What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (4 page)
Authors: Marianne Schnall
—C
AMERON
D
IAZ
I see a lot of people really wanting to do positive things in the world. And I feel that it’s like a new generation
.
—N
ATALIE
P
ORTMAN
Part of what Bill and Warren [Buffett] and I are trying to do with the Giving Pledge is to get other people who are wealthy to give away half their wealth.
What we tell them is, if they choose to get involved, they will be blown away by how joyful it actually is and how much fun it really is, and if they put their brains and their energy and their money behind something, they really can contribute to changing the world. And I believe that not just for somebody who’s wealthy, but for somebody who volunteers in their local community and gives their time, too. So there are a lot of benefits to giving back, time or resources, in either case
.
—M
ELINDA
G
ATES
Every one of us makes an impact on the world every day. It’s helping individuals to understand that though they may feel their small actions don’t make a difference
—
which if it was just them, they would be right probably. But it’s not just them, and cumulatively our small decisions, choices, actions, make a very big difference
.
—J
ANE
G
OODALL
I’ve always felt the best way to make change is to work with the grassroots and to focus locally where you are in your own community. . . . There’s plenty to do everywhere. When people say they don’t know how to direct their energy, I want to say: walk outside. People are suffering everywhere
—
people looking for work and needing healthcare, people desperate to talk and tell their story. The world changes from the ground up
.
—E
VE
E
NSLER
With a global population of 7 billion people, that’s a lot of potential for good to happen. If we all just do a little something, it’ll go a long way. We need to realize that we are powerful beings. We live in a world where ordinary people do extraordinary things every day. They do not get the headlines, accolades, the awards. We don’t know much about them but they’re out there. They work miracles every day
.
—L
OUNG
U
NG, AUTHOR AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
In Southern Africa we have a concept called
ubuntu,
which is that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. You can’t be human all by yourself. We
think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas what you do, what I do, affects the whole world. Taking that a step further, when you do good, it spreads that goodness; it is for the whole of humanity. When you suffer or cause suffering, humanity is diminished as a result
.
—A
RCHBISHOP
D
ESMOND
T
UTU
“Having a daughter and a son, and another daughter on the way, I want so badly to shift this and create a healthier culture where we just raise the boys to be true to who they really are
—
these authentic, beautiful, emotional beings. But we as parents and as teachers and as educators in all forms . . . we’re so stuck in what we’ve accepted as normal. This is what it is to be a man. This is what it is to be a woman. And it’s increasingly then been pushed to extremes vis à vis media, which perpetuate it, and capitalism, which is all about sell, sell, sell. It’s much easier, for them at least, to market that way. We’re creating a very painful and lonely existence for both our men and our women.”
J
ENNIFER
S
IEBEL
N
EWSOM
is a filmmaker, speaker, actress, and advocate for women, girls, and their families. Newsom wrote, directed, and produced the 2011 award-winning documentary
Miss Representation
, which explores how the media’s inaccurate portrayals of women contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence. Newsom is the founder and CEO of
MissRepresentation.org
, a call-to-action organization that provides women and girls the tools to realize their full potential. She is an executive producer of the Academy Award–nominated documentary
The Invisible War
, which exposes the rape epidemic in the U.S. military. Her next film series,
The Mask You Live In
, which explores “America’s bifurcation of gender and the extremes of masculinity imposed on our boys and men,” is currently in pre-production.
As an actress, Newsom has appeared in films and television shows including
In the Valley of Elah, Something’s Gotta Give
, NBC’s
Life
, and
Mad Men
. Newsom currently serves as a board member of PBS’s Northern California affiliate KQED and a Global Advisory Board member of the Dove Self Esteem Project. Previously, she was a member of the Girl Scouts Healthy MEdia: Commission for Positive Images of Women and Girls and an honorary board member of the International Museum of Women. Newsom graduated with honors from both Stanford University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Newsom resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, and their two young children. She is pregnant with their third.
MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think we have not yet had a woman president?
JENNIFER SIEBEL NEWSOM
: Before I directly address that, can I share one story with you that you might appreciate, that’s kind of tragic? I’ll start with the good: my daughter, Montana, is three and a half. A few months ago, when her teacher picked up a book on princesses to read to the class, my daughter went up to the teacher and said, “I’m sorry, but my mommy and I don’t like princesses. I think we should read this book on puppies instead” [
laughs]
. So that’s the good; that was sort of endearing and lovely. But then recently we were all lying around, just hanging out one day, and Gavin asked, “Montana, do you want to be president someday?” or something like that. And she looked at him and she said, “No, only boys can be president!”
MS
: How old was she?
JSN
: She’s three and a half—this was literally two weeks ago. And she loves Obama. She sees him on television and she gets excited, so obviously that’s all she knows, right? But it was so interesting that from seeing him she decides that only boys can be president. I just wanted to share that because it was really eye-opening. Here I am working so hard to transform this landscape . . . and yet, “Only boys can be presidents, Mommy.” She was so sure of that! It was really interesting. It’s scary. She was so adamant. I was like, whoa! [
laughs]
Where did this come from? How is this possible?
