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Some Thoughts on Women’s History Month and the Candidacy of Hillary Clinton

By Carol Amoruso, Hispanic American Village Editor

March has arrived, bringing Women’s History Month once again.  This year, we both celebrate and make woman’s history, as, for the first time in two and a quarter centuries of electoral government, a woman has announced her candidacy for president of the United States.  Hillary Clinton has a fighting chance to become the standard-bearer for her Democratic Party which has a good shot at reoccupying the White House after an 8-year hiatus and rising disgust with the Republican incumbency.

It gives one cause to ponder that a people who nearly a half century ago spawned the movement for gender equality in nearly every society world-wide, should until this date have had no contender as head of state.  It is more puzzling still when, since 1940, 32 women have been elected or appointed to head their countries, many of which have horrific histories of human rights abuses against their women. This impressive number excludes the non-elected position of prime minister, the ranks of which have been filled by such world players as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, and Angela Merkel, women who have been entrusted with and wielded great power, for better or for worse.

Hillary’s potential candidacy—it’s curious how our two most powerful female leaders are tagged with the casualness of their given names, Hillary and Condoleeza, while the men retain the distance and respect engendered by their surnames: Bush, Rumsfield, Cheney—begs examining our image and expectations of women leaders today.

Do we as Americans want a nurturing figure, one that conforms more stereotypically to a female image?  History has given us male presidents who governed as caretakers of our collective well-being as much as they tended to the business of rattling sabers. FDR, Lincoln and JFK come first to mind as homebody presidents, both beloved and respected.   Is this more laid back role one we’d be comfortable with a woman playing, or can we accept vulnerability only in our male leaders, fearing that compassion in a woman is a harbinger of total collapse?

If we are looking for that chink of vulnerability, Hillary is not our gal.  She’s a toughie, her voice edged and unequivocal, her smile sardonic.  She lays out her positions as unassailable.  It would seem that she is (over) compensating for any cries of “softie” by trying to outdo the boys in bellicosity on both the three I’s: Iraq, Iran and Israel.  Furthermore, like the president, she is hard-pressed to admit to a mistake.

The former first lady’s style not only contrasts the down-home casualness of her two top rivals at present, Senator Barak Obama and former senator and vice presidential candidate, John Edwards; more tellingly, she displays none of the innate warmth of new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.  Pelosi’s public image of a hearth-identified grandmother with considerable conciliatory skills but not without grit and a hankering for a fight has been garnering admiration.  (In a perhaps unkind, yet trenchant comment, a friend compared Senator Clinton to Speaker Pelosi, observing, “[Chelsea notwithstanding] Hillary is mother to no one.”)

Pelosi’s style, more than Clinton’s revisits the early days of the women’s movement when a more androgynous identity was a less pressing issue than was work and wages and recognition of and appreciation for women’s responsibilities in the home. Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia as well as former Irish president, Mary Robinson also represent more that “old guard” feminism.  Bachelet is a surgeon, pediatrician, epidemiologist, divorced mother, daughter of an air force general (she, her mother, and father were all tortured under the regime of Augusto Pinochet, her father dying in prison of heart failure), as well as a student of military strategy.  She has led her country, since taking office in March, 2006, down a path towards social welfare reform and human rights.

Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf, a World Bank economist, has been chosen for her maternal image and reputation as a conciliator as well as her history of outspokenness and resistance.  Her task, which some say could only have befallen a woman, is to try and heal the wounds of a multi-fractured dysfunctional nation torn by decades of civil war at the hands of stupid, brutal men who put 9 year-old children onto the streets to fight and where, in certain regions, 3 of 4 women have been raped.

Mary Robinson, former president of the Republic of Ireland (1990 to 1997) is a highly-achieved humanitarian, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and currently honorary chairperson of Oxfam International.

If elected, Clinton promises to resemble more female leaders like Thatcher of England, Israel’s Meir, and India’s Gandhi, women who ruled with iron fists, imperially and in alpha mode, the latter two products of severely repressive, chauvinistic cultures.  (For a report on current struggles in Israel against the entrenched and religiously fanatic repression of women, and the valiant women resisting it, see articles in Al Haaretz and Newsday.)

How countries far from our western mold have been able to choose women to lead them is a wondrous question; we must be thankful for their open-mindedness—if indeed this is what motivated their choice--while rueful that the pioneering women could not have proven more humane as role models.

Hillary may be in the vanguard of a new generation of very young women sporting suits and military uniforms who, teeth-clenched, heels dug in and ready for all comers, challenge all gender stereotypes; go beyond refuting the genetics behind their separate identity from men, taking their equality with, if not superiority over, men for granted; pooh-pooh their mothers’ legacy of struggle; and, according to author/psychologist, Dan Kindlon, will, once their time has come, bring great and positive change to our society.  Kindlon’s alpha girls are socialized and coached (he is fond of extolling the positive character-building of competitive sports) by their proud fathers, ready to relinquish or share their plushy leather seats of governmental, financial, military and academic power.

The outcome of and soundings on the 2008 vote promise to shed light on how much American men are willing to cede their might and self image to a woman who will compete with them at their own game.

The issue of Hillary’s sex is a very big one, perhaps as crucial to her appeal as race is with contender Obama. I write from the yards of Jamaica where Portia Simpson Miller has been appointed interim prime minister by her party.  Five Caribbean nations have already had women heads of state: Grenada, Haiti, Dominica, Bermuda (geographically north of the Caribbean, but generally considered one of the basin islands), and the Netherland Antilles.  Jamaican women are frequently referred to as “my beef”, usually confined to the home after dark, are frequently used from a preteen age as sexual objects, but are better employed, better paid and better educated than the men.  A general election testing Miller’s popularity and the prospect of electing Jamaica’s first female head of state will be called later this year.

I’ve asked a number of people whether they thought Simpson Miller’s gender would be an issue in a contest where party loyalties traditionally override to a pernicious extent all other considerations.  No one was even fazed by the question.  One fisherman pundit friend of mine weighed in.  “No, mon,” he emphasized.  (I’m addressed as “mon,” “sir,” and referred to by the third person pronoun “’im” as often than not here.)  “De Jamaican people gwanna [are going to] gi’ de gyal [girl] a chance.”  As the 2008 campaign heats up, we’ll be better able to judge the readiness of America to give a gyal a chance and the kind of gyal we’ll want her to be.

Also of Interest

Women's History Month: March 2007
Census release paints a statistical portrait of women in the U.S. today at work, school, home, business and beyond