What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (79 page)

MS
: Sometimes it’s a really hard line to be a powerful, influential, ambitious woman and still be liked. We see that all the time with the sexist treatment of many women leaders. I always think with your mother, she managed to be this strong figure and she was really revered and so beloved. What special qualities do you think that your mother had that made her so special and such a dynamic leader?

CR
: Well, she was a person who wanted to be loved, too—that was part of her own personality, and she was a very public person. But I wouldn’t say
. . . she wasn’t universally loved, because she really pushed the envelope on a lot of things that made people uncomfortable—on race, on gender, on sexism in the workplace. I think she was able to do a lot of it because she used humor to disarm people and perhaps point out what some people would think of as the inanities of what happens, either in political life or public life. I also think that Texas is a very different kind of place and she had that sort of unique Texas folkism, that folksy way that I think was disarming to people. Her father didn’t have much education, worked his entire life, but was a great storyteller, just someone who was universally loved in his community. And I think my mother took a lot of that from him and understood how you could disarm people, even the folks that you didn’t agree with, by using humor. She also, in the same way that I believe that Ms. Pelosi has been so successful, she really understood you have no permanent enemies and no permanent friends and that someone who’s against you one day, in politics, you’re going to need desperately later on, and so never to burn bridges, never do things to make people feel that they can’t save face. She had a real knack for that.

But again, I would say I don’t think she took the easy road. I think she pushed the envelope, obviously appointed more women, African Americans, Hispanics, openly gay and lesbian people to office and to positions in Texas than all the previous governors combined. She really did try to open up government in that state, in what was considered by some people a revolutionary way.

MS
: Even with you, now, people say the most glowing things about what you’ve brought to Planned Parenthood as a leader yourself. What do you think are the ingredients for successful leadership? How would you describe your own personal leadership style or philosophy?

CR
: Well, I started really as an organizer, and I started back in the labor movement, in the early days, organizing garment workers. So I spent most of my time trying to help folks help themselves to, frankly, get a better lot in life. And I think I learned early on—and it’s something I hope that I carry on, but some days it’s hard—and that is to really listen to folks and understand where they’re coming from. And certainly when you’re organizing low-wage workers, it’s trying to understand their struggles and what their lives are like. I’m very proud of that work, but really proud, frankly, of the work that our folks do every day at Planned Parenthood to help young people and women who often really have no other healthcare provider to turn to and to make sure that what we’re doing is actually helping them in whatever their situation is.

MS
: I also know that we talk a lot of times about the hierarchy of elected leaders, but the truth is that we can all be active citizens. You’ve had the opportunity, especially within the last year, to meet with women across the country, young and old, and talk about the importance of civic engagement and participating in our democracy. What did you learn through that experience?

CR
: It was fascinating and perhaps it wasn’t anything new, but it was just a reinforcement that no matter where I went—and I did take off a large part of the fall to help ensure that women got out to vote—every campaign headquarters that I went to, every phone bank I went to, every block walking that I went to, the vast majority of the folks participating were women. Of every age. Someone told me the other day some extraordinary percentage of the volunteers in President Obama’s reelection were women. We know, too, in this last election, there was the largest gender gap ever in the history of Gallup polling, and I do think women really kind of came into their own—not only elected a lot of women to office, but were
determinative in the direction of the country. My hope is that now, particularly this rising electorate—the most diverse generation ever in our history, voting in bigger numbers than they did even four years ago, and it’s not just women, it’s young men, as well—they really have the opportunity to completely shape the future here. That’s why I do believe that there will be a woman elected president in my lifetime, in my daughter’s and son’s lifetimes. All of the ingredients are here to make it happen.

MS
: As you know there has been a very regressive pushback around reproductive rights. How do you see women’s reproductive freedom, the right to control our own bodies, as connected to this conversation about women’s equality and our advancements as leaders? What is the symbolic significance of this ongoing struggle over reproductive freedom, and why do you think there is still so much controversy about it?

CR
: I think there’s a separate reason why there’s so still much controversy and, in fact, in an interesting way, I think there’s stronger support in this country now than ever before on basic reproductive rights and the support for
Roe
. And we saw that actually this January on the 40
^th
anniversary of
Roe
. But, unfortunately, I believe that the Republican Party is being held hostage here by a very extreme group of folks who want to take us back to the fifties, and that’s just not where the American people are. That said, I think a couple of things. One is we do have to continue to make these links. The single biggest change for women, in terms of their ability to go to school, get a job, support a family, be independent, was the ability to plan their families and to be able to be sexually active without worrying about having another child. And the statistics are just extraordinary about before the birth control pill and after the birth control pill in this country. There was actually an interesting study done recently about how much of women’s economic advancement in the last fifty years can be
directly attributed to the birth control pill, so these things are completely connected—the ability to control your own body and control when and whether you have children. I think the other thing, though, and this is why I think this next generation to me is so encouraging, is they actually think all of these are rights that they already have, and so when you try to start taking them away, it creates enormous both activation and pushback—and, again, with young women and young men. We saw at Planned Parenthood the last couple of years, when we’ve been so under attack by this U.S. House of Representatives, literally more than two million people joined Planned Parenthood as activists or supporters, and half of them are under the age of thirty. This is an enormous wave of young women and young men who never thought they would have to fight for the right to have birth control, or the right to be able to go to Planned Parenthood. So I actually have been wildly encouraged as an organizer to see a whole new group of folks, who I believe will lead this movement in the 21
^st
century. That to me is a good byproduct of what has otherwise been a pretty brutal time on women’s rights.

MS
: What does power mean to you, and how do you think women’s relationship to power needs to change or shift?

CR
: These are the kinds of questions I’m not exactly certain how to even approach, except . . . look, it is all about women taking their power and asserting it. And again, that sort of goes back to your original question, why do we not have a woman president? It’s because if women actually made it their mission to make that happen, they could. So I think power is something you have to take and use. It’s just not given to you. I’ve been an organizer my entire life. The only thing you get is what you fight for and nothing more. So, again, I come out of an activist tradition and just believe that, and every day we have to push forward. And don’t be patient
and don’t wait for someone to ask you and don’t think everyone’s going to like you, because if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re probably not doing your job! And that’s how change happens, because people are bold and audacious. Who could imagine that in our lifetime, a president in an inaugural address would champion and hold up the great leaders of Seneca and Selma and Stonewall? These are not people who in their lifetime, necessarily, or at that time, made people comfortable, and so we’ve just got to be willing to make more people uncomfortable and push for the power that we deserve. I think it’s happening and I feel enormously hopeful.

MS
: What do you think is possible when women, half of humanity, take their equal place in positions of influence in our government and society?

CR
: I think the world would be a lot better off, not only this country, but the globe. I think we are seeing that everywhere, but I think if anything is possible . . . you saw what happened the last few weeks on the Violence Against Women Act, when Congress refused to do anything, literally refused to take care of one of the most basic issues for women, the right to live without fear, the right to live without violence. And they wouldn’t have done anything if women hadn’t continued to push and to organize and to agitate and to beat them up on Facebook and on Twitter. It was wonderful to be with this group of young women last night who own that victory. So to me, when we pull ourselves together and focus on what we want, there is nothing holding women back. It’s beautiful when we see it happen. It’s interesