record as focused on gender equality as clinton's. clinton is not exclusively making a claim about her substance. she's also implying there is symbolic power in the possibility of a woman as president. the symbolic power of president obama, the raw displays of emotion at the first inauguration were only partly about obama himself, much of the exuberance wasn't seeing a black man assume the presidency and seeing the american state embodied in a black body when so many had been broken, marginalized and shunned by that very state since its founding. history will decide the substantive impact and the lives of african-americans but the symbolic meaning is already written. our question for 2016, with the election of hillary clinton have a similarly deep, effective s symbolic meaning? maybe. maybe not. despite the historic and continuing reality of women's equality, gender has never held