Authors: Marianne Schnall
What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (36 page)
GS
: It is because culture is what it is, right now. Society is what it is. It’s probable that walking around female for twenty years, or fifty years, in this culture has given someone a set of experiences that men don’t necessarily have—in the same way that walking around as a black person or a Hispanic person or a gay person gives people a different set of experiences than a white, heterosexual person. Experience is everything. Somebody who has experienced something is more expert at it than the experts. We need politicians who look like the country.
MS
: Which, after this last election, I feel like we’re starting to make some progress. There are many other countries who obviously have already elected female heads of state, and the United States is ninetieth in the world in terms of women in national legislatures. What do these other countries know that we don’t, and why is the United States lagging so far behind when we are so much more progressive and democratic in other areas?
GS
: Well, I’m not sure we are so much progressive and democratic, because in economic division we’re low down on the list, too. The division between rich and poor here is exceeded only by four other major countries, I think. There are a variety of reasons and they all function in different ways. One is there’s more power in this country. It’s still the dominant power in the world, so there’s more competition for these jobs. One is that we are multi-racial, and racism always increases sexism because you have to maintain control of women and reproduction in order to maintain racial difference. So one-race countries, generally speaking, as the Scandinavian example, for instance, have slightly less motivation to remain sexist. Another is that we are big and decentralized, so social reform has to take place fifty times, whereas in France or Sweden or Finland it only takes place once in the national legislature. And the final one is the power of family, which is deep here, but is not as deep as in India, say, and many other countries. So because Nehru’s family, the ruling family, was so strong or had such power, even a daughter was acceptable. Now if she had had a brother, he would have been Prime Minister, no doubt. But since Indira Gandhi didn’t have a brother, even a woman was acceptable because of the power. The disaster of being a female was mitigated by the power of being in that family.
MS
: That’s really interesting. Are you feeling hopeful with the last election? Sometimes it feels crazy to be celebrating twenty women in the Senate. While it’s a big milestone, it’s still obviously so lacking. Are you feeling progress, like we are making a steady climb?
GS
: I am, but it depends what we do. I feel hopeful, but I feel hopeful that you and I will act. It’s not automatic. Nothing is automatic.
MS
: What does that mean to the common person?
GS
: It means recognizing that the voting booth is the only place on Earth in which everybody’s equal—so, using it. We’re still not doing so well in percentages of who votes.
MS
: In terms of women running themselves, what do you think are some of the factors or obstacles—either societal or sometimes even self-imposed—that deter women from entering the political pipeline? And what can we do as a society to encourage more women to run?
GS
: One is that politics is a rough game and that women are culturally taught to seek approval, not disapproval. So as Sheryl Sandberg points out, we have to lean in—lean in and not be dependent on being liked, as much as the culture has encouraged us to be. Money, of course, is a big barrier, a huge barrier. I’ve raised money for candidates, who, if I’m raising money for them, probably are all the same on the issues. But if I’m raising money for a man running for the Senate, someone will give me $1,000; if it’s a woman, they’ll give me $200 or $300. Not consciously, but unconsciously, as if women can get along on less or they’re ashamed to give a man less. We have to name that and be conscious of giving women candidates as much as we would a male candidate. And we have to also, at the same time, do with less money, because we’re more likely to be opposed to the Koch Brothers and some of the others, so we need to be really good at community organizing. It’s a much more democratic message than just paying for TV ads.
Now we could do many other things to reform the electoral system, which would help everyone, especially women. For instance, radio and television stations have to have FCC licenses because they are essentially renting the public airwaves. There’s no reason why the FCC couldn’t require stations to, in return for a license, give a percentage of their time free to candidates. That would take a lot of the money out of the political contest.
MS
: It does seem that there’s a lot that could be done structurally. Do you think part of the issue is that not just women, but people in general, have gotten a little cynical about the political arena as a forum for effective change?
GS
: A great deal of effort has been extended toward making us cynical. I remember during the Nixon administration when it was pretty clear that the Republicans benefited from a low voter turnout, because then it was older, richer, white voters, so they quite consciously depicted politics as dirty: “You wouldn’t want to get involved. Your vote doesn’t count.” Neither of which is true. So we have to understand that that was a conscious campaign to keep us from voting. And it’s still a conscious campaign to keep us from voting. I’m not saying everybody who believes that is giving in to the campaign—they believe that for their own independent reasons—but there’s also a campaign to tell us that. It’s not unlike saying to women, “Well, money is dirty and business is crooked. You wouldn’t want to get involved.” It’s a way of keeping us out.
MS
: In the movie
Miss Representation
, there was one thing that really stood out to me: Carolyn Heldman said that when children are seven years old, boys and girls say they want to become president in roughly the same numbers. By the time they’re fifteen, however, the number of girls who say they’d like to be president drops off dramatically, as compared to the boys. What role do you think the media plays in all this?
