By Jean Godden

Not since the "Year of the Woman" -- back in 1992 -- has there been such a productive crop of women elected to higher office in Washington cities. It is astonishing what has happened in the eleven months since we donned pink caps and joined the women's march. 

In Seattle, we are set to swear in the first woman mayor since 1926 when Bertha Knight Landes was elected to stamp out corruption. Bertha served a single two-year term, losing in 1928 to the forces of "tolerance" (another word for sin) and to rampant misogyny ("petticoat rule"). Bertha's faced two male opponents in that year's election (former mayor Edwin Brown and Frank Edwards, her little know successor). The Portland Oregonian attributed Bertha's loss to "Seattle's wish to be known as a he-man's town." 

Now, eighty-nine years later, there will be a turnover not only in seventh-floor offices at City Hall, but also on the second-floor where, come January, there will be a super-majority (six out of nine) women councilmembers. The council will also be diverse with five minority councilmembers.

While Seattle was choosing women leaders, Tacoma voters were electing Victoria Woodards as mayor of that city. Woodards will succeed another woman, term-limited Mayor Marilyn Strickland. And then there's Everett, where Councilmember Cassie Franklin will become the city's first woman mayor. Women mayors also will head Lynnwood, Kent, Vancouver, Auburn, Issaquah, Black Diamond and Bellingham. They're the Wonder Women of I-5.

Meanwhile, the state too is seeing a gender leap. In the 45th Legislative District, voters elected Manka Dhingra, giving the Democrats control of the state Senate. Manka's win means that 34th District Sen. Sharon Nelson, a Democrat, will become the Senate's new Majority Leader. 

Add those watershed wins to the fact that Washington is represented by Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, powerful U. S. senators, along with four congresswomen among the state's 10-member delegation to the U. S. House. We send a dozen Washingtonians to Congress and six of them are women.

What will the women-in-charge sweep mean to this state and city? It would be wrong to suggest or even assume that women are somehow better at governing. There are plenty of good and bad examples from both genders.

Still the gender change does give us reason for optimism. Women, as a group, have shown surprising strengths. For one thing, women seem better at team building. We are more likely to find women working together cooperatively rather than in conflict. Women are more apt to strive for peace rather than resort to war. 

Another difference is that women are believed less likely than male counterparts to misuse their power. Having women leaders is no guarantee that that there won't be Harvey Weinstein-like outrages and harassment, but it certainly will be far less likely. 

In recent years, a delegation from Seattle's Center for Women and Democracy traveled to countries like Morocco and Jordan to train women to run for office. The delegation once included me and, at another time, mayor-elect Jenny Durkan. We discovered that women candidates from vastly different national parties had remarkedly similar platforms. The women all advocated for education, jobs and health care. These three aims are likely to have the support of most women leaders, regardless of nation or state.

In our year of electing women, the important question is: What will women do given the opportunity to govern? 

For a clue to the answer, it helps to look back at the career of Bertha Knight Landes and her legacy, both as mayor and previously as an effective councilmember. A few of the things Bertha gave the city: the Seattle Planning Commission, building and zoning codes, a traffic code, safety patrol, the first transportation committee, a strengthened Civil Service Commission, a city-county hospital, parks and recreation improvements and an expanded Green Lake Park. Although she never again ran for office, Landes made a national name for herself, lecturing throughout the country and urging others to follow in her footsteps.

Leaders today -- men and women -- would do well to use Landes as an example of what a mayor can accomplish even in a short time, setting a city on the right path toward a better, healthier life for all its residents.