Democrats didn’t just elect a wave of women to Congress on Tuesday. They elected a number of young women—and that’s important. Nancy Pelosi laid it out back in 2012, schooling Luke Russert on why it is that she didn’t become a House leader until a relatively advanced age, and why that experience pointed to the need to elect more young women:
I came to Congress when my youngest child Alexandra was a senior in high school and practically on her way to college. I knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. They had a jump on me because they didn't have to, children to stay home. Now, I did what I wanted to do, I was blessed to have that opportunity to sequentially raise my family and then come to Congress. But I wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner.
Pelosi was in her late 40s when she was first elected to Congress. This week, New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, at 29—and she will have peers. Abby Finkenauer, elected in Iowa, is less than a year older—she’ll turn 30 between the election and being sworn in. Lauren Underwood, elected in Illinois, turned 32 last month. Sharice Davids, Ilhan Omar, and Abigail Spanberger are under 40. Several other Democratic women in their early 40s were also elected to the House.
This means a generation of women are getting that early start that Pelosi’s male peers had, and will have time to climb up the House leadership or move to higher office—maybe the highest. And it means that Congress will feel a little less distant to a generation of young women voters.