Glass Ceiling Breaker

The firsts

The first woman to serve as a governor of a US state. The first Black woman nominated for Vice President, in 1952 — and passed over, then and in the decades that followed. The first woman to serve as Secretary of State, in 1996. The first Black woman to hold that office, nine years later. The first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993. The first woman elected Speaker of the House in 2007.

Each of these was described, at the time, as unprecedented. Not because nothing had changed — but because the change had taken so long that it still qualified as news.

An installation made of broken glass

In January 2021, the day after Kamala Harris was elected, Swiss artist Simon Berger installed a portrait of her in front of the Lincoln Memorial, made entirely from shattered laminated glass. No image was printed onto the surface. The portrait is legible only from a distance, and only because of how the cracks fall.

Berger developed the technique in 2016, taking a hammer to layered glass until the fissures resolved into a recognisable image from across a room. 'I like creating beautiful things through destruction,' he said. The work was staged against the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument, and it carried a plaque quoting the museum president: representation matters, especially at the ballot box.

• Shirley Chisholm — the first woman in Congress, and the first Black woman to run a major-party presidential campaign, in 1972.
• Carol Moseley Braun — the first woman elected to the Senate.
• Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice — the first women to serve as Secretary of State.
• Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — the first women on the Supreme Court.

What we take from it

Harris's acceptance speech is the reason this page exists. She thanked the generations of women who paved the way for that moment, and said: I stand on their shoulders. The portrait worked the same way. It was made of the broken remains of something that had previously been whole and unpassable.

That is the part worth carrying into a boardroom. A ceiling does not come down in one clean break. Someone breaks it, badly, and then it is easier for the next person — and the next, and the next — until eventually the whole structure gives way. The club exists to make sure the people standing at the top of the ladder know there is someone behind them who will catch them if they fall.