Hillary Clinton yesterday made the official announcement that she will run for president in 2016.
If Clinton is successful in winning the Democratic Party’s nomination and then the presidency, she will become the United States’ first ever female president. But in recent weeks Clinton has been mischaracterised as the first ever female presidential candidate. In fact, there is a long list of women who came before her. Women have been running presidential campaigns for centuries.
The first woman to secure a presidential nomination in the US did so in 1872. Since then, 33 other women have made presidential bids after being nominated as their party’s candidate. A further 85 women have gained nominations as their party’s vice presidential candidate, the first being Marietta Stow, who ran as the National Equal Rights Party’s vice-presidential candidate in 1884.
Here is a snapshot of some of the women who paved the way for Clinton’s nomination:
The first female presidential candidate to win a nomination, Victoria Woodhull, was a leader of the US women’s suffrage movement prior to her presidential bid in 1872. She was a long time activist for women’s rights and ran for president as a nominee for the Equal Rights Party. She campaigned against a government comprised only of men for years and then, in New York in 1871, decided to solve the problem by running for office herself. She was unsuccessful in securing the presidency, but ran for nomination twice more and continued her decorated career as a magazine editor.
Almost a century later, in 1988, Lenora Branch Fulani became the first woman and the first African American candidate to be placed on the voting ballot in all 50 US states, and in the 1988 general election gained more votes than any woman in history until that point. She was nominated as the candidate for the New Alliance Party and received a quarter of a million votes nationwide. She did not win the presidency but nevertheless ran again in the general election of 1992.
Monia Gail Moorehead then represented the Workers World Party, a US communist party, in the 1996 general election, receiving 29,000 votes. Moorehead had spent a lifetime as a political activist, advocating for the rights of the African American community as well as workers. Moorehead ran a second time in 2000, against soon-to-be president George W Bush, and then went on to become a campaign manager for the party’s subsequent candidates.
Roseanne Barr, American actress, comedian, producer, director and writer secured the presidential nomination from the Peace and Freedom Party in the 2012 general election. She had originally made a bid for the nomination of the Green Party, but lost to Jill Stein and subsequently won the Peace and Freedom Party nomination. She ran a campaign on women’s rights and empowerment as well as support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. She placed 6th overall in the presidential race, winning 50,000 votes worldwide.
Jill Stein herself had a very successful career in politics, culminating in her nomination for the Green Party’s presidential bid in 2012. Stein was endorsed by celebrated academic and activist Noam Chomsky and became hugely popular among voters. Stein received almost half a million votes in the 2012 election, making her the most successful female candidate in US presidential history. She has recently announced that she is considering running again in 2016 – watch this space.
Two women have also secured vice-presidential nominations from the major parties: Geraldine Ferraro for the Democratic Party in 1984 and Sarah Palin for the Republican Party in 2008.
Will Clinton become the first among them to win the race? We’ll have to wait and see, but from what we’ve seen so far, if she does become president she will put gender equality at the forefront of her agenda.