The year of the woman? We reflect on 2018’s progress and the challenges ahead

What a year it has been. To review all of the strides women have made throughout 2018, I recently sat down with BBC News’ Katty Kay, humanitarian Zainab Salbi and MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt.

We all agreed: Women have made great progress, though serious challenges still lie ahead.

Katty Kay discussed why she believes we saw record numbers of women running for – and winning – political offices this year. “Donald Trump was a big driver here in the United States,” she said, referencing women’s marches and other demonstrations.

And although we now have more than 100 women in Congress, “it’s not enough,” Katty said. “We still have work to do. We’re nowhere near parity. We’re still at only about 20% in the Senate.” The key, she said, is for more women to at least run for office – because we know that when women do run, they win at rates as high as men.

And the way women do campaign is changing for the better, Kasie Hunt said.

This year “women were running as themselves,” Kasie explained. “Historically the model for a woman running was to try to be like the guys. Act like them, and that will help you get

But the women campaigning in 2018 “threw out that playbook out the window,” Kasie said. Mothers brought their kids to campaign stops. Suddenly there are more breastfeeding women in Congress, so conversations are finally being had about facilities in the Capitol – something that was never much of a consideration before.

“I think that’s a huge step forward,” Kasie said. “And I was happy to see that women were able to win in that mold, because perhaps it will help us all break through that idea that if you want to succeed, you have to act like a dude.”

Attitudes are changing in workplaces beyond Capitol Hill, too, particularly in terms of sexual harassment, said Zainab Salbi.

“What has changed is women started breaking their silence,” she said. “Sexual harassment is an old issue…we all coexisted with it. But women said, we’re not going to tolerate such behavior. It’s an excellent moment in American women’s history, and the world in general.”

Still, as Zainab noted, so far the movement has largely been “individual women speaking out about individual men.” That’s a great start. But to stop harassment -- so no woman ever has to be in the position of speaking out – we “need to change the work space and work infrastructure,” Zainab said. “It’s about the behavior and how we change that.”

In other workplace concerns, Katty pointed out that the persistent and widespread nature of the wage gap “makes me think we need more on the policy front…I’m hopeful we can start to change the gap with more women involved who have their voices heard up on Capitol Hill.”

Could that woman’s voice come from the top spot on Capitol Hill? At our Know Your Value conference in San Francisco earlier this month, Sen. Kamala Harris of California broke the news that she will decide with her family over the holidays whether she will run for president in 2020.

Senator Harris’ announcement was just one of the highlights of our annual conference, where I was thrilled to see nearly 600 women connect with our speakers and each another. We tackled the issues that matter to women: boosting confidence, recognizing our true value and getting everything we deserve. I couldn’t imagine a better way to close out the year. Here’s to even more progress in 2019.