If Anita Hill's explosive accounts of sexual harassment by a Supreme Court nominee were to come before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today, Hill would have had one advantage she lacked in 1991.

Make that two advantages. Today's Judiciary Committee includes two women, Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar and California's Dianne Feinstein.

In 1991, when law professor Hill came forward with an account of sexual harassment by now-Justice Clarence Thomas, the committee was all male. It was so disinterested in Hill's story that it took a breach of congressional protocol by several women members of the U.S. House to win Hill a chance to tell her story.

Hill related that experience in Minneapolis Monday at the annual fundraising luncheon of womenwinning (the former Minnesota Women's Campaign Fund) to underscore the reason for the organization's existence. For 30 years, it has raised money and provided assistance to help elect women (that is, those who favor keeping abortion legal) at every level of government.

It's not clear that a female whistleblower accusing a powerful man today would fare differently than Hill did 21 years ago. The Senate panel then recommended Thomas' confirmation. But the presence of 17 women in the Senate, a bipartisan group with strong feminist sensibilities, would at least assure that such accusations would not be discounted out of hand.

And the nation today is more likely to take such an accusation seriously. For that, Hill deserves credit. By going public, she inspired other similarly harassed women -- and men -- to do the same, and convinced employers that they bear a responsibility to keep such conduct out of the workplace.

"All of the battles are not over," Hill told the audience of more than 1,200. "If we don't know that, we haven't been listening to the news."

The womenwinning organizers believe that a voter backlash is building to Republican efforts to weaken the Violence Against Women Act, deny funding to Planned Parenthood, restrict access to abortion and allow contraception to go uncovered by some employer-provided health insurance.

They credit outrage over Hill's experience in 1991 to major gains for female candidates in 1992, which has been called the "Year of the Woman" in U.S. politics. Making 2012 a second "Year of the Woman" is womenwinning's intention. So far this year, Republicans in Washington seem to be playing into their hand.