What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (13 page)

MS
: Now we have twenty women in Congress and already there was an article on the front page of
The New York Times
—it was Rob Portman, a Republican male senator, who said even that small increase in women was having a “positive impact” and that he thought that “women tend to be interested in finding common ground.” Especially given the fact that things are so partisan right now, do you think that having more women on both sides can lead to a different dynamic?

AN
: Listen, the men have been in charge of leadership in Congress for a long time and they don’t seem to be getting it right, so we are in the midst of a sadly dysfunctional government. Our government is operating in a somewhat dysfunctional way, and I think having more women could only help. But you know . . . it really depends on the person, the individual, and not his or her gender. There are some women who are ultra-partisan. I’m not sure Nancy Pelosi would be thought of as being more of a consensus builder than Steny Hoyer. If you ask me, I think Steny Hoyer is more of a consensus builder than Nancy Pelosi. So, I think we are, ourselves, delving into stereotypes and generalizations if we think women are different than men. Women can be just as hyper-partisan as men, and men can be just as practical and consensus building as women. It just totally depends on the individual.

MS
: I definitely agree with you. There was another thing Celinda Lake said that I wanted to ask you about. She said, “I firmly believe that what we need are more progressive, moderate Republican women. Now the problem is that they can’t survive.” You seem to me to be somewhat of a more progressive, moderate Republican woman—

AN
: I don’t know what the hell I am anymore. The conservative movement has changed so much. After three days at CPAC, I don’t know what a conservative is anymore. I thought I knew what a conservative was. I’m telling you that when I first started in politics, conservatism had three legs. It was a three-legged stool: strong national or international defense, fiscal conservatism and small government, and strong social values. I went to CPAC and half the people are saying, “Let’s be isolationists, forget aid to Egypt, forget aid to Syrian rebels.” Half the people are saying, “We don’t want to talk about abortion; we don’t want to talk about gay marriage; we don’t want to talk about social issues.” . . . I’m telling you, I don’t know what conservatives are anymore, so I’m not sure.

I go back to telling you, I think it’s less about the ideology and more about the individual. I think one of the problems we’ve had, as Republicans, certainly when you look at the Republican women in the Senate in particular, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski . . . they’re very pragmatic women, all of them, who are less about ideology and more about policy. They do what they think is the right thing to do. In fact, if anything, moderates have been the ones getting elected, but the Republican primaries right now are equally tough for progressive, moderate men.

MS
: I was curious about your perception of what the results of this last election told us about the way both our electorate and the face of our government is changing. I know you also do a lot of outreach to Hispanic communities, and obviously the larger picture isn’t just about women—it’s just about diversity in general. Do you see a shifting of paradigms happening toward greater diversity in Washington?

AN
: It’s inevitable. Anybody who doesn’t acknowledge that there’s a growing diversity in the American electorate lives in a cave with their head in
the sand—and that means gays, it means women, it means young people, it means blacks, it means Hispanics, it means Asians.

MS
: That seems hopeful. I know that you’ve worked on a lot of different campaigns. If you look at Washington right now, things seem really dysfunctional, and it’s hard to get people motivated to want to be a part of that. But I know you’re very big on trying to engage people into the process, especially minority groups. What advice or encouragement would you give in terms of trying to get people to run and to be an active part of our process?

AN
: People run because they have the fire in their belly. I don’t think you can persuade or advise somebody into running. Running for office requires a level of commitment, willingness to be scrutinized and lose your privacy, the sacrifice of time away from family and home . . . I think the women who run pretty much know what it entails. And I always think that running is a very personal decision. But I do think anybody who runs, regardless of gender, needs to know what’s entailed, what it means.

MS
: I do some writing for the Women’s Media Center and they had released a report recently that was titled “Report Exposes Problem: Gender Disparity in Media is at Crisis Levels.” I know that you’re a regular contributor to CNN and a variety of other media outlets, but women are still very much a minority. Why there is such inequity in terms of representation and diversity in the media, and why is that important?

AN
: I think the reason that there are fewer women—that there is a gender gap in the media, there’s a gender gap in elected office, there’s a gender gap in high-level corporate America—it’s all the same reasons. Because, until very recently, women have been the ones that bore the brunt of family and
home responsibilities. And it’s not been until recently that that has begun to change and we are now in an era where shared responsibilities have become the norm, not the exception. That women are beginning to have just as many chances as the men to enter careers that require great commitment and time, including the media. When you take a look at the news anchors, it’s got to be somebody that can hop a plane and go cover the war in Kuwait one day and hop a plane and go cover the Papal election the next. So the reason that there are fewer women in the media and corporate America and elected office is all the same reason. We’ve been keeping up the home front and it’s not been until recently . . . that women are having the opportunity to pursue careers that are very demanding.

MS
: I do think the other part of the problem is that, for example, women hold only about 3 percent of clout positions in mainstream media.

