What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (43 page)

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

“I don’t even think of my life in terms of obstacles. You know, the fact that I was born in a city that had no democratic government
—
I mean, we had no local government, no democracy. Or that I was a black child that went to segregated schools, because the D. C. schools were segregated until the ’54 decision. Or that I was a woman. I have never considered any of those things to be obstacles [
laughs
]. They’re the things that give you fight. I just think if you sit down and count the obstacles, you’re counting yourself out.”

R
EPRESENTATIVE
E
LEANOR
H
OLMES
Norton was elected in 1990 and is now in her twelfth term as the representative for the District of Columbia. Named by President Jimmy Carter as the first woman to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she came to Congress as a national figure who had been a civil rights and feminist leader. Delegate Norton serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service and the Census, and the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements. She also serves as the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, and is on the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment and the Subcommittee on Aviation.

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think we’ve not, as of yet, had a woman president?

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON
: Many people thought we would have had a woman president who comes from our majority group—there are more women than men in the country—before we had a black president who comes from a minority group. But we didn’t. Presidential aspirations are far more linked to the person than to any other factor. For example, while the Republicans have tended to put forward candidates based almost on succession, Democratic presidents have popped out of nowhere. There’s no longer a question about whether a woman could be president, because Hillary Clinton’s run surely put that to rest. I had thought that the first woman president was likely to be someone from the military who had exceptional leadership experience, because the military gives you leadership responsibility that many people would respect, but I have put that aside. If you asked that question ten years ago, I think you would have answers about all kinds of preparatory things; I no longer think that’s the case. Women are here at the top—not in nearly enough numbers—but at the top of business, of politics . . . I think it just takes the right woman to get up and choose to run.

MS
: Do you feel like you will see a woman president in your lifetime?

EHN
: Surely. I mean, I think the next president should be a woman. I don’t see why not. I hope that Hillary Clinton’s run has inspired women to understand that you do not need to have had her successive positions in order to run, but you need the kind of track record that will make people vote for you. I think men are prepared to vote for a woman to be president, especially considering the mess men have made of this country.

MS
: I feel hopeful about that, too. Do you think that, in terms of being a milestone for women and the world, having a woman in the Oval Office would have the same impact that electing Barack Obama was for African American people? How symbolic do you think it would be to have a woman as president?

EHN
: Look, the symbolism of the first black president really is a case unto itself. Here we have a minority group that began as slaves in this country, and then moved to being a hated minority, discriminated against until very recent history. That’s a case by itself, so we can’t look at women on the same grid. I began to wonder why it took women 150 years or so to get the right to vote. They slept with men who voted, yet most men came out against them having even the vote. When pressed, women know what to do. We saw that in the last election when they thought they might lose contraception and abortion. But when not pressed, women simply do what needs to be done. For example, there’s no excuse for women [not to go] into the workforce in about equal numbers of men, or else the standard of living would collapse. There’s no excuse for a country of this size and power and economy not to have educational childcare. We don’t have any more than we had twenty years ago. But why is that? It’s because women have not demanded it. You would think, though, that with the hardships that women endure they would have done so at least on childcare for their kids while they mandatorily go into the workforce. Women also were very quick to get behind a woman to be president. It’s just that she had a formidable opponent. Imagine some other opponent, who was not as unusual and attractive. That’s why I say this really goes to the moment in time. It goes to the person, and to pull all those together is very difficult. Barack Obama did it. It was not the moment in time, but it was the person. Nobody guessed it. Most people doubted it. Nobody would doubt if we had a half dozen candidates running next time and three of them
were women. No one would doubt that the time has come. Certainly if we had three women—women of general appeal, whether Republican or Democrat, I think the country is more than ready.

MS
: Just in general, in terms of in Washington, if more women were represented in our government, what changes do you think we would expect to see? This isn’t just a question of equality and fairness. Why is this important?

EHN
: We better not over-emphasize that, because what tends to happen, if you take some absolutely pure women’s issues—let’s leave aside the controversial ones like abortion—but take a pure issue like the Paycheck Fairness Act. I was an original co-sponsor of that bill. This is a bill that simply updates the Equal Pay Act, which was the first of the great civil rights acts. It was passed before the 1964 Act and the 1965 Act that of course brought about the civil rights revolution. And it’s a bill that would simply update the Equal Pay Act in ways that are not very radical. That bill didn’t have a single Republican woman co-sponsor, not a single woman on that side of the aisle to vote for it. I don’t think that has always been the case. Even since I’ve been in Congress, I have seen Republican women who would have embraced that bill. But in a Congress that is as polarized as this one, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Republican men and Republican women. For example, we just passed one of the most popular pieces of legislation, the Violence Against Women Act. There were no Republican women sponsors of that bill. So I’m not going to sit here and tell you that all we need are some women and women will see results. It is important to note, I was amazed to note, the statistics—something like three times as many Democratic women got elected as Republican women. That’s just overwhelming. Ask yourself why—because Republican women don’t run on women’s issues, so why should women go out of their way to vote for them? Women who do vote for them, vote for them on other issues.

