While many women mourn the defeat of the first female major party female Presidential candidate, Americans around the country are celebrating historic firsts for women, particularly women of color, in local and national elections. Some of these women include:

Tammy Duckworth, Senator from Illinois

• First Thai-American in the U.S. Senate
• First disabled woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (she lost both of her legs after her helicopter was shot down during the Iraq war)
• American father (Vietnam War veteran) and Thai mother of Chinese Ancestry

Catherine Cortez Masto, Senator from Nevada

• America’s first Latina senator
• Nevada’s first female senator
• President Obama supported her, describing her as someone “who believes everyone deserves a chance”

Kamala Harris, Senator from California

• America’s first Indian American senator
• California’s first black senator
• America’s second-ever black female senator
• Indian mother and a Jamaican-American father

Stephanie Murphy, Representative from Florida

• America’s first Vietnamese-American woman on Congress
• Daughter of Vietnamese refugees who were rescued by the U.S. Navy when they were fleeing from Vietnam in a boat
• 37 years old

Kate Brown, Governor of Oregon

• First openly LGBT female governor
• Married to a man but identifies as bisexual
• Was outed in the ‘80s, and while it was not her choice, she openly embraced it and hopes to be a role model for young people like her

Ilhan Omar, State Representative in Minnesota

• America’s first Somali-American legislator
• First United States Representative to wear a Hijab
• She immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her family left Somalia in 1991 when she was eight after the start of the Somali civil war, and spent four years at a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States.
• At 14, Omar began accompanying her grandfather to caucus meetings to serve as a translator for him.