve let the women’s movement slip away. In 2010, under a Democratic pro-choice president and with a Democratic pro-choice female speaker of the House, we allowed the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to come to a vote. That amendment sought to deny women the right to purchase healthcare and reproductive services with their own money. What happened after Stupak-Pitts passed in the House of Representatives? Nothing. Zilch. Women did not rise up, consolidate our power, and come down on the cowards with force. Congress betrayed half the population, and no one paid a price.