GS
: Well, of course, the media is the main purveyor of masculinity and femininity. And, as Carol Gilligan pointed out so brilliantly, when little girls are eleven and twelve, or perhaps even younger, the gender role comes down upon them. And the purpose of the gender role is to turn us toward having babies and taking care of them for nothing.
MS
: I keep thinking back to Hillary’s presidential bid, and I thought one of the most interesting times we’ve had in a while was during the race between Obama and Hillary. At one point there was this messy dialogue around race and gender.
GS
: It was outrageous. It made me so angry for people to be told they have to choose between sex and race. It’s, first of all, rendering most women in the world invisible who experience both sex and race or color. It’s outrageous to present that choice. It’s like saying which is more important, your legs or your arms? It’s just awful.
MS
: Yes, and I thought it was interesting that it felt a little generational, as though generally the older generation was supporting Hillary and the younger generation was supporting Obama.
GS
: Yes, but that made perfect sense because for older women, including a lot of black women, who supported Hillary, this was their last chance to ever see a female president. For younger women, they would have many other chances, or some other chances.
MS
: What women do you see on the political landscape right now that you think would make good future candidates?
GS
: Well, I think Kirsten Gillibrand is outstanding—a whole person who leads a whole life and is an excellent senator. I think the same is true of Elizabeth Warren. The same is true of Maxine Waters, but because she came into politics earlier, because she’s older, she probably will not be present in political life long enough to get the reward she deserves.
MS
: I have to say out of all of the answers in the piece I did for CNN about what it would take to make a woman president, people were most intrigued by yours, which was about gender roles. You said, “Because we are raised by women and we associate women with childhood. . . . one of the most helpful things we can do long term is to make sure that kids have loving and nurturing male figures as well as female figures, and authoritative and expert female figures as well as male figures.” From a cognitive place, we can all feel we absolutely need to do that, but what are some concrete ways as a society we can begin to support those shifts?
GS
: Well, it’s up to each person and everyone’s situation is different, so I’m not trying to say that people have to do one thing. But we could understand that boys can be babysitters. We can, before we have children with someone, try to make sure that they want to be nurturing parents, if they’re men. Sheryl Sandberg always says this: The single most important career decision you make is the partner you choose, supposing you want to have children.
MS
: I think we are moving toward that. I also think that some of this is about appealing to women to value their visions and opinions, knowing that they actually have something to offer the world through their voices in leadership. How did you tap into your inner leader? What advice would you give on having the courage to honor your voice and to speak out and contribute your influence, even though sometimes society is pushing against that?
GS
: Hang out with people who make you feel smart, not dumb. That’s crucial. Because if they make you feel dumb, they’re not supporting you and they’re not helping you. It isn’t that we’re right or wrong. It doesn’t have to do with being right all the time, but if you have consistency of
support from people who value your opinion, it will help you to value your opinion. We’re communal people. You can’t do it by yourself.
MS
: Do you feel hopeful that we will have a woman president?
GS
: I feel hopeful, because I feel hopeful that you and I and the people reading this will act.
“Take the tools and the skills and the resources of every kind that you have, and go out, find something that you know is not fair, is not just, and begin to change it. In whatever way you know, in whatever way is appropriate for you, but don’t ignore it. Don’t think it’s somebody else’s job to change it. Confront it in your own way, and make it your job to make change.”
T
HE YOUNGEST OF
thirteen children from a farm in rural Oklahoma, Anita Hill received her JD from Yale Law School in 1980. She began her career in private practice in Washington, D.C. Before becoming a law professor, she worked at the U.S. Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989, Hill became the first African American to be tenured at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she taught Contracts and Commercial Law. In 1991, she testified at the Senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, gaining national exposure when her allegations of sexual harassment were made public. Currently, at Brandeis University, she teaches civil rights courses. As counsel to Cohen Milstein, Hill advises on class-action workplace discrimination cases.
Hill is the subject of Freida Lee Mock’s documentary
Anita
, which premiered in January 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival. Hill’s latest book is
Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home
. She has also written her biography,
Speaking Truth to Power
, and coedited with
professor Emma Coleman Jordan
Race, Gender, and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings. Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Boston Globe
, and
Ms. Magazine
have published Hill’s commentary, and she has appeared on many national television programs.
MARIANNE SCHNALL
: What is your sense of why we have not yet had a woman president?
ANITA HILL
: I think we’ve had, and we continued to have, this skewed concept of what leadership looks like, how it appears. Leadership in our minds, unfortunately, has a gender, and the gender is male. We see that not only in politics; we see it also in just about every kind of business and different aspects of our lives, even in environments where you are presumed to be very liberal and open to change. And there are all kinds of cultural factors. I always talk about cultural factors, because I think very often when you talk about politics, you’ll hear people say if women could raise money or if they were going up through the ranks or . . . You hear all of these reasons why [electing a woman president] is not possible, [based] purely on money and, to some extent, on system, but I think we can’t discount the role of culture in shaping our concept of what women can do.