What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (67 page)

IRL
: I think so. I think so much has changed. It’s been traveling at the speed of light in terms of politics and public perception. I think wonderful women leaders like Hillary Clinton and folks like Condoleezza Rice have done a lot of changing people’s opinions about women in strong positions of leadership. So I think the public is ready, and now we just don’t have as many women candidates as we would like. But it’s happening, it’s changing, and I think that Hillary changed that perception of people when she had her legendary run for the White House. It was astonishing to me that even though experts kept on saying that Barack Obama had the presidency, Hillary kept winning primary after primary. That was the wrong focus. It turned out that she should have paid attention to caucus states and smaller states, but she was winning California when everybody was already saying Barack Obama is the candidate, and people were still voting for her. So even when there already was the perception that Barack Obama
had
the presidency, Hillary kept winning contest after contest of
really
tough states. So I think that she really shattered the ceiling. Even though there had been other women running for president before her, I do acknowledge that, but Hillary was the one who really took it the furthest,
right up until the last primary she was still winning them. But I don’t know if she will run this time or not. She’s very popular and highly respected. But I do believe her when she says that’s she’s been there, done that, and she’s moving on with her life, which is amazing to say that you would give up the presidency, because it looks like the nomination is hers for the taking. But I don’t know if that’s why people are putting out those rumors about other female candidates running, because they really think that Hillary won’t. I think the public is ready. I think they’re way beyond ready to approve that.

MS
: Me too. This was also a history-making election in terms of the number of women in Congress, but yet again when you really look at it, it’s still so far from parity . . .

IRL
: I know. It’s unbelievable that we’re applauding winning what is really a miserly amount of number of women who are in the House, and we think,
Oh, wow, look at this high number
. I mean, you’ve got to look at where we started from and where we are now. Granted, if you just had a fresh pair of eyes looking at the numbers, you would say this is pathetic. This is nowhere near a reflection of the demographics of the United States of America, but that’s true for every population, whether it’s Hispanic or African American or women. I mean, we’ve come far, but we certainly have a long way to go. But considering where we were just a few years ago, it’s really changing. It’s moving in the right direction. When I got elected in 1989 to Congress, there had only been one woman elected in Florida before me, and that was Ruth Bryan Owen—she was the granddaughter or the daughter of a president or something—and she was elected. So there had only been one woman before me and I was elected in 1989. I couldn’t believe that there had only been one woman. I thought for sure that I was, whatever, the fifteenth woman. And so many women who are serving now, they are the first women of their states who have served in Congress.

MS
: What’s your sense of why there are so few women there?

IRL
: It’s so costly to run for Congress and you have to leave where you are and move to Washington, and so many of the states are so far from Washington, D.C. So the money and the distance, uprooting your family, having to decide what to do with your kids. Do they go with you and then you make Washington your home? Do you keep your primary residence as the one in your home state? So it means a lot of changes for the family, whereas local office you don’t have to make that sacrifice, and because you’re still in the traditional makeup of society. And why pretend that it doesn’t exist? The woman works, but she’s still the one that makes so many important decisions about the kids and finances. There are so many responsibilities that she thinks,
Oh my gosh, what am I going to do, just uproot my family and move to Washington, D. C., or will my husband be able to take care of the kids? Is he willing to do it?
It seems like women running for these higher offices—even though it sounds old-fashioned, it is just the truth—it means a lot of changes for the family structure. It means you have to divvy up the responsibilities in a different manner, in a non-traditional manner. And those are tough decisions for families to make. But more and more are making them, and soon, five years from now when I read these words, if they ever get printed, I’d say, “Oh my gosh, I actually said that?” But it is a reflection of today’s society; it’s really true.

MS
: Why is it important that we have more women’s voices represented?

IRL
: Oh, it is so important. We are a better nation when the people who represent us are true representatives of who we are. If we have people who represent us who don’t share our values or don’t share our adventures or our backgrounds and they don’t understand us, then we’re a poorer nation for it. I think women represent such an important part of our society,
whether it’s electorally or in economics or in every facet of life, that if we don’t have those numbers of women representing us, I think we’re a poorer nation for it. We just don’t have those voices crying out for the issues that we care about. And it doesn’t mean that women care about only issues A, B, and C. Of course, we’re just as good at multitasking as the men are, we are as interested in defense as we are in daycare issues. So it’s not just the issues that we’re involved with, but it’s a different way of looking at the world. It’s not monolithic—not all women, of course, are the same, but it’s an important voice that is missing, just as we don’t have enough Hispanics and we don’t have enough blacks represented in Fortune 500 companies. When you look at the boards of directors in those companies, you’re just aghast. We look like we’re a progressive organization in Congress when you compare it to the big companies and how much they lack diversity.

MS
: That is really true. You hold the distinction of being the first Hispanic, actually the first Cuban American, as well, to be elected to Congress . . .

IRL
: And I was astounded when I got elected and they asked me to be on
The Today Show
, and Katie Couric said, “How does it feel to be the first Hispanic?” And I said, “Well, I’m the first Hispanic here from Florida, but I don’t think I’m the first Hispanic woman elected to Congress.” And she said, “Oh, yes you are!” So I researched it—I was flabbergasted. And still we only have I think about eight, nine, something like that. I don’t know how many, but boy, Hispanic women, they make up a
big
chunk of society. It’s amazing that we have such little representation. It’s tough to get elected. It’s a lot of money and the races are pretty vicious. And it’s just tough to get elected to Congress.

