What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (14 page)

MS
: What message would you most want to instill in young girls? What do you wish you had known as a child?

MA
: Courage. Also, I encourage courtesy—to accept nothing less than courtesy and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

MS
: I saw some of your emotional appearances after Barack Obama’s first win, in 2008. Did you ever imagine that you would live long enough to witness that?

MA
: Never. Never. And yet somewhere, obviously, I must have known. I know that my people did, because they couldn’t have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. There are some songs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that say [
sings]
, “By and by, by and by, I will lay down this heavy load.” I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope—amazing songs. The slaves knew that they did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same people wrote and sang with fervor, “If the Lord wants somebody, here am I, send me.” It’s amazing.

MS
: There seems to be a growing movement around issues such as antiwar sentiment, awareness about global warming, violence against women,
and world poverty—a growth in awareness and compassion and a sense of responsibility. Do you think humanity is experiencing an evolutionary shift to a new paradigm?

MA
: I think so. I think we are making it very clear to people, whether they want to hear it or not, or whether they would like to think of this as some fluke of history—wrong, wrong. People are saying, “This is what I will stand for. And I will not stand for any less than this.” It’s amazing. We are growing up! We are growing up out of the idiocies—racism and sexism and ageism and all those ignorances.

MS
: What do you think is the root cause of all the problems we have in the world today?

MA
: Ignorance, of course, but mostly polarization. You see, it’s a long time arranging this sort of condition. And it will not be over in one term, or even two. But we are on the right road. If you have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is to convince yourself that the person is subhuman and won’t mind the enslavement. The second thing you must do is convince your allies that the person is subhuman, so that you have some support. But the third and the unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is not quite a first-class citizen. When the complete job has been done, the initiator can go back years later and ask, “Why don’t you people like yourselves more?” You see? It’s been true for women, it’s been true for immigrants, it’s been true for Asians, it’s been true for Spanish-speaking people. So now we have to undo. We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

MS
: There are still so many ways in which we divide ourselves—by religion, race, gender, sexuality, nationality. Are you hopeful that humanity will ever come to see itself as one family?

MA
: Yes, but it will be a long time. But that’s all right; it’s a wonderful goal to be working toward.

MS
: Do you feel like women around the world are awakening to a sense of their own power and a need in the world for their influence?

MA
: Yes, I think so. We can see—from California to New York, from Maine to Florida, Seattle to New Mexico—everywhere there are women’s groups. Everywhere there are women who have gotten together to examine global warming and women who have gotten together to prepare each other for single parenting, women who have come together to be supportive—all sorts of gatherings of women. I mean, I look back fifty years ago and there was nothing like that, nothing.

MS
: I know you have gone through some dark times in your life, but you have accomplished so much and are such a beacon of light and inspiration. Where do your own strength and courage come from?

MA
: Well, I had a fabulous grandmother. And my mother. I have some sister friends. . . . They have influenced and strengthened my life. And when I want to think about what would be the right thing to do, the fair thing to do, the wise thing to do, I can just think of my grandmother. I can always hear her say, “Now, sister, you know what’s right. Just do right!”

MS
: Do you have a spiritual philosophy or way of looking at life that guides you?

MA
: Yes. All of us know not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is—but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided.

MS
: What advice would you give to people who are going through something painful or are feeling frustrated or depressed? What would you say to give them hope?

MA
: Well, I would say, “Look what you’ve already come through! Don’t deny it. You’ve already come through some things, which are very painful. If you’ve been alive until you’re thirty-five, you have gone through some pain. It cost you something. And you’ve come through it. So at least look at that. Have the sense to look at yourself and say, ‘Well, wait a minute. I’m stronger than I thought I was.’” So we need to not be in denial about what we’ve done, what we’ve come through. It will help us if we all do that.

BALANCING THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE

I believe we have been living in a very masculine world; a world of singularity where we are not looking at things holistically, where we don’t take in the totality of a woman. It’s been a boy’s club, and leadership and the way we think about it has been impacted by this. In order for things to change, we have to shift the perspective from being “either/or” to “and.” It’s not about women replacing men
—
it’s about the embrace. We need masculine and feminine energies for us to move the needle forward. I have said many times that I’m fascinated by the word “woman,” and that’s because when you really look at the word, you see how there is a man in every woman. I think this is incredibly symbolic, as the feminine and the masculine need to be in harmony. I feel that there is a dynamic shift that is happening and that a balance needs to be restored
.

