What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (58 page)

And Marianne, you know, it really did not matter to me. I’m not somebody that is focused on titles. I’ve always said the title for an elected or appointed office should be public servant or whatever. And then I had an English teacher actually write me a note and thank me for using the term “congressman,” because she said “congresswoman” is a misnomer; it is not a gender-specific job, therefore the terminology should be gender neutral. It’s like with the freshmen—you don’t call them freshwomen. Female senators are referred to as Senator, not Senatress; female governors are referred to as Governor, not Governess. And this English teacher had always found it curious that in Congress, for the title of congressman, for some odd reason unknown to her and certainly unknown to me, they had begun to call it congresswoman. It is not actually a correct term. We are not represented by male and female per district, but only one.

MS
: That’s a really interesting, good answer! I was fascinated by a lot of the points you made in your book,
Life Equity;
for example, that while women are consensus builders, there may also be this dichotomy of women seeing “a strong desire to lead as being a bit rude.” Is that part of the problem? Do you think that women are in this dilemma of seeing the desire to lead as a negative or not portrayed as culturally acceptable that may be holding women back from being ambitious or openly pursuing leadership positions?

MB
: A part of that, I believe, comes from the role model. And having the individuals who have served and have served well and have modeled how to do that. It is tough to be a trailblazer and to be on the front end on a regular, ongoing basis, but somebody’s got to do it. I think that’s one of the reasons that you see women step forward and then step back a little bit, because there seems to be an aversion to females who are overly aggressive or outspoken or who push themselves forward in a queue. There still seems to be a resistance to that and part of it is a hesitation of how you accept and work with and incorporate those individuals. I don’t think it is nearly as bad [as it used to be]—I have seen a tremendous amount of improvement over the last few years in that arena—but there still does exist a hesitancy of some companies or environments or institutions to accept a woman moving into those top slots.

MS
: The other thing your book does is issue a call to action for women to bring what is “uniquely you.” And I was thinking a lot about that, because I think girls—and I have two of them—are often taught not celebrate their uniqueness, but instead to conform and to fit in, to be popular, to be liked . . . so sometimes they may not even know what is uniquely them or what their own vision is.

MB
: That is one of the things where the family unit, I believe—and strong mentors and role models and extended family—helps children, helps girls realize what is unique and wonderful about them. As my children were growing up, I would always say, “Every child needs to be the best at something, out of their circle of friends.” And part of my responsibility was to help my children to figure out what that center of excellence was and what they wanted to be, and then put them in the environment where they had every opportunity to develop that to the full extent of their potential. As we think to help our girls and develop those qualities, what we want them to do is not be restricted or restrained by, “you have to do this” or “you have to do that,” or push too much one way or another. I think there is a confidence that comes with being comfortable with who you are and what you’re about. You do not doubt yourself. And as girls grow into young women and are looking for career advancement, when they do not doubt themselves—when they know at their core they’re firm and what they’re really good at, and then also have an understanding of what they’re challenged by—then they are going to do a better job of pushing forward and expanding the boundaries for other women who are going to be coming behind them.

MS
: You seem like somebody who has had that confidence; you seem to know who you are and always speak your mind and remain true to your beliefs. Is that something you were born with or was that an evolution? How did you develop your own inner leader?

MB
: I think part of it is genetic, and then I think the other part of it comes from just opportunity and practice. And a very strong-willed grandmother, a strong-willed, persistent mom—even though my mother would have much preferred for me to have been the president of Garden Clubs of
America [
laughs]
. She is a fabulously talented flower show judge, a judge emeritus for Garden Clubs. Just a realization that it’s important to figure out how you’re going to fit in to your environment, your extended family, your community. And then your job is to leave things in better shape than you found them and to give back more than you take. That means that you have to know who you are and what you’re about. I have two siblings, a younger sister and an older brother, and we were all encouraged to not be daunted if we hit something that was frustrating to us, to work through it. And one of the things I told
my
children, as my mother had always told me, “There’s no such thing as a failed test.” You
learn
. It’s only a failed test if you refuse to learn from your mistakes. But there is an equity that you build in having those experiences where you learn. That’s how we position and tweak and find what we’re going to be best at and most successful with.

MS
: Where do you see the status of women here in the United States and around the world? Where do you think we are, and what’s the call to action for women today?

MB
: I think that where we are is in a better position of awareness of what women bring to the table for influencing public policy, corporate policy, organizational or institutional policy, and there is more appreciation for that. The call to action would be for personal excellence—to be ready for the opportunity when the door opens—because you never know when you’re going to be presented with something that will be a wonderful opportunity. And what we would like is, as women move forward into top spots at corporations and institutions and the political and public policy arenas, that they’re going to be well prepared and that they are going to perform beyond expectations.

ROBIN MORGAN

“The pipeline is important, and getting women to run is important, and then funding is really absolutely crucial. And being there for the women politicians, if they act in a principled manner. Being there for them in a way that is really loud and clear. Not forgetting once they win. . . . We need to get on their mailing lists. We need to tweet and email and call and fax and use whatever means of communication
—
carrier pigeon, if necessary
—
when they have bills up that we approve of. We need to become less apathetic and more involved in legislation, or else we’ll have legislation that will kill us.”

