What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (77 page)

MS
: I definitely agree with that. Now we’re talking about breaking a lot of glass ceilings—actually, Nancy Pelosi called it a “marble ceiling.” I always think back to you because you were one of the people who were trailblazers: you were one of the first solo female anchors on the news, not only as a woman, but as a black woman—these were big milestones. So I was curious, what did you learn through that experience in terms of not only breaking through glass ceilings, but also being in industries that had been primarily male? At the time were you very aware that you were breaking through that glass ceiling?

CJ
: Well, sure I was, in that first go-round. But here’s the thing. The problems that we had then, we still have now: inequality of pay. . . . When I went into the news, women were neither expected nor allowed in newsrooms to
cover politics, or whatever. You know, the reason many of the people of color were hired was because of a federal edict, and then we got to cover riots; they sent us out to cover the riots, as opposed to the hard political stuff. So all of those really hard-fought battles were won. But when I look at the media, for instance, I still see the same problems. The current episode of hiring anchors for certain shows, they seem to be all white men, and women of color and people of color are being let go. There is equality there that one would expect, so I think we certainly made progress, but not as much as one would think. And that’s the thing to keep in mind—that we all think that because we don’t have that many marches in the streets about it, that it still exists. So I take seriously this notion when I talk to young women about, “Do you know what the person sitting next to you is making? Because nine times out of ten, they’re making more than you are, doing the same work.” [I was talking to] a young friend who had just gotten a great raise and we had a conversation about pay equity, and so I said “When you replaced the guy in your job, what was the pay discrepancy?” She said, “Well, he made about $70,000 more than I did, and I was doing most of his work.” So it’s in the unladylike category to be talking about money and asking about money, but I think you won’t become president of the United States if you don’t get the money thing. You have to understand who has it. You have to convince them to give it to you. You have to feel that you’re worthy of it. You have to know that it is not right and fair, even though that’s the way it’s always been done and somebody sitting next to you or somebody that you replaced was making two salaries more than you’re making. And I find that it’s curious that young women seem not to care as much about that as I think an older generation did. I don’t know how we get them on board to understand that the money is a piece of this machinery, unfortunately. So until they change that, this is the part that you have to learn and master.

MS
: Having two daughters, I think about how girls don’t necessarily know their self-worth, or don’t learn how to advocate for themselves. I’m making big generalizations here, because this isn’t true of everybody, but I think our culture and media often send messages for young girls and young women to please and not make too much trouble and sometimes not to even ask for what they need. Do you think that is part of the problem—that these aren’t necessarily tools or skills that girls or women naturally have? I’m also thinking a little bit about having been a very grateful graduate of Progressive Women’s Voices, which I think was such an important program in terms of helping women to own their expertise. It does seem that it is an area where we do need extra support and encouragement, because it’s not necessarily coming from the messages that we’re getting from our culture.

CJ
: And very young . . . as I now move into the grandmother phase, I see that the three- and four-year-old girls are punished for being aggressive and the boys are, well, that’s the way that boys are. So I think if you start getting put down when you’re three [
laughs]
it sort of sets it up for the rest of your life. And I shake my head when, even at three, they categorize themselves into the pink category and blue is for boys, which is representative of so much—that they want to be pink, to be acceptable. It’s hard to go against that grain, but I think we must; we must give our children all kinds of toys and let them be who they are and support and encourage them. It’s so funny—we have Progressive Women’s Voices, and we have Progressive Girls for teenagers, because we realize that we need to get to them younger . . . and I am sure there will be a Progressive Toddler program [
laughs]
where we say, “No, we need you now. Come in on Saturday morning and learn how to be yourself” [
laughs]
.

MS
: Maybe that’s a good idea! Talking about media, this recent Women’s Media Center report came out about gender disparity in media being at crisis levels. Most people aren’t as informed on that and never even question the status of media. As the founding president of the Women’s Media Center, why would you say there is such inequity of representation and diversity in the media? And why is this important?

CJ
: Well, oddly enough, I think the president, when he is talking about a woman for the Secret Service and a woman for the FBI, opens up a whole category of potential because that filters down. Not that I believe in trickle-down economics or anything, but I think that just saying that a woman is capable of doing it and that we’re going to give her the job is enormous. I think that part of the problem in media is the money, because there are two tracks that you can follow in any corporation, actually, which is the human, sort of soft path, and then there’s the money path. And a lot of women have not heretofore mastered money. So in order to make a film, in order to direct a film, in order to run a section of media that deals in film, you have to be able to manage millions and millions of dollars. Most people always think of the creative piece,
Oh, but she’s a great creative
. But the truth of the matter is that in all areas one must conquer the money piece of it. So to go into any field that you’re going into, master the money piece. Where is the money coming from? How is it spent? How can you manage it? How do you get it for yourself, for your own projects? Because women in film, for instance, have been making some progress in doing other people’s films, but not their own. Because in order to raise $30 million or $40 million, even to do a low-budget film, is a massive undertaking.

So a lot of it is the money piece and a lot of it is the old-boy network; it’s the mentorship program. I always say that Kathryn Bigelow had a fantastic mentor in her husband. Now, I may be unfair to her to say that she learned it from him, but the supposition is that if you’re in that mix,
you learn it, and then you’re given the credibility. And that’s how she got to make her movies, because she demonstrated that she could handle millions of dollars, in addition to being a creative source. So I think that we haven’t paid enough attention to how the world runs, and if we want to be a part of running it, we have to acquire the money skills. I think that’s part of the reason that women are still lagging behind. If you’re moving up behind the scenes in a news operation, when you get to the top, you’ve got to run a pretty significant budget, a number of people—less now, since they’re firing people all the time [
laughs]
—hundreds of people, millions of dollars . . . and that’s the piece that you have to focus on.

