Happy Birthday to trailblazing politician Nancy Patricia Pelosi (b. March 26, 1940, in Baltimore, MD), the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Her consistently confident, independent, and assertive exercise of tremendous power in this role despite gendered attacks from political opponents continues to inspire. When she first became speaker in 2007, she reflected on the significance of the moment for American women and girls. She told her colleagues that, “By electing me speaker you have brought us closer to the ideal of equality that is America’s heritage and America’s hope.” Then she pivoted to the long struggle for women’s rights, stating: “Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren’t just waiting; women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and granddaughters today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and granddaughters now the sky is the limit.”
Citations: Melissa Haussman and Karen M. Kedrowski, Walking the Gendered Tightrope: Theresa May and Nancy Pelosi as Legislative Leaders (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023), open access, 169, 181-182, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.12676438.1; Nancy Pelosi, “Pelosi: ‘Let Us Work Together,’” CNN, January 4, 2007, https://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/04/pelosi.transcript/index.html; “Women in Leadership: Women in Congressional Leadership; Nancy Pelosi, House of Representatives Minority Leader and past Speaker of the House, addresses the audience,” photograph (location unknown, March 13, 2014), https://catalog.archives.gov/id/301689871.
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