United States of America

Women have made great progress in the struggle for equality. But when it comes to filling leadership positions, women lag substantially behind men across industries, including in law, medicine, finance, academia and politics.

The term is making headlines, but Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib have their own definition.

Sometime in the past few months, four members of Congress came to be referred to in mainstream media outlets as “the Squad.”

The story of how that happened says a lot about politics in America today.

Over the last several years, debates between Republicans and Democrats have increasingly involved extremely divergent attitudes toward women.

William T. Sedgwick believed that no good could come of letting women vote.

“It would mean a degeneration and a degradation of human fiber which would turn back the hands of time a thousand years,” Sedgwick said in 1914. “Hence it will probably never come, for mankind will not lightly abandon at the call of a few fanatics the hard-earned achievements of the ages.”

In february 13, 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt stood triumphant before the opening session of the National Woman Suffrage Association convention and declared the organization’s decades-long mission finally accomplished. “Women be glad today. Let your voices ring out the gladness in your hearts,” the 61-year-old suffragist said.