Last week, we were joined by ABC News' Linsey Davis for our 2020 Senator Winona Lipman Chair lecture, Ascension 2020: Black Women in Media, Politics, and Power. In the session, she discussed how she approached moderating a debate during the Democratic presidential primary: "I did it knowing that it might just allow a young girl who's at home sitting and watching in her living room to realize that her trajectory was not limited by her skin color. It was also an important message to America at large, once again, that representation matters, and I started off my line of questioning during that September 2019 debate asking the questions that were on the minds of young Black voters...I felt, if not me, then who? If I'm not going to ask these questions, who's going to?" Watch the full video of the lecture here.

CAWP is pleased to announce the newest member of our staff, Salma Elakbawy, who joins our data team as data services assistant. Salma received her M.A. in Political Science: U.N. and Global Policy Studies from Rutgers University-New Brunswick with a concentration in women's rights, environmentalism, and public health. Her graduate research explored the different ways global policies disproportionately impact women and the importance of ecofeminism. Prior to CAWP, Salma was a program coordinator at Rutgers Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in STEM Research. While an undergraduateat Rutgers, Salma worked at the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers, the Institute for Research on Women, the Center for Women's Global Leadership, and interned at the Feminist Majority Foundation.

CAWP Senior Scholar Kira Sanbonmatsu has co-authored new research in Political Research Quarterly: "Do Women Seek 'Women of Color' for Public Office? Exploring Women's Support for Electing Women of Color." In the article, Sanbonmatsu and her co-authors, Yalidy Matos and Stacey Greene, explore whether the phrase "women of color" is politically advantageous. "Using original public opinion data, we draw on theories of intersectionality and social identity to hypothesize about how different subgroups of women respond to the prospect of electing more WOC to Congress. Consistent with group differences in the historic processes of racialization, our findings reveal considerable complexity within the WOC umbrella. Even within this complexity, we found that black and white women are the most distinctive in their preference for electing WOC." Read the full piece here.

In a new op-ed in The Washington Post, Melinda Gates argues for the creation of a national czar for caregiving by the Biden administration to address the broken American caregiving system. "The president-elect has taken care of aging parents and been a single father to two young boys. He knows from his own experience that today's caregiving crisis is not a symptom of the pandemic but a preexisting condition," Gates writes. "If there ever was a president who understands why this issue must be a priority, it's him. And if there was ever a moment caregivers needed a full-time champion in the administration, it's right now." Read the full piece here.

In other Biden transition news, the incoming administration has already demonstrated an early commitment to appointing more women with diverse backgrounds, including a communications team comprised entirely of women, many of whom are mothers to young children. Other recent picks include Neera Tanden as director of Office of Management and Budget, Cecilia Rouse as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Dr. Rochelle Walensky as director of the Centers for Disease Control, and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith as chair of the COVID-19 Equity Task Force. Follow the Biden-Harris transition here and learn more about the history of women serving in the executive branch from our Women Appointed to Presidential Cabinets fact sheet.