United States of America

Kamala Harris crashed through one of the highest of American glass ceilings on Saturday, becoming the first woman elected vice president of the United States. She will serve alongside President-elect Joe Biden.

Harris, 55, has made a career of being the first: the first woman of color — daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father — on a presidential ticket for a major party, and to serve as attorney general of California and district attorney of San Francisco. She has served in the U.S. Senate since 2016 as the junior senator from California.

Kamala Harris has become vice-president-elect of the US, the first time in history that a woman, and a woman of color, has been elected to such a position in the White House.

Joe Biden won the presidency by clinching Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes on Saturday morning, after days of painstaking vote counting following record turnout across the country. The win in Pennsylvania took Biden’s electoral college vote to 284, surpassing the 270 needed to win the White House.

Kamala Harris savoured the moment she became the first woman, and the first black and Asian American, to be vice-president-elect, with a very hearty laugh.

In a video posted to her social media she shares the news with President-Elect Joe Biden: "We did it, we did it Joe. You're going to be the next president of the United States!"

Her words are about him but the history of the moment is hers.

At least 131 women are set to serve in the U.S. Congress in 2021, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. The count surpasses the previous record of 127 women, first set in 2019. So far, the tally includes 100 Democrats and 31 Republicans. 29 women candidates remain—19 Democrats and 10 Republicans—in uncalled races.

The Aronson Center for International Studies held the third event in its 2020 Fall Speaker Series on Human Rights to discuss the topic of “Women and Conflict” on Thursday, Oct. 29.