Inauguration Day is a big day for women in America and some of the people paying especially close attention are young women in Jacksonville.
As Kamala Harris gets sworn in as the first woman vice president she's checking a lot of new boxes. The daughter of immigrants, she is the first woman, Black woman, Southeast Asian woman and stepmother to become vice president.
"I'm just like, 'oh that's one of us,'" said 10th grader Deriona Johnson.
"She inspires us young African American women and women, in general, to fight for our spot in the world," said 12th grader Saniyah Young.
Local girls say Harris is breaking barriers for them.
"I feel like it gives our ethnic group much hope that we can be more than what people would stereotype us as," said Casey Hubbard, youth development specialist with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida.
"We have to work twice as hard in this society because we are African American and a woman and we get downgraded by so many people," Young said.
The inspiration to shoot for their goals reaches beyond the political realm.
"My goal is to become an attending trauma surgeon," said Young.
"My goal is to own my own business and go to college to become an OBGYN," said Johnson.
"I want to be a pediatrician and I want to be a professional volleyball player," said Nadiah James, a 10th grader and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida youth of the year.
Harris's achievements are making Robin Rose's job as president and CEO of Girls Inc. of Jacksonville easier.
"We help girls think higher and dream bigger about who and what they can become," said Rose. "I think that this is just a huge one for our girls to say, 'wow, not only a woman but a woman who looks like me.'"
It also makes Hubbard's job inspiring kids at the Boys and Girls Clubs easier too.
"They will want to be more in life than what they are 'cause there's chances out there for everybody," Hubbard said.
As Harris gets sworn in, what these young women really see is a piece of themselves.
Women now make up just over a quarter of all members of Congress, the highest number in U.S. history. Still, 144 of 539 seats is not proportionate to the number of women in our country.