MS
: We’ve also been hearing that there are studies saying that often women don’t think that they have what it takes to run for office. That
some women may tend to steer away from pursuing leadership positions or think they’re not qualified enough. Do you think that there’s also that going on with women, their own psychological blocks?

IRL
: Well, I think they know that they have what it takes, but I don’t think that we, as parties, political parties, do enough in putting resources to work for women. And it’s not just money, but access to people—helping young candidates get to the right people so that they can raise money, also having classes, seminars. I know when I first ran in 1982, my dad and I—my dad was my campaign manager and always had been—we went to a class put on by some Republican institute and we had no idea how to run a campaign, none. We had never even volunteered in a campaign. And so they showed us a brochure, and we thought,
Okay, this is what a brochure looks like
, and we copied that brochure exactly. Of course, it wasn’t the same language and it wasn’t the same photos, or the same topics, but we thought,
Okay, this is a brochure. This is how you do it
. And it really helped us. We were so unknowledgeable about a campaign that we followed what they said to the letter. And that helped us so much, because lacking anything else, we did it the right way. And I don’t see those courses being offered for first-time candidates. I mean, I’m pretty political in terms of looking around at what is being offered, and so we’re working with some groups here to see if they can offer those kinds of classes so that we can elect more women to positions of leadership. So I think that the self-esteem is there and I think they know that they can do it. They look around and they see the guys and they say, “Are you kidding? I could do this. This guy’s an idiot” [
laughs]
. And I think that the self-awareness is there. I just don’t think that we have the resources available to them so that they can learn how to put together a campaign and do a good job in it. Maybe they think that they won’t be as successful—that part of it may be true. But we can work on that.

MS
: I know that you’ve been very vocal about the need to have more Republican women candidates. Specific to that, do you think there are challenges?

IRL
: We need them. We need them. I mean, look at the numbers—the Democratic women did a great job in recruiting members and helping them get elected. Because the primaries are really tough and so there’s a reluctance in both parties to get involved in primaries, because they feel that once you’re the candidate, then we’ll help you, but I think we also need to get involved in some primaries, so that we can help good candidates win. And we did that this time. A couple of years ago, we did it with Martha Roby of Alabama, got involved in her primary and helped her win. And Mia Love in Utah, got involved in her primary and helped her win. She didn’t win the general. But now there are more people willing to get involved in primaries.

But that’s been the problem. We get wiped out in the primaries. We have had very good candidates and they don’t make it out of the box. So, yes, getting involved in the primaries is going to be something that our party needs to do. Now the chairman of our party has called me to ask me to help out with that rebranding effort that is underway. That thing that they call the Autopsy Report of this last election, where we did so badly with every demographic, except I guess white males. I’m not sure if we got them either. And one of the things that I’m going to encourage him to do is to see if they can change their way of thinking and try to get involved in primaries—if we have a good woman candidate and she needs an extra boost that we could, not endorse, but just help a little bit more, get the word out to people who can donate.

MS
: Not only in terms of supporting Republican women candidates, but do you also have thoughts in general about how the Republican Party can appeal to more Republican women voters, as well?

IRL
: Oh, absolutely. We are so pathetic with reaching out and trying to capture that women’s vote. We go out of our way to alienate women and speak about topics that are not going to change their way of life, or their life in any way. So I think our leadership—Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, people like John Boehner—I think that they finally have gotten the message, and I think that they’re going to be very helpful. And I think this next election cycle will be totally different for the Republican Party. Now they’re actually thinking about—at least thinking about—immigration reform, et cetera, and before they would have been totally cut off from any such topics. So they understand that the Democrats were successful in branding us as having a War on Women. There’s no doubt that that branding was successful and it hurt us badly in the ballot box. It hurt us with Hispanics and on other issues. And we can’t afford to lose young people, women, Hispanics. We don’t have that luxury anymore. We used to have a big chunk of the African American vote and now we think that we can’t ever get that back. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but at least let’s work on some groups where it’s doable.

MS
: I was watching your video as part of the
MAKERS
series, which I thought was fantastic. One of the things that really intrigued me was when you were saying that “feminist is not liberal or conservative,” although obviously it often gets framed that way. Can you talk a little bit about that?

IRL
: Absolutely—we have take ownership of the language and say, look, the Republican Party
is
a feminist party. When you look at the elected
leaders and the people who are speaking on behalf of the Republican Party, traditionally in U.S. history, they were Republican women. And we’ve lost that feeling, as the Righteous Brothers sang [
laughs]
, we’ve lost that loving feeling—nobody thinks of the Republican Party as the party of women, and we need to get back to that. And so we need to embrace words like “feminism” and not think of it as a four-letter word and we need to think, okay, “empowerment,” that is not a Democratic word. We can use it as well. And we can phrase family values in a totally different way than traditionally has been used. So we need to own up and do some modern stuff. So we’ve just been doing a bad job of getting with this century. And it’s about time we wake up or we’re going to never get back to being a national party. We will control the House, barely, and we will be good at the local level, but we will no longer be a party that can win the White House if we don’t understand how badly we did this election, and what we need to do to change it. And looking at a word like “feminism” and not choking at the sound of it would be a good way to start.

MS
: I feel like we need more courageous leaders like you, who also speak up for what you believe in, even if it means breaking with your party. I know you’ve been very supportive of LGBT rights and I have to say my brother is gay and so this is a personal issue for me. Where do you find that courage?