A Telling Statement
During their most recent debate, Clinton and Obama each politely tried to look like the more pragmatic-but-revolutionary future leader. One interesting thing that Clinton said was that having a woman win this presidential election would mean a lot for the world. I had to laugh at that because she said it as if she was going to be blazing some kind of new path if she won, as if electing a woman would be a progressive message for the US to send to the world! This to me is a real window into the strong limitations of Clinton's vision and worldview. Because it has to be either that she hasn't realized that it is now 20 to 30 years since the first set of countries were brave enough to democratically elect women as their heads of state (including Muslim Pakistan!) or it is that Clinton is so US-centric that she really doesn't think that a thing is important until the US does it. An example of someone else doing this is when Reagan got excited about sending a woman into space in the 1980s not realizing that the Soviets had sent a woman on a solo space flight as early as 1963. Speaking of which, what of "Iron Lady" Thatcher? Is Clinton unaware of the fact that not only has there been an influential female head of state before her, but there has even been a CONSERVATIVE influential female head of state! How lame is that? Neither liberal America nor Labour Britain nor any Canadians or Aussies have given us a moderate-to-left leader that is female. Luckily the world doesn't wait for America to come around before blazing new trails for governance and gender equality nor are the world's women looking to Clinton for much of anything except perhaps to not bomb them.
Labels: Clinton, gender, woman leader
Posted at 2/29/2008 02:40:00 PM UTC
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8 Comment(s):
Ian, I've thought a lot about this as well. Indira G. and Benazir B. were in a different category altogether, as their positions were only handed to them as a result of sheer nepotism. And it didn't turn out very well for either...
Canada, the U.K., and Germany are obviously in a completely different category (am I forgetting any other Western female leaders elected into office in recent years/decades?)Oh, there's that Finnish president who looks like Conan O'Brien. And I was so hoping that France would join that club recently...
Then there are the Southeast Asian leaders, the only one popping to mind at the moment Corazon Aquino, another case of nepotism...
I think Clinton is in a singular category all her own in that a woman has never led a 'superpower'. That term still makes me shudder, and I would have preferred to be born in a different place, but it's the undeniable truth. Yes, we are vilified pretty much universally now - with good reason(s)-and she'd be the first person in a skirt to ever lead a nation capable of annihilating humanity (depending on how she reacts to that 3 a.m. phone call, that is!) I wouldn't label that an enviable responsibility, but it certainly is a unique one.
PJ in PA
How could I have forgotten Sri Lanka and Ireland? Sri Lanka was the very first to elect a person with XX chromosomes to lead, way back in 1960.
And Evita! Again, the husband thang...
Plus, lots of others in Latin America/Asia that I'm forgetting and/or count pronounce...
Also, it's obvious that if Clinton IS elected, her victory and tenure will forever be associated directly with the prior leadership of HER husband...
PJ
That's 'can't pronounce'. It's the cold medicine-I hope.
Ahh, you forgot Norway, which elected its first female prime minister in 1981. So when a Norwegian hears Hillary act as if a female US President happening a full 27 years later is some kind of big deal for democracy, you can imagine the lack of awe. The fact that there's more power involved doesn't really change things, it's the halfness of the female population that matters, whatever the level of power. After all, with an extra 245 million citizens comes an extra 122.5 million women (the point being that the US population is one-half woman...just like Norway or any other place), so the issue is the same. Why has it taken American women this long to elect a woman?
Points well taken.
I still don't know why it's taken so long for our 'progressive' country to elect a woman, but it's downright shameful. Norway: not a surprise. Scandinavians are just more egalitarian and reasonable by nature (well, every one I've known, anyway, with one glaring exception-whom I haven't been in touch with for over 25 years, by the way! We all have our bad seeds.)
Despite the great strides made by and for American women over the last century, it's pretty hard to deny that the idea of a woman answering that 3 a.m. call is simply too scary, even now, for many U.S. citizens. So I really have to question whether the sheer amount of power that hypothetical (well, now concrete!) woman would and could wield is at least one logical component of our reluctance to put a female in office, and that it adds an extra layer of hesitation/fear that doesn't exist in places like Canada or Norway. I don't view our society as inherently misogynistic (perhaps naively) on the whole, and in spite of the ERA's failure, we legalized abortion before several, if not most, European countries (as one example of our modern tradition of according women respect and autonomy) . And I'd have to do some research to see exactly who started the trend...but consider that in Ireland, which is already a member of the Female Leadership Club, women still must flee to the U.K. to have legal, safe abortions. I know, I know...Catholicism at work. But that in itself makes the acceptance of a female leader there pretty ironic, doesn't it? It's all so paradoxical... )
My better half (don't you love that ridiculous term?!) is disgusted by our 'backwardness' in this regard, probably even more than I am. We're also very amused that we live a literal stone's throw away from the mansion where James Buchanan, possibly the most dangerously ineffective president ever, spent most of his life. There are rampant and salacious rumors regarding a 'cover-up' of his sexual orientation, which of course is irrelevant (but wouldn't it be interesting if we'd had a gay president and didn't know it?)...and the consensus is that he took no steps whatsoever to mitigate the clear likelihood of an impending civil war. 'Wheatland' is right across from my 11th grader's school, and he rolls his eyes each time he passes the place !
In a country that's never, ever elected a non-Christian, non-male, non-Caucasian, non-straight (with possible exception above) leader, it's sadly not too surprising that we're still not members of The Club. It's profoundly disturbing, though.
PennJen
Good points PennJen. I do think that this country has plenty to be proud of in the world of progressive measures, for example dealing head-on with racism in ways that no European country (other than perhaps Britain, but I'm even sure about that one) has ever done, even to this day. However, I think that there is still a strange kind of Neo-Victorianism affecting gender relations that lingers even though it should have no place here.
A thematic footnote: just had to add that the Scandinavians were well ahead of us on the choice issue, like they are on everything else...
All abortions were legalized by Lenin in 1920.
Iceland was the very first Western country to legalize them on a limited basis in 1935 (!), Sweden not too long thereafter. Then there was a huge chronological gap until another wave of conditional legalizations hit. Roe v. Wade preceded decriminalizing laws in France, the Netherlands, Germany, etc. And, of course, Poland actually took a huge step backward by criminalizing all abortions in the late 70s.
Wonder when it was legalized in Norway, Denmark and Finland?
Norway was behind the other Nordics on abortion rights with a strange evolution of don't ask/don't tell abortion law (De Jure illegal but De Facto legal) from the late 1800s until the 1970s when it was fully legalized for on-demand use. In professional mattters, Norway is interesting on gender relations vis-a-vis the US because though Norway has achieved almost parity on elected officials (which if it were being emulated here would mean 200+ women in Congress), the US still has a higher percentage of things like female CEOs. One other thing that Norway has more of than America is commercial airline pilots. When was the last time you heard "The Captain" speaking to you about the flight and realize that it was a woman? Probably never. In Norway, that does happen.
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