AN
: I think part of it is being in the media is a twenty-four-hour-a-day [job]. Being in the media is like being a doctor on call every day. There could be a number of emergencies that just require getting covered at that moment. And I think it’s not until recently when women have been able to get out, when women have been able to do more than raising children and taking care of the home duties, that they’ve been able to pursue that. I think that’s going to change. I think we’re going to see more women in every aspect of American life, because it’s changed and it’s going to continue to change—the notion women no longer have to feel limited or guilty about spending time on other pursuits and asking their partners to share in the responsibility of raising the children.

MS
: You are somebody who is so outspoken. You’ve always seemed to have had the courage to speak your mind. I was very taken with the fact that you came out in support of same-sex marriage, something that many
people in the Republican Party are against. Where did that inner strength and courage come from?

AN
: I think it’s about commitment to your principles, to what you believe in. But also I grew up in a household where I was constantly encouraged to learn, be educated, and have my own opinions. And I was educated by the Sacred Heart nuns in an all-girls school . . . and believe me when I tell you that Sacred Heart nuns are the foremost experts in encouraging the independent, strong voices.

MS
: What advice would you want to give to a young girl or a young woman today? What words of wisdom would you want to instill in them?

AN
: I would say, “Be open to opportunities. See the opportunities when they appear, and seize opportunities.” But I also think that women need to follow their hearts. It’s okay for a woman to lean in. It’s also okay for a woman to lean back, if that’s what she wants. I think women need to follow their hearts and their minds and not conform to social pressures. And I think we also need to be acutely aware of opportunities when they arise and seize them with both hands.

MAYA ANGELOU

“We need to be seen as well as heard. It’s not sufficient to say, ‘Well, we are here, and we deserve.’ Because if we really think that the majority of women in the world are also always in the kitchen and in the kindergarten and in the places just to look after the young and men, then we do ourselves and everybody a disservice . . . The whole country needs to know that women are much smarter
—
we’re more than that.”

D
R.
M
AYA
A
NGELOU
is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, she is a celebrated poet, writer, performer, teacher, director, and civil rights activist. In addition to her groundbreaking autobiographies, beginning with I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, Angelou has written two cookbooks; five poetry collections, including
I Shall Not Be Moved;
three books of essays, including
Letter to My Daughter;
and six long-form poems, including “Mother.” The list of her published verse, nonfiction, and fiction now includes more than thirty best-selling titles. In her most recent work, a memoir titled
Mom & Me & Mom
, she shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. A trailblazer in film and television, Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film
Georgia, Georgia
. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1996, she directed her first feature film,
Down in the Delta
.

Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received three Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Angelou’s reading of her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” was broadcast live around the world. In 2012 she founded the Maya Angelou Center for Women’s Health and Wellness in her adopted hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think we haven’t had a woman president? And do you feel our consciousness is ready to have that happen?

MAYA ANGELOU
: Well, I think we are more ready for it than we think we are. I mean, if anyone had asked you five years ago, “Do you think we’re ready for a black president?” it’s very likely that the wagging of the head would have been, “No, no, no—not yet.” However, we’re readier than we thought we were. And I think that’s true about women. I supported Hillary Clinton in her bid for the White House. After a while, some of the top Democrats phoned me and asked me to ask Mrs. Clinton to step down because it seemed certain that Senator Obama was going to be the choice. So I said, “I told her twenty years ago that if she ran for anything, I had her back and would support her. When she steps down, I will step down.” I think that she would make a wonderful president. But when she decided that Senator Obama was a likely candidate that she could support, she stepped down and I stepped down with her. And I went over to the Obama camp and said, “If I can be of any use, please use me.”

MS
: Sometimes this gets framed as just about equality—women are still such a minority, not only in Washington, but in corporate leadership. Why is it important that we have women’s voices equally represented?

MA
: Well, we need to be seen, all over the place. We need to be seen as well as heard. It’s not sufficient to say, “Well, we are here, and we deserve.” If we really think that the majority of women in the world are also always in the kitchen and in the kindergarten and in the places just to look after the young and men, then we do ourselves and everybody a disservice. Because women offer so much more than it would seem we offer. It would seem we offer kindness and the chance to be cared for and nursed in more ways than just medical. And I think that the whole country needs to know that women are much smarter—we’re more than that. We’re that and more than that.

MS
: If you could speak to the world community, what message would you most want to deliver to humanity?

MA
: I would encourage us to try our best to develop courage. It’s the most important of all the virtues, because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can be anything erratically—kind, fair, true, generous, all that. But to be that thing time after time, you need courage. We need to develop courage, and we need to develop it in small ways first. Because we wouldn’t go and say, “I’ll pick up this hundred-pound weight” without knowing our capacity. So we need to say, “Oh, I’ll start by picking up a five-pound weight, then a ten-pound weight, then a twenty-five-pound, and sooner or later I’ll be able to pick up a one-hundred-pound weight.” And I think that’s true with courage. You develop a little courage, so that if you decide, “I will not stay in rooms where women are belittled; I will not stay in company where races, no matter who they are, are belittled; I will not take it; I will not sit around and accept dehumanizing
other human beings”—if you decide to do that in small ways, and you continue to do it—finally you realize you’ve got so much courage. Imagine it—you’ve got so much courage that people want to be around you. They get a feeling that they will be protected in your company.