Election Of A Woman In And Of Itself Would Be A Momentous Step Toward Full Equality In the U.S.

From the Boston Globe:

Hillary Clinton and the glass ceiling

By Marcia Angell | February 19, 2007

NOW THAT the presidential campaign is underway, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy is the subject of intense discussion. In polite company, people often insist with a virtuous air that the right thing to do is to vote for the best candidate without regard for gender. But that is a limited view of what's at stake. The fact that Clinton is a woman is not a bad reason to vote for her, and unless you see the perfect man, it may be reason enough. Let me explain.

In the 218 years since George Washington became president, every one of his 42 successors has been a man. For most of that time, of course, there were no women leaders anywhere in the world. But that changed long ago -- with Golda Meir in Israel, Indira Gandhi in India, Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, and now Angela Merkel in Germany, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, and Segolene Royal, a candidate in France's next presidential election. It's way past time for the United States to catch up. Women are not a minority group. We make up the majority of the electorate, are more likely to vote than men, and are on average better educated.

So here comes Clinton -- well-qualified, talented, and smart. Why the unease about her? To hear people talk, it has nothing to do with gender. What we hear is that she is polarizing, opportunistic, too tough (or not tough enough), and, finally, that most self-fulfilling of all prophecies, not electable. Note the vagueness and personal nature of these criticisms; they mostly go to style, not substance -- the kinds of judgments that have everything to do with gender.

The exception is her ill-considered 2002 vote for the war in Iraq. But every other Democratic candidate who was in the Senate at the time was equally craven. (Barack Obama, who did oppose the war, was not yet in the Senate, so didn't have to cast a vote.) Now that the political winds have changed, the other candidates are falling all over themselves to admit their mistake. That is harder for her. An apology may be disarming in a man, but a woman has to worry about appearing weak or indecisive. Yet I have little doubt that if elected, she would move as fast as any of the others to get us out of Iraq.

All of the parsing of Clinton's personality and policies ignores the elephant in the living room: She is a woman, and the first woman with a serious shot at the presidency. As such, whatever she does will be wrong, and wrong in a way that does not apply to even the most closely scrutinized male candidate. She will be held to the standard applied only to women trying to break the glass ceiling -- she will have to be perfect according to shifting and often contradictory standards.

I have some experience with glass ceilings. I entered medicine at a time when it was an almost exclusively male preserve. As with Clinton, criticisms of women usually focused on personal attributes, not ability. We were expected to possess the stereotypical masculine traits that were then associated with doctors, but also satisfy stereotypical notions of femininity -- a tricky juggling act that men were not called on to perform. Those days are mostly behind us in medicine, but not in politics, and they won't be until we have a woman president.

The major Democratic candidates are similar in ideals and programs. That being the case, the fact that Clinton is a woman should weigh in her favor. Supporting Obama because he is African-American does not somehow compensate for the exclusion of more than half the population from the highest office in the country; it simply underscores it. If we wait for the perfect woman to come along, we'll wait a long time. And in the meantime, we'll continue to elect men every four years who will often be seriously imperfect.

Clinton is well qualified by experience and ability to be president, and she has by all accounts been a hardworking and conscientious senator. But we should also pay attention to the fact that the election of a woman in and of itself would be a momentous step toward full equality in the United States and a powerful message to the rest of the world.

Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, is a guest columnist.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

~Hat tip to Professor Wombat at Eschaton