In 1872, Victoria Claflin Woodhull became the first woman to run for president — before women even had the right to vote.

Campaigning as a member of the Equal Rights Party on a platform of women’s suffrage and labor reforms, the election came and went without Woodhull receiving any electoral votes, but Woodhull became the first of a small club of women who have run for the United States’ highest office.

This campaign cycle marks another milestone for women — for the first time, women are vying for the White House in each of the major parties’ primaries. Women’s voices are also becoming more prominent in campaign finance, particularly for Democrats. That’s something that will get new attention over the next several months and with the first campaign finance disclosures set to be released Wednesday.

The Washington Post reported last month that 60 percent of Hillary Clinton’s donors are women — a nearly 30 percent increase over Barack Obama’s 2012 record, when almost half of Obama’s individual donors were women, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Women candidates are front and center in a way they never have been before, which is really exciting for women voters and donors and activists,” said Jess McIntosh, vice president of communications for EMILY’s List, which aims to elect Democratic women to office. “We see in research that if a woman is running in a race, women are more likely to be engaged in that race.”

Even before the 2016 presidential cycle, contributions from women to political campaigns had been on a slow but steady rise. The reason is threefold, says Missy Shorey, executive director of Maggie’s List, an organization that supports conservative female candidates to run for U.S. Congress: increased efforts to engage women, more women in the workforce and more women are voting.

“When we represent 53 percent of the electorate — the majority — we are clearly going to be more politically active, and one of the forms of being politically active is, of course, donating,” Shorey said.

Women’s attitudes toward politics are also shifting.

“What we’ve seen over time is that women have been philanthropic givers, giving to charity in a range of amounts, but they haven’t seen politics as a place to invest their dollars,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “There hasn’t been a sense that politics is the place where you can make change.”

But that sense is changing, Walsh says. Women are beginning to see politics as a way to cause change on the issues they care about. And traditional women’s issues like reproductive health, equal pay, child care and family leave aren’t the only topics bringing women to the table.

“We’re even seeing political issues that don’t usually get talked about as women’s issues — like raising the minimum wage — get talked about as women’s issues, because they disproportionately affect women,” McIntosh argued. “I think seeing great female candidates, talking about women’s issues in a way that really clearly defines the contrast between the two candidates running, just means that more women than ever are engaged in the process.”

That gain in share, however, has not been seen equally from both parties. While the share of money going to Republican presidential candidates from women has remained largely flat, the share of donations to presidential Democratic candidates from women has grown by more than 20 percent since 1992.

Some conservative groups are working to change that.

“When we reach out to women,” Shorey said, “we speak about our core issues and talk about why this candidate is going to make a difference. Women like to invest their money knowing it’s going to end up doing something, why this woman we’re suggesting and have endorsed can win.”

Maggie’s List uses established political data and on-the-ground insights to talk about candidates when reaching out to women, Shorey said.

“We reach out to women that support our ideals, which are fiscal conservatism, less government, more personal responsibility, and stronger national security,” she said. “Those are our core issues.”

Though women are making gains as a proportion of individual donors for candidates, they still remain underrepresented among political donors as a whole. Women made up only 36 percent of all funds donated during the 2012 presidential election, meaning that men still donate at nearly double the rate of women.

This difference is even more pronounced at the top level. Of the 100 most generous campaign contributors during the 2012 election cycle, only 11 were women, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

But that’s likely to change.

“As you see more women more successful in terms of income and business and as they have more independent wealth and disposable income they can invest,” Walsh said, “you’ll see more women as donors to campaigns.”

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After a nerve-rattling plunge, stocks in Asia, Europe and the United States managed to end the week ahead of where they started.

But not so for industrial commodities. Their prices just keep heading south — creating more worries for miners, but good news for many manufacturers and consumers. The price drops could even help depress interest rates for all sorts of borrowers.

Before considering the impacts, first check out the magnitude of the changes. These are approximate prices, compared with one year ago:

• Copper: $2.55 a pound, down from $3.27
• WTI crude oil: $53 a barrel, down from $103
• Silver: $15 a troy ounce, down from $21.50
• Aluminum: $1,700 a ton, down from $1,941

Iron-ore prices have been especially hard hit, falling to just $44.10 a ton a few days ago. In early 2011, the price was nearly $200. By week’s end, prices had nudged back up to roughly $49, but they remain far below peaks.

These price collapses can help manufacturers who must purchase raw materials to make finished goods.

Here’s one example: Back in June 2008, aluminum hit a high of about $3,100 a ton. Today, the price is down to almost half that. So if you are making fuselages at a Boeing plant, this cheaper aluminum may help your employer earn bigger profits — and that might make your job more secure.

For steelmakers, cheaper iron ore means lower production costs; for lighting fixture manufacturers, cheaper copper can mean higher profits, and so on. Or the savings can be passed along to consumers.

That pass-through certainly has happened with oil. AAA, the auto club, says that thanks to the dramatic drop in crude oil prices, drivers are paying an average of about $2.75 a gallon for gasoline, compared with $3.64 one year ago.

And a new forecast from the International Energy Agency says oil prices will most likely fall further because the world is “massively oversupplied” with crude oil.

But for the companies that mine or pump these raw materials, the price drops have been brutal. For example, thousands of U.S. workers in northern Minnesota have lost jobs as iron ore mining operations have scaled back. Arizona’s copper miners have been hit with layoffs, and oil patch workers in many states have been sent to unemployment lines.

What’s the cause of the commodity price drops?

Analysts attribute most of the change to China, which just isn’t building infrastructure, skyscrapers and apartments the way it had been a few years ago. The economic slowdown in China means less global demand for steel, copper and other materials used in construction.

Metal Bulletin’s report on iron ore on Tuesday, a particularly bad day for prices, said: “Markets for the whole ferrous complex were in free-fall. … The recent crash in China’s stock market further aggravated fears of economic decline in the country.”

But it’s more than China. Europe too has been struggling to grow, and now its prospects are being clouded by the Greek debt crisis. The IEA report said crude oil is being depressed by the “financial turmoil in Greece and China.”

While raw material prices don’t necessarily get passed along directly to consumers, they do factor into the overall inflation picture. And these days, inflation remains extremely low worldwide, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pegging the annual consumer inflation rate at 0.6 percent.

On Thursday, while speaking with reporters in Chicago, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said the Fed probably should delay an interest-rate increase until mid-2016 because inflation is still so low and the risks abroad are so great.

“There is a worldwide low inflation issue that no one right now is able to address with their monetary policies,” he said.

In other words, the drop in commodity prices could mean a cheaper car loan for you later this year. In a world where we’re all connected, everything else is connected, too.

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