“Well behaved women seldom make history.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard historian —Well behaved women seldom go into politics, that bastion of male prerogative, where patriarchy still rules. Women make up 52% of the population of the United States, but only 14% of the Senate and House offices in the U.S. Congress. Of top executive offices, 6% are held by women. The women of Switzerland were not even given the vote until 1970, but now, 30% of the Swiss parliament is made up of women, a much higher ration than in the US. (Running in High Heels, film by Maryann Breschard)
It would not matter so much if women were uninterested in politics, but the facts show otherwise. Women cast more votes per capita and in absolute numbers than men. But they are not a bloc; they don’t vote by gender. Elderly women don’t vote a lot differently than elderly men. Wealthy women don’t vote a lot differently than wealthy men. Women tend to be more “liberal” on social issues, perhaps because in the way politics has been framed, social issues are “women’s issues” that a lot of men dismiss. It is nothing short of a miracle that Hillary Clinton got health care toward the top of the campaign issues. While many Americans need it, male politicians did not give it a thought. Obama and McCain both have proposals, and you may think one of them is better than Clinton’s, but she got it on the table.
No Child Left Behind was not “women’s legislation,” and perhaps this is why it has been such a dismal failure. Clinton wants it repealed, as do many women, because they are paying attention to their children’s education. One exasperated teacher came in to talk about her MA thesis with me and told me her school had finally given up teaching the writing of term papers. “We need to teach to the test,” she said, “and there’s no time for writing something bigger than the five paragraph essay.” All children are left behind by such policies, and women know that, whatever side of the political spectrum they come from. Men saw something else in NCLB: profits from private schools that they run. Ah, well.
Love Hillary, hate Hillary, she deserves credit for getting measures on the table that men consistently ignore. While running for office on Feb. 29, 2008, she introduced legislation to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in developing countries. The recent Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 was on her agenda as a major issue, but it was filibustered by Republicans.- Vote Rejected (56-42, 2 Not Voting) The Senate fell short of the sixty votes necessary to proceed to debate on H.R. 2831, a bill that effectively overturns a recent Supreme Court decision concerning pay discrimination litigation.
Again, in the midst of a presidential campaign, Clinton continued to work to make difference for families. Last week, she announced that her legislation to support vital research to improve newborn screening has been enacted into law. The president signed the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act, which creates the Hunter Kelly Research Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
When men are interested in legislation regarding reproduction, it almost always involves fetuses, not born children or mothers. Women are divided on the abortion issue, as are men, but in politics, the anti-choice legislation is almost always male-driven. And it is far from dispassionate, even though men often claim it’s women who get emotional.
Men who want to control reproductive activity often never speak of mothers. They leave the word out of speeches on purpose, because if one talks about mothers, there is a person involved other than the fetus, who by law is not yet quite a person. Women, pro-choice or pro-life, have been much saner on this issue than men and more concerned with the complexity of the issues: health, morality, ethics, financial support. Men just think if abortion ended today then all the babies would be adopted, and adoption is not controversial or complicated, right?
Love Hillary, hate Hillary, she has brought to the table issues that have not been on the political agenda as mainstream issues. She addresses all the stuff the boys care about: war, economy, immigration, etc.
So while women don’t vote in blocs, or support the same candidate (there are plenty of women who won’t vote for Hillary Clinton), women owe her something. She has changed the national debate in significant ways.
It’s interesting to hear male politicians use language about Hillary Clinton that some women don’t seem to mind. Bill O-Reilly, after interviewing Sen. Clinton and receiving emails that he was “too soft” on her, asked viewers, “What should I have done, pistol whipped her?” Pundits have suggested she be “taken out behind the barn” and the implications of that are clear. Olbermann wants her beaten, not just in the race, but from his comments one can only conclude actually beaten. Women should not stand for this. They should vote for the candidate whom they feel most represents their point of view, but women have two stakes in this election: having issues on the table that are classified as “women’s issues” and having blatant sexism thrust at one of their own sex.
In a video about hip-hop in which a former football star interviewed some young women, he posed a question to them, “Who are the hos and bitches these men are singing about?” The women uniformly answered that the hos and bitches were not them. They were other women. How did they know this? Because, they said, “We ain’t hos or bitches.” When the interviewer asked a group of men standing nearby who the hos and bitches were, they turned and pointed to the women who had just denied these songs were about them. The interviewer said, “I guess now we know.”
Sexism is about all of us, male and female. It’s an attempt to degrade women, or a specific woman, but it degrades the men who engage in it and ultimately all women. Hillary Clinton is absorbing the hate flung at women every day. And she doesn’t mind being the fall-woman.
Love Hillary, hate Hillary, she has become the “Woman” in American politics. And that’s a tough spot to be in.
[Susan Shapiro Barash examines the obstacles Hillary is encountering by becoming the first woman to go where no other woman in America has gone before in her historic campaign. "Do Women Want to See Hillary Fail?" To read this article, click here.]