A
N AWARD-WINNING POET
, novelist, political theorist, feminist activist, journalist, editor, and best-selling author, Robin Morgan has published twenty books, including the now-classic anthologies
Sisterhood Is Powerful
and
Sisterhood Is Global
, and the recent
Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for a New Millennium
. A founder and leader of contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in the international women’s movement for more than twenty-five years.

Cofounder (with Simone de Beauvoir) and president of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and cofounder (with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem) and board member of the Women’s Media Center, she has cofounded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the United States and abroad. In 1990, as
Ms. Magazine
editor in chief, she relaunched the
magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, then resigned in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. She is the writer and host of the weekly CBS radio and online-streamed and podcast program
Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan
. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, as well as numerous other honors, she lives in New York City and has just completed a new novel.

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Right after Obama’s first election, I was talking with my daughter Lotus, who was eight at the time, about how amazing it was to have an African American president. And she asked, “Have we ever had a woman president?” I said, “No,” and she asked, “Why?” And here I am, president of
Feminist.com
and everything, and it was this obvious, very honest question—and it was a good question. So, starting there, what would you have said to an eight-year-old girl? Why have we not had a woman president?

ROBIN MORGAN
: Kids are wonderful for cutting right to the chase, the unfairness of it all: How can this be? Why? I would have said, “Because we live in a patriarchal, sexist society, and that’s one of the biggest ceilings that we have yet to crack.” It’s a position of tremendous power. It’s called the most powerful post in the world—whether it is or not, it certainly is one of them. It’s also the commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States, and many people perceive women as incapable of command and control. But mostly because it’s about power. It’s the kind of post that when you don’t have it, it means an enormous amount. And once you do have it—once we have the first woman president—we will realize that everything has not immediately fallen into place and women are not immediately free, but we still have a ways to go.

It’s sort of like the ERA: Having had it wouldn’t have made that much difference; not having had it makes a huge difference. And, in fact, we can hear people all the time saying that because we have a black president, we are in a “postracial” society. Well, that’s complete bullshit. It still does not affect the average African American, particularly the average African American woman. The fact that Oprah is a billionaire . . . the fact that we can point to one or two cases where, with enormous work and effort and organizing, people who are in the have-not category—women, people of color, et cetera—get a token or two in, does not mean that the battle is won. But it does have to start somewhere. And I’m not completely sure that we’ll have a woman president in my lifetime, although if Hillary runs, we will. But it will happen in your lifetime, is what I would say to [your daughter].

MS
: It’s funny because everybody keeps saying that if Hillary were to run, she would have the most realistic chance of becoming our first woman president.

RM
: Well, yeah. It’s rare that you get the confluence of factors in a candidate, any candidate, male or female, much less a woman. She has more credentials now than John Adams did. In other words . . . nobody, nobody, has been a First Lady—which is a powerless position but nonetheless with enormous influence and contacts and just high presence, a high profile—representing the United States. She was that, and many First Ladies have made nothing out of that, but she made something out of it. She then did what people said nobody could do: she ran for and won the Senate, and she was a damn good senator. She was my senator; I live in the state of New York, and she was an amazing senator. And then to run, to almost win the primary, which, if she hadn’t had certain men giving her advice, she would have. If she hadn’t spent all the money too early in the primary
season. And then to take on [Obama’s] offer, which was courageous of him to make and even more for her to accept, of secretary of state. And then to become the most traveled, arguably most successful and loved and respected and effective secretary of state in the history of the United States—my God, what more qualifications do we need?

MS
: Why is it important? What do you think having more women in positions of leadership—whether it’s the presidency or other parts of the government—would mean?

RM
: Well, first of all, let’s even just go to the lowest common denominator, which is not true, but let’s go there for the sake of argument. Let’s say it means not a damn thing—nothing, no change, no nothing. Even at that level, it’s our turn. It’s just that simple. This is more than half of humanity we’re talking about. This is not a marginal group. This is not a minority. There are more women, literally, on the face of the planet than men. And women are the majority of the populations of almost every country, except at this point India and China because of female infanticide, due to son preference. So we’re talking about humanity, the majority of humanity, that has been kept from exercising power. So just at the level of it’s our turn, that’s the beginning.

However, there is a real difference in the way women practice power. If you’ve come up through cigar-smoking, back-room-deal party politics, for example, like Margaret Thatcher did, you’re going to be an imitation guy, which is what Margaret Thatcher was. We’re not talking about that. And we’re not talking about a token. We’re talking about, for example, in Norway, when Gro Harlem Brundtland was first elected prime minister. She appointed a few women, and her policies were not that markedly different on environment and other things. Being a Scandinavian country, they were already basically pretty damn liberal compared to us, but they
weren’t that different from what they had been before. Then she lost in an election. Then she came back and she was reelected, and the second time she was elected, she appointed the majority of her cabinet women, and everything suddenly changed. In other words, not tokenism, but critical mass. Policies on everything from employment and child care and flextime and work hours to environmental policies to you name it—it just changed. It was absolutely enormous. And the same thing is happening in Rwanda now, because a majority of the parliament are females.