Women's March will send message to Trump: Wendy Sherman

A day after Donald Trump is inaugurated, thousands of women will descend on Washington for a march — a time-honored tribute to our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly. I have been surprised, however, by the number of women who have asked, “What for?”

I acknowledge that many women, like me, may be spending more than the usual amount of time binge-watching HGTV, Say Yes to the Dress and The Crown. We are also consuming more wine than usual as we contemplate the Trump presidency. Depression is rampant in many quarters of the country, and getting on a bus to Washington may seem for some just too much to do.

Others want to know what the agenda is, asking whether it wouldn’t be better to wait for a Supreme Court nomination or a particularly egregious piece of legislation. The objectives of the march seem amorphous and so the measure of outcomes unknown.

For me, the agenda is clear. It is solidarity. It is saying to the new administration that misogyny cannot rule. Whether reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, an end to sexual violence, women in combat or the importance of girls’ education worldwide, we are here; we will not relent; we will not give up.

I have spent many years working in international security and business, and I travel almost constantly. As undersecretary of State for political affairs from 2011 to 2015, I went to 54 countries. In virtually every meeting, the host government wanted to discuss the status of women. Maybe that happened because I was a woman (the first woman, in fact, to hold my post).

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But women also were on the agenda because Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Colin Powell and Condi Rice understood that girls’ education is the single most important factor in increasing gross domestic product, and they advocated for the inclusion of girls in schools all over the world. The status of women was on the agenda because Laura Bush had made the cause of Afghan women her own, and Michelle Obama and Jill Biden made concern about military families universal.

Perhaps the most moving meetings abroad were with young women. They are fearless, relentless in their pursuit of a better life. In a rural village in Mali, illiterate women used corncobs to keep track of small amounts of change deposited in a group collective so that they could take out loans for a village water pump or buy books for a school girl. In a Peshawar refugee camp, teenagers told of rape at the hands of the Taliban but set up schools in a belief that one day, they could become teachers back in Afghanistan. In India, women organize to stop sexual assault and insist that village councils take action. In Nepal, the first country where your identity card can read male, female or other, a range of young people have gained rights that never before existed.

And we in the United States set the example for them, through our values, our policies and the many women leaders — and good men — who helped promote them.

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Some of the young women I work with at home, in fact, thought we were in a post-feminist era. But since the election, they have realized how much more work there is to do. Millennials and Gen Xers embraced the Facebook posting suggesting a march, and it is a tribute to women everywhere that the event sprang from the Web. Its very inchoate evolution speaks to the democratic impulse behind the support for women’s rights. My own daughter told me about the march before I even knew about it.

So to all of my sisters and like-minded brothers, join us on Saturday, whether in Washington or at the many other marches throughout the country. Yes, we will have to sustain this effort. We will have to make real change on specific issues with specific outcomes. We will have to organize in villages and towns and cities here and abroad. But for this day, it is enough to stand up and be counted. That’s a statement women and the world, and Donald Trump, need to see.

Wendy R. Sherman, senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, was undersecretary of State for political affairs from 2011-15 and led U.S. negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal.

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