What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (15 page)

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Just to start with, why do you think we haven’t had a woman president so far?

MICHAEL KIMMEL
: I think there are two reasons. Obviously, the easiest answer to this is the overconscious prejudice that people believe that women aren’t as competent around leadership, that leadership requires being a man—being willing to push the button, being willing to let our sons go into harm’s way, to stand up to our rivals and our enemies. So there’s always been the feeling that in some ways women weren’t qualified, that there was an essential difference between women and men, and that categorically, women should be excluded. I mean, it’s not that long ago that women just barely got the right to vote. So there’s still a tremendous amount of prejudice, it seems to me, and this results from the kind of essential-difference argument.

Now, it is also true that if I make an essential-difference argument with my students, if I say to them, “Women and men are so fundamentally different that women should never, ever be elected to higher office,” my students immediately would respond, “But what about Golda Meir? What about Margaret Thatcher? What about Indira Gandhi?” I mean, there are a lot of women who are really qualified and certainly as capable leaders as any man. So my students are willing to suspend it if they’re challenged, I think, but what I’ve come to believe is that a lot of this “discrimination” is soft discrimination, by which I mean that if you could find a counterexample, they’ll believe you. What happened to Hillary Clinton in 2008 seems a really good example. She was defeminized because she seemed so competent: “Okay, right, she could definitely be president, but she’s not a real lady” [
laughs]
.

So that’s the first thing. It’s the obvious answer, it’s the right answer, but I think there’s another answer as well. There was a breakthrough essay written by an art historian named Linda Nochlin in the early 1970s. The article basically posed a question as women were beginning to criticize
the art canon, the canon of great artists, and she wrote an essay with the title “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” And the answer, of course, that everyone had been given is this overt discrimination that women weren’t good enough, capable enough, couldn’t hold the brush right, whatever. And she said, you know, it is really facile and probably wrong for us to go back through the old pages of the history of art or music or literature, searching for the female Shakespeare or Rembrandt or Mozart. The truth is, there haven’t been any great women artists. The question is not to sort of dredge up some second-rate artist or musician and try to proclaim them to be as great as Mozart or Shakespeare. The question is, Why? And there, she says, the answer is that women were excluded from the schools that created the great artists to begin with. She looked at French painting in the eighteenth century, and she said what happened in France was that there were three levels of painting: there was genre painting, there was landscape painting, and then there was portrait painting. And portrait painting was, of course, the most elevated. But, of course, in order to paint a portrait, you have to actually see a model, and women were way too delicate—they were excluded from the live-model studios—therefore, they never could paint portraits; therefore, they never became the great artists. So she said it’s not enough to just throw it on bad men or bad ideas and prejudice; it’s also the fact that women are excluded from the very places that train you to be that kind of person. So if women are not in the great military schools, if they don’t get into the great law schools, or whatever, that prepare people for careers in politics, then of course they’re not going to be those kinds of leaders. Now, that answer means that we haven’t had a woman president yet. But clearly now there are women at West Point. There are women at all the major colleges and universities and all of the premier law schools. In fact, over half of the students are women, so it does seem to me now that after having these centuries of exclusion, what we’re dealing with are the remnants of this
prejudice. I personally believe we will have, in 2016, our first female president. I’m actually a big believer that now that these structural obstacles have been removed, there is enough of an erosion of this old prejudice that, in fact, we’re about to see something quite remarkable: the first black president, followed by the first female president. And America is really the outlier on this, Marianne, as you know. Countries that we keep denigrating because they treat women so badly, like Pakistan, have had two! They’re right to say, “Who are you to talk?” [
laughs]
Because we’ve had zero. We’ve barely had a woman come close. So my answer [pertains to both structure] and the remnants of prejudice, and I believe that now that those structural barriers have begun to fall, the prejudices are also beginning to erode. I think the percentage of people, male and female, who believe that by definition a woman is unqualified for public office has shrunk to single digits. It’s never been lower. I would imagine, although I don’t have the numbers in front of me, that the numbers were probably close to 30 or 40 percent only forty years ago. That’s a pretty big change.

MS
: You devote much of your work to and write a lot about gender roles, and we were talking a little bit about what happened with Hillary—the conundrum women face of having to be confident, powerful, and ambitious to get to a place where they can be considered good leaders, while dealing with all the negative backlash against women who do act in that way. What are your thoughts on that conundrum for women?

MK
: One of the things about Hillary’s candidacy that I think was made most evident in her campaign was that sexism is still more permissible in our culture than racism. I don’t want us to get too self-congratulatory here. I don’t think that we’re there yet, although I think that we’re closer than we ever have been. You remember that “iron my shirt” moment. What’s interesting, I have to say, is that my students just didn’t know
about that. When I talk about that in lectures, when I say, “And you will remember the time when those guys held up that sign that said G
O
I
RON
M
Y
S
HIRT
,” most people look at me like,
What? No, we never heard of that
. I thought that was interesting, because that was a pretty obvious moment in the disability of sexism—and those ideas were still alive and well. And I thought to myself,
What would have happened if, instead of some men holding up a sign that said G
O
I
RON MY SHIRT,
some white guy at an Obama rally had held up a sign that said G
O
S
HINE
M
Y
S
HOES?
The entire campaign would have come to a screeching halt. Every single media outlet would have covered it, big-time. It would have been the major news story, and every candidate, including the Republicans, would have said, “Okay, stop everything. That’s wrong.” The fact that it passed without notice is an indication that that kind of sexism, those kinds of prejudices, are still more visible than racism, still more permissible.