MS
: That’s why I think the work that you are doing is so important. It does start in girlhood with the images and stereotypes girls absorb. How is this connected to the conversation around empowering women’s leadership? And what is the role of media in connection to the conversation of grooming women into leaders?
JSN
: So, the media have been more damaging, to a certain extent, than good. They can be good, yet it feels like it’s taking too long, in a sense, to recognize how critical it is that the media celebrate the diversity of women—what diverse women look like, what they sound like, how they behave, their occupations, their statuses, et cetera. So what we’ve seen, obviously, is this proliferation of hyper-sexualization and self-objectification that’s encouraged by the media, celebrated by the media. And it’s so overwhelming and so all-consuming. It takes videos like the recent Dove campaign piece; it takes that kind of stuff just to remind people of their true value, beyond youth or beauty or sexuality. But even then, the focus is still on beauty, right? And I think we’re in a rut in our country; I feel like we’re stuck. We give so much power to beauty and not enough to
talent and brains and leadership when it comes to women. And that’s been disappointing. Sure, we’ll celebrate one woman in leadership—but then we’re so quick to find flaws with her and want to pull her apart. And we’re also quick to assume that if we have one woman at the top who’s being celebrated in the media, that’s all we need. So we’re very narrow-minded in our perception of women. And there’s that double standard that has been very harmful to many women, especially women seeking leadership, whether in the political or business arena, whereby they’re expected to not only be intelligent and at the top of their game, but also to look like, to a certain extent, a Victoria’s Secret model [
laughs]
, which requires a lot of time, energy, plastic surgery, or whatever—Botox, all those sorts of injectables. And it’s not natural—it’s harmful, it’s distracting, it’s binding—and at the end of the day, then, it’s so much harder to listen to their policy positions, because the media has made their appearance that much more important.
MS
: I remember you documented in
Miss Representation
this negative depiction of strong women leaders—for example during Hillary’s campaign or the coverage of Nancy Pelosi. Likewise, in Sheryl Sandberg’s book she talks about this likability correlation, that the more successful women are, the less they are liked, whereas it’s the reverse for men.
JSN
: Right. There’s a “bitch factor.” And I hate to say this, but in some cases, the dumber and sexier and more under the radar they are, the more likable they are. But the more they put their ideas and thoughts and values out there, the media—I am going to be really extreme by using the word “witch hunt”—the media go after them and, in some sense, try to destroy them. I mean, for example, we like Hillary Clinton now because she’s not threatening, but when she was aspiring toward leadership, she was threatening, and therefore it was as if it was our right, especially the
media’s right, to tear her apart. That’s the other thing: I think part of the problem with having so few women and not having reached the tipping point for women in leadership in the public eye, is we’re so quick to tear them down and hold them to these ridiculous standards. And no man is perfect; every man in leadership is flawed. Oh my God, I’m horrified by it. I’m horrified by many of our representatives. We are so tough on women. We are, period.
MS
: One of the things that I’m hoping to also do with this book is to think about what the solutions are to so many of these problems, especially when it comes to media, because it’s easy to just be a passive consumer. Where do you see the biggest entry points for change? Is it on the consumer? Is it on the media to get things to change?
JSN
: I think it’s conscious consumption across the board, so it’s calling out sexism and bad behavior and demeaning and limiting behavior in the media vis à vis social media, and even on the ground activities and [petitions] and pledges and what have you. And all the work we’re doing at Miss Representation, with other organizations like Ultraviolet, the Women’s Media Center, you name it—I think that is critical and necessary. Similarly, men in leadership, the ones running these companies, have got to start taking responsibility. The women in leadership need to recognize that they bought into a masculine, patriarchal world by perpetuating these norms, and so both the men and women in leadership really have to stand up, be conscious, recognize the effect that their products or media are leaving on our society and how it’s impacting culture in such unhealthy ways, and start shifting what they put out there into the world. I think that’s us holding them accountable. It’s a real transformation that’s required that we’re working on in our own next film series,
The Mask You Live In
, with our boys and men, in terms of raising men, authentic men of consciousness
whose hearts aren’t disconnected from their heads, who are the empathetic beings they were born to be, where empathy, care and collaboration aren’t socialized out of them, where leaving the world a better place is a value that’s given top priority. So all that, and I think it takes time, but I think it does start with conscious consumption. I think it also starts with recognizing our power as citizens, to stand up and speak out and really hold our representatives accountable, whether they are representatives in government or, to a certain extent, corporate representatives—really demanding more, expecting more and writing letters to those who are contributing to a culture that’s so demeaning and disrespectful toward women. And just not being afraid. So many people are afraid to speak out; they’re afraid to ruffle feathers. And we have to. We’re in this together; there’s no way around it. It’s not okay to just go on living our lives and pretend like everything is okay and that we don’t need background checks on automatic weapons and that it’s okay that women make 77 cents on the man’s dollar, African American women 63, Latina 57—that’s not okay. So we’ve really got to start holding people more accountable.