Tom Brokaw: ‘Historians will say this was the century of women’

Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw says the 21st century will be remembered as the “century of women” due to the gains made by female leaders in the U.S. and other countries.

“I think historians will say, ‘this is the century of women,’ ” Brokaw told host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday.

“Not just in this country but around the world. They’ll begin to take their place in the long historical calendars that we always deal with, as not just great new powers, but new influencers, taking jobs that they were cut out of before,” Brokaw said.

{mosads}Brokaw said he had been talking about these changes for women “for the last eight or nine years.”

“At the beginning of this century, in audiences, the women would erupt in applause and the men would kind of look at me like, ‘where’s that coming from?’ ” he added.

Brokaw’s comments follow a report from The New York Times that the new Congress will have at least 124 women, with some races still uncalled.

The report, however, noted that the vast majority of those women will be Democrats; there will only be 19 Republican women in the House and Senate combined.

A study by the Center for American Women in Government at Rutgers University this week also found that a record number of women have been elected to state legislatures around the country in 2018.