It's Not Magic. It's Women.

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of Good Girls Revolt. It’s a period drama about the lives of a group of women who work at a news magazine in the 1960’s. The main story line of the season is the women collectively demanding parity with their male counterparts in the newsroom. In more ways than one, Good Girls Revolt is not the greatest series, like when it lacks subtlety in presenting the everyday issues of the female characters on the show. (Example: Character 1: “Oh crap! I missed my period!” Character 2: “Did your husband poke a hole in your condom!?”) Despite those moments, Good Girls Revolt managed to keep me coming back, episode after episode. Besides entertaining me, it reminded me that women have been working together for a long time.

So, as one does in 2016, I googled for specific instances of women working in tandem. If women have been doing this so long, surely there are plenty of internet anecdotes to support this. Perhaps, a Buzzfeed article listing the "15 Times Women of Congress Came Together For Human Rights," or "9 Times Women Of Faith Worked Together To Lobby Against Discriminatory Laws." Instead, what I observed was a clear void in the internet. The only thing I found was, basically, Chelsea Handler’s latest essay, which pled for women to support each other. And an article on why women failed each other during the election. From the looks of the internet, we’ve all assumed our rightful (projected?) roles as “mean girls;” we’re definitely telling each other that butter isn’t a carb; and we’re definitely not speaking, much less working together. That would be an easy answer, wouldn’t it?

But as I grew increasingly frustrated with what I didn’t find, I thought about my own life. I can think of example after example in my personal life and professional life of women supporting me, and women supporting women. It didn’t make any sense.

Or maybe it did, if the Bechdel Test rings true. Created by Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace, the test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. While this test only technically applies to nonfiction, one can appreciate the applicability outside of the nonfiction world. The perceived isolation of women, especially women in male-dominated spaces, disempowers them and strips women of the powerful concept of community (sisterhood, as we call it). Men, on the other hand, are provided with “stories” of fraternity, through most films, video games, animated movies, talk shows, especially sports shows, and most major sporting events. If there’s a woman in the stories of fraternity, it’s only one, maybe two, and they rarely interact. Soraya Chemaly explains this concept succinctly in her article, Four Reasons America Is Afraid Of Women With Friends.

Everyone could use the reminder that women do work together. Although history and the media would like us to believe we’re all catty, mean girls, women have found ways to work together for all of history, despite our differences. If you’ve found yourself down the internet rabbit-hole, or deep in a heated post on Pantsuit Nation, wondering how women will come together in 2017 to protect each other, rest assured: bitches get shit done.

With that in mind, and looming political change on the horizon, I’d like to remind our readers (and frankly, myself) of a few instances when women politicians worked together for the common good and reached across the aisle to the women on the other side.

#1 Every time the women of the Senate get together for regular dinner parties to maintain civility.

According to Mary Anne Marsh, a political consultant and speaker at the MIT Women in Politics: Representation and Reality Forum, female senators of both parties get together for dinner every six weeks and often collaborate on bipartisan bills. “That’s how it used to be with everybody” in the legislature, she said, adding that the more voters see women working together across the aisle, the more likely they will vote for women politicians. In the words of Doug Barry, a political writer at Jezebel, "[t]he dinner parties encourage civil interaction, help women on opposite sides of the political spectrum become familiar with one another and, according to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, to ‘resolve conflicts the way friends do,’ the logic being that it's a lot harder to hurl imprecations at someone when you have to share a meal with them at least once a month.” Maybe the key to political civility is just a dinner party away.

#2 What about that time women handled the government shutdown when their male counterparts would not?

Let’s go back in time. Remember when the federal government shutdown for sixteen days in 2013, after Congress failed to pass a budget? Hundreds of thousands of federal employees were out of work without pay; even more had their checks delayed. Some departments and employees were furloughed. Overall, it cost the country $24 billion dollars. But what the graybeards got us into, the women pulled us out. “Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily from women in the Senate,” John McCain stated after a bipartisan deal was eventually reached.

Frustrated by weeks of stagnation, women senators formed a bipartisan group, presented a plan that both parties could live with, and started the negotiations for what would become the final Senate deal that eventually reopened the federal government and averted default. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said after-the-fact: “The 20 women in the Senate have formed such strong friendships of trust, even though we come from different places, I’m very hopeful as we go forward. Those relationships are going to make a difference as we get into what matters, which is the long-term budget.” Likewise, during the debacle, Barbara Mikulski (D - Maryland), implored the Senate “Let’s get to it. Let’s get the job done. I am willing to negotiate. I am willing to compromise.” Boys’ club, who?

#3 Or perhaps the time someone showed that, statistically, women politicians actually do work together more than men?

At this point, it should come as no surprise that as it relates to the wide world of politics, women appear to be better at reaching across the aisle, negotiating, and compromising. Good news: math people have now confirmed what we already know! Quorum, an internet start-up founded by two Harvard graduates that analyzes legislative data for corporate clients, put its math-measuring software to good use. What it found was that over the past seven years, female senators co-sponsored more bills with other female senators than male senators sponsored with their male counterparts. “Women are not only introducing more legislation over the last seven years, but they are also getting more support for that legislation, getting more bills out of committee and getting more enacted than their male colleagues in the U.S. Senate,” said Quorum’s co-founder, Alex Wirth.

This concept -- that women are able to work together and reach across party lines to progress the country forward -- is an approach we need to remember in this uncertain political climate. As we continue to see divisiveness play the starring role on the national stage, our need for cooperation and compromise becomes increasingly crucial. So how do we it? Let’s start by electing more women. Creating a country that works for all of us is possible, and no, we don’t need magic, just some women to get shit done.