MS
: What qualities do you think women would bring to leadership that are most needed in the United States and around the world now? Why would you like to see this? Why is it important?

MK
: There are two answers to this question—one of them depends upon a kind of gender-similarity hypothesis, and one of them depends on a gender-difference hypothesis. The gender-similarity hypothesis would say I don’t really care what gender the person is—what I’m looking for is somebody who is really qualified to lead the country, to help us restore the economy, to rein in rapacious corporations, to be more equitable in our tax policies, to make sure that there is an adequate social safety net, and to lead us as the leader of the world. Now I want to know who that person is. And most voters, I believe, don’t really care about the gender package that comes in. So that’s the gender-similarity argument.

The gender-difference argument is, now, what I’ve just said are gender traits, so we want to say to everybody that we should share the burden, we should seek peace, we should be safe, we should make sure that everybody has enough, that the hungry should be fed—those are traditionally feminine attributes. In the old way that we coded traits, attitudes, and behaviors, those were coded as feminine. It’s moms who say to children who are fighting, “Now, wait a minute—let’s share that toy and use your words.” And then there are the dads who say, “Draw a line in the sand and stand up for yourself.” So which one is more likely to go to war?

Either way you go, a woman would be a reasonable candidate. If you believe women and men are basically, fundamentally different, you should vote for a woman, because you would be much safer and you’d be much less likely to go to war with a female president—if you believe in the gender-difference hypothesis. If you believe in the gender-similarity hypothesis, which I do, you’d simply look for the person who would be more likely to enact those kinds of things.

MS
: When we were talking about the milestone of Obama becoming president, I think in some ways, in addition to the fact that he’s paved the way for having a minority become president, he also does embody a slightly more “feminine” way of being—in the way he tries sometimes to negotiate, reach across the aisles, and he also is very vocal about taking time for his family. Is this also just a push to have the more “feminine values”—not necessarily that women always embody that—enter into the paradigm of leadership?

MK
: I think that’s right. First, there’s Obama’s personal style. Secondly, there’s the demand. What we demand from a black candidate is, of course, that he remain utterly and completely even-tempered and never get angry, because the last thing that people would vote for in this country is an
angry
black man. So his temperament, plus the demands of unconscious racism in the electorate, led Obama, I think, to be far more conciliatory. And, of course, everybody criticized him because the right wing, the Republicans, dug in and they were intransigent, and he tried to compromise. That didn’t work, and so he became equally bellicose. Why? Because he had to.

MS
: It seems to me, even with men—and you being a perfect example of this—men are starting to become supportive of women’s equality, not for the sake of fairness but because they do think that women have something to contribute. Is it your sense that men are starting to also realize how important it is that women’s voices and perspectives are equally represented in all sectors, including politics?

MK
: You know what? I don’t think so. At our best, I think currently we’re becoming more gender blind. I don’t think men would sit there and say women embody these characteristics, therefore we should vote for them. I don’t think that that’s true. I think the liberal position is to be more gender blind.

MS
: That’s really interesting. I actually like what you’re saying. I think it is maybe true that hopefully it isn’t about all these divisions and classifications, but just about looking at the person inside us. I would love to be moving to a place like that. How did you come to be who you are and being able to raise a son in the way you’re raising your son? Did you have a certain influence on you that allowed you to be this way, or is this something that you had to learn, in terms of your awareness and activism around these issues?

MK
: My experience is a combination of all of the different ways in which men come to believe in gender equality. I think we come to believe in gender equality in three fundamental ways. First—because the first one is what you might call the ethical imperative—I’m an American. This is what my son, Zachary, said yesterday about why he thinks men should support feminism. He said, “I’m an American. We believe in equality and fairness and justice for all. That’s the foundation of our country.” Of course I believe in that. To me, the weird thing is people who don’t believe in that. So gender equality is right and fair and just, and—being an American and studying America’s society—I believe that. I believe that firmly, and it’s made me an antiracist activist and a profeminist activist, because I believe that’s what America stands for. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is, it’s been part of my experience to meet and listen to the experiences of people who have been harmed by gender inequality—just as I’ve talked to people who have been harmed by racial inequality or sexual inequality—and listening to those stories sometimes breaks your heart. Sometimes it makes you feel angry. Sometimes it makes you disgusted. How is this possible in this country that people have to endure these kinds of things? I think that’s one of the other reasons that men get involved in this, because they have some personal experience with the women in their lives being discriminated against or subject to violence or whatever.