“We did it. We did it, Joe.”
Kamala Harris uttered those seven words on 7th November, five days after US voters cast their ballots in one of the most tense elections the country has ever seen. Harris was right to say to Joe Biden that “We” did it: she was arguably just as influential in the Democratic campaign as he was himself. Harris, of mixed African American and Indian American heritage, was the first woman of colour on a presidential ticket. Perhaps as a consequence, 91 per cent of black women and 70 per cent of Latina women ended up voting for Biden.
When Biden nominated Harris as his running mate, he made history. Their ultimate victory marked the first time a woman would be serving as vice-president. Consequently, Harris’s ascent to power certainly seems to be a win for feminism in narrow terms: it suggests that the US may well be on their way to their first woman of colour president soon, especially if the ageing Biden doesn’t run in 2024.
However, while some US feminists are delighting over Harris’s win, it’s important to remember that policies matter more than identity. We must be careful not to reduce her to a symbol—doing so means that she escapes the level of accountability that is absolutely vital for someone in her position. We shouldn’t ignore the troubling record Harris held as California’s attorney general and prosecutor, when it was often women from disadvantaged backgrounds that felt the brunt of her power.
For example, as California’s attorney general, Harris was instrumental in passing a truancy law in January 2011 that made it a criminal misdemeanour for California parents to allow their children to miss more than 10 per cent of school days. While this may have appeared to be a simple attempt to tackle truancy in the state, it was the single black mothers who became collateral damage. Many of them were either issued with fines they couldn’t afford or were even put in prison.
During her time as senator, she also voted twice in favour of the Hyde Amendment. This law, which has been in place since 1980, prohibits federal funding for abortion unless in the cases of rape and incest. This means that women on the fringes of society who didn’t have access to healthcare were unable to have the right to choose.
She also actively led campaigns making the lives of sex workers more difficult and unsafe. For example, when San Francisco-based Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project filed a suit to decriminalise sex work in 2015, Harris dismissed the suit, arguing that California’s current prostitution law—which allows people to accept money in exchange for sex only if the act is being filmed: ie pornography—protects sex workers from human trafficking. In 2016, Harris also led the charge against classified ad website Backpagedotcom, despite the fact sex workers at the time argued that advertising their services on the website was safer than on the streets.
However, as she has continued to climb up the ladder (higher than any women has climbed before her), her stance has undergone a considerable transformation. She publicly expressed regret over her draconian truancy stance on a podcast in 2019, where she said the imprisonments that happened as a result of this law was an “unintended consequence.” On that same podcast, Harris also claimed that she was a “huge advocate” for “finding a safe place for sex workers”: a stance that is markedly different from her attorney general days.
Most notably, Harris seems to have radically changed her stance on the Hyde Amendment in recent years. In the past two years, Harris has established herself as one of the frontrunners of the movement to get it repealed. One of her most memorable moments during the Biden campaign was publicly challenging him for being a long-time supporter of the law during a presidential debate in 2019. With Biden making a U-turn on of his own on his position of the Hyde Amendment soon after, Harris soon gained the support and endorsement of pro-choice organisations like Planned Parenthood.
While Harris has evidently undergone a feminism-friendly rebrand in recent years, there is no doubt that some will find it difficult to reconcile this with her track record of ignoring marginalised women in the past. Supporters will say Harris has learned from her mistakes. Her critics will say that this U-turn is a cynical attempt to be more electable in an increasingly left-wing Democratic party. Either way, you can’t blame people for having doubts.
For Americans, only time will tell if Harris will be a success for women. It is up to them to hold her to account and ensure that she makes good on her word. I, for one, hope that she does. In order to do her duty as VP, Harris needs to more intersectional in her feminism: fighting for women from the less privileged corners of society. After all, if a woman in power is only memorable due to her gender rather than her actions, then what is the point in having a woman in power at all?