MS
: That’s such an important point. I think it was Gloria Steinem who said to me that it’s not about biology, it’s about issues.

EHN
: If you can’t even embrace all-American issues like the Violence Against Women Act and the Equal Pay Act—and by the way the Equal Pay Act is everybody’s favorite issue to gather around—if you can’t embrace that, then you can’t say that no matter what the party, all we need is a woman.

MS
: This election was historic in terms of women being represented; however, still only 18 percent of Congress is women. I remember interviewing Nancy Pelosi who called it not just a glass ceiling, but a marble ceiling. In general, do you think there are specific obstacles in the political arena? What can we do to encourage more women into politics?

EHN
: I really think there are obstacles. A very young woman who runs better watch out, because if she has children, if she’s married—she’s really got to have an understanding so that her family life does not crash. Men apparently do that. Women still disproportionately take on the household and the children’s responsibilities . . . I know that Blanche Lincoln, who was a colleague of mine in the House, got pregnant, left the House because she learned she was going to have twins, and I’ll be darned if she didn’t come back, with twins, and become a Senator. That’s a terrific role model.

MS
: Right now, many women may feel discouraged to pursue politics as a career, also based on some of the cynicism and almost dysfunction they see in government today. What would you say?

EHN
: I would say it’s a clarion call for women.

MS
: Why did you decide to pursue this yourself? What are the rewards of doing this as a career?

EHN
: There are some rewards, but to be part of a legislative body, you’ve got to want to work with other people. You have to want to stand against those—rather strongly against those—who oppose you, then the rewards are small but all the sweeter when something happens that you want to happen. But unlike in real life, there is no reward such as “this is exactly the bill I wanted.” It’s not going to be your bill and only your bill. And women, I’m told, have a capacity to make compromises . . . that may be just the work for them, being a member of Congress. You have to learn how to fashion a compromise, one that does not forego principles in order to reach agreement. It seems to me that women are pretty good at that. I don’t want to attach any of these characteristics to gender, but to the extent that you can, it does seem to me that this is a place ready-made for women.

MS
: I remember seeing Diane Sawyer interviewing all of these women in Congress a few months ago, and they were saying that if more women had been in the room during the fiscal cliff conversations, this would have been settled. Do you think that is true?

EHN
: No, not entirely. We’re far too polarized today for a simple change of the gender of the actors to be all-healing. But, I do note that virtually the only Republicans willing to seek compromise consistently in the last Congress were two women: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, who has retired.

MS
: What can we do to get more women in Washington? Do you have any sense of what it will take?

EHN
: I do think women need to do a better job of pushing other women to run, for high office or for any office. Men are certainly not going to do that. I shouldn’t say that, because the fact is that the parties do look for people who can help them win an election. I cannot explain, therefore, why there were so few Republican women even running, relative to Democratic women. Or maybe they were running and just didn’t make it through. When you look at this House, the difference is startling, and it seems to me that that’s where Republicans have an opportunity. I think somebody’s got to take that opportunity, or else we’re not going to break these stalemates.

MS
: Not only are women obviously a minority in Washington, but black women are even more so. Do you think diversity in general is improving?

EHN
: Of course it is. For example, a third of the black caucus is women, and if a third of the Congress were women, we’d be a whole lot better off. Women who want to lead the Congressional Black Caucus don’t have any problem. It may be a tradition of greater equality because you couldn’t do anything else. Greater equality because everybody must work—whether you were working in the fields, as slaves, or whether women worked in other women’s homes, they worked. That’s such a strong tradition of both women and men working in the black community that they bring that tradition with them to Congress.

MS
: Today there’s been this move, especially for younger feminists, toward this concept of intersectionality in feminism—that it’s now about the greater diversity, the intersections of class and gender and sexuality, and all of these classifications that society uses to divide us. It’s about the need for greater diversity, so that even having Barack Obama in office is a good, positive step toward getting a woman president there because it is about
moving away from the non-diversity that we’ve seen. Do you think you’re seeing more of that?

EHN
: That’s true. Hispanics supported Barack Obama because he’s for affordable healthcare, but I’m sure they recognize fully that this will ease the way for other people of color to become president. It makes no sense for them not to support him if he supported their issues. But women, on diversity, the problem with that is the whole society is so compartmentalized, whether it’s on TV or . . . even Twitter and Facebook tend to line people up with their close friends. And that’s terrific, but your friends tend to be like you. So the intersectionality is explicitly important and I think probably harder to reach today than it might have been before all of these special interests that we’ve all been put in began to define who we were.