MS
: Do you think that part of building momentum is also women reaching back and helping other women? I just interviewed Donna Brazile last week and she said, “I found that when I was coming up through the political ranks, it wasn’t enough to be the only woman, or sometimes the only minority in the room. I wanted to make sure that I was not the last. So while I sat at the table, I often told my colleagues, ‘Look, if there’s no room at the table, we’ll just bring in folding chairs, we’ll make space for women.’ The attitude is that we’ve got to start making space for each other. If we don’t, we will never see ourselves as making real progress.” Do you think that’s a valid point and that maybe women need to do that more, to reach back?

CJ
: Yeah, I do. That’s a great quote, by the way, but she’s talking about a woman of power, right, who’s had to assert herself at some level and put up a folding chair at the table. I have not experienced, as many have, that women are not supportive of other women coming through. Almost all of the people who have helped me have been women in the news business and in my post-news career in the non-profits, so I think I have great examples of all the women at the Women’s Media Center—Gloria Steinem
and Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan—creating that whole operation and bringing me along to help set it up, which was a fantastic experience. You know, my news director at NBC when I was there, who was a woman, sent me to South Africa. She had a choice of sending me or the typical white male producer, completely capable of covering the stories, as was I. I was a junior to that senior reporter, and she sent me. I think that it is absolutely essential that we do that when it’s possible. I think that people tend to overestimate what is possible when people are sort of in the trenches trying to keep their own job. One of the interesting things about Sheryl Sandberg’s book when she was talking about this whole idea of mentorship, she asked one of the women who asked her to be her mentor, “Well, what would that look like?” And she said, “Well, you will sit down with me for an hour or two every week and help me live my life.” And she’s saying it’s unrealistic—you can’t. That’s babysitting, that’s not mentorship. And I think that’s sometimes what women expect when they talk about mentorship. They really want a mother who is going to do what their own mothers didn’t or couldn’t do. And that’s expecting too much. So I think that understanding the difference between women who are in power and can do that—pull up a chair, it’s great—and those who can’t is essential, so you don’t develop hard feelings for a woman who is in her own way making progress for all of us, but not able to lift up everybody behind her.

MS
: You’ve always been in touch with your voice and stood up for what you believed in. Where does that come from, in terms of that inner strength, and what limiting obstacles did you face that you had to overcome? Were you always just naturally this way, or is it something that you had to grow into?

CJ
: Well, I came from a feminist family, which always helps. My mother was one of sixteen children on a farm in Lawrence County, Alabama. All
nine of the girls got to go to college while the boys stayed on the farm [
laughs]
, so I would say that we were early feminists. There was never a moment where anyone in our family didn’t think that they would have to make their way in the world. There was no such thing as you could marry—everybody was expected to work, to do the best that they could. So that was a great standard that was set for me. And so I didn’t have the “Oh, should I stay at home, should I . . .?” I mean, I had to work and it was expected, too, that I do the best that I could and raise my children the best that I could. I think that it goes back to raising children to expect the most of themselves, as what parents do is equally as important as what the teachers do and what television does. You know, we can blame the media for children’s television, and I always do [
laughs]
. But you know, we also have an enormous responsibility. I think I heard something Al Sharpton was saying, that there was some public school where there were 3,000 kids in the school and only four parents showed up for parent-teacher meetings, so there’s that huge dissonance between what we expect of our children and what we expect other people to do for them and what we must do ourselves. I think we just can’t let ourselves off the hook for expecting the most from our kids and giving them the support that they need to go out into the world.

MS
: I know you also do a lot of global work, and I’m curious where you see the status of women right now. Some days I feel really hopeful because there are a lot of very positive signs. But then sometimes there are some really discouraging signs, like these backward steps on reproductive rights or these crazy statements about rape and incidences of violence against women. Where do you think we are in terms of both the status of women here and around the world?

CJ
: Well, I think we’ve made great progress, but we’re missing in some very fundamental things. Like in New York City, the death rate of black women giving birth is astronomically high. In Appalachia, they’re missing something like 30,000 or 40,000 doctors. And I do the international work where we operate on a very basic level with birth attendants, midwives, making sure that people have food. So the difference is that when you go to an African village, there’s a certain thing that you expect to see: lack and want and neglect of women. In this country, we don’t expect to see that, and there seems to be some kind of mechanism that allows it to be invisible, more than it should be. That we just don’t see the hungry people, you know, and when I started work in the soup kitchens here, you’d be astonished at the people—first of all the number, but the kinds of people coming through the lines. They have on their work clothes, their uniforms, their families—they’re not of any particular ethnic group, it is everybody. They don’t have food. So I think that the responsibility that we have is just enormous, not to neglect the people right here, but also to do that international work and to raise the clarion calls for outrageous [situations], like in India, where now people are paying attention because tourism is down because of the rapes. And suddenly everyone says, “Well, we have to fix this problem!” Tourism is down, multibillion dollar tourism that India gets is down because people are afraid to come. I know that many of the women, like me, who work in both fields are torn this way, too. To be able to work here and to make things better and to be able to work abroad, as well. In some ways a dollar can do so much in an African village, whereas here it takes more. But we need to not let these things remain an issue here. And if you’re going to talk about millennium development goals, I think we need to look at the women of color and the poor women in America, as well as in the developing world.