        
—D
ONNA
K
ARAN

Let’s face it: we could have a woman president and it might not be any different if the woman, in order to get up the ladder, has armored her heart and become like a man. . . . So while it would be great to have a woman president, what may be more important is her consciousness. Whether it’s a man or a woman, do they have a feminist consciousness? And, of course, what we would have to contend with if there was a man running who had the consciousness, well, we know the names that would be hurled at him, and given our culture, it would be really hard. He’d be called a pansy, effete, and on and on and on. It takes a lot of courage for a man in this culture to claim his emotional literacy and his heart. And we have to rally around both genders. It’s less about gender sometimes and more about consciousness
.

        
—J
ANE
F
ONDA

Sometimes I feel like it’s a bit of fallacy to say men are violent and women are non-violent, because I don’t think that’s necessarily true. But I do think there is a sort of natural balance in nature between men and women, and that it’s being thrown off balance by the social and economic inequities between men and women. And one of the reasons FINCA [the organization I’m an ambassador for] is primarily women is because in many places when they would have mixed groups of men and women together, the women just
wouldn’t run for office; they wouldn’t try to be president or vice president. You see that so often, and that’s something that’s totally socialized. I read some study when I was in college about how in the United States, if you see class president elections, it’s like all girls, and then in eighth grade, no girls run. It’s like, what happens in there that tells girls to be quiet, be submissive, be meek? It’s ridiculous
—
we’re missing out on 50 percent of our potential great people
.

        
—N
ATALIE
P
ORTMAN

I think that sometimes we romanticize the role that women can play because in many countries of the world, women are still not in charge. They are still not playing a very important role in decision making. But sometimes when women do find themselves in those positions, we really don’t see that much difference. I have always felt that perhaps women have sometimes almost embraced the same values as men, and the same character as men, because they are in the men’s world and they are trying to fit into a system that men have created. And maybe, in truth, when there is a critical mass of women who play that role in governments, such as what we have in Rwanda, then we will see whether women can really manage power in a way that is less destructive than the way men have used power
.

        
—W
ANGARI
M
AATHAI
, N
OBEL
P
EACE
L
AUREATE

The feminine has to rise in order for there to be any hope of continuation of the species. And I think that most people actually feel that on some level. What is a little frightening, though, is how many women are really fleeing the feminine. And you see it most clearly in language. As I mention in
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For,
women and girls are taught and programmed actually to think of themselves as “guys.” It’s a way to basically evade being deeply feminine on a daily basis. And you’ll notice, too, that there’s a kind of repetitiveness, like it’s being constantly reinforced that you are not feminine, you are something else
. . . .
I think women have to be so conscious about what they want to be called, what they are actually are. It should be our choice, and it should not just be society’s programming or the media’s programming or masculine or patriarchal programming. . . . Anything that encourages women to accept themselves as who they are and what they are and to honor the feminine in them, would be very, very helpful for the world’s healing
.

        
—A
LICE
W
ALKER

MICHAEL KIMMEL

“I have found that since I’ve begun to support gender equality
—
since I’ve tried to do it at home, as well as in my professional work
—
my life is much better. My relationship with my family, with my children, with my parents, with my friends, with my colleagues, is so much richer. So the argument that I make consistently to men is that gender equality is not a zero-sum game
—
it is a win-win. And, in fact, gender equality is the only way you’re going to be able to have the kinds of relationships you say you want to have, so it’s in our interest to support it.”

M
ICHAEL
S. K
IMMEL
is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at SUNY at Stony Brook. He is the author of
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
, which was featured on
The Today Show
and
Good Morning America
and in more than one hundred radio, newspaper, and blog reviews. Some of his other books include
Changing Men, Men’s Lives, The Politics of Manhood, The Gendered Society, Misframing Men
, and, most recently,
The Guy’s Guide to Feminism
. He is the founder and editor of
Men and Masculinities
, the field’s premier scholarly journal, a book series on gender and sexuality at New York University Press. He was also one of the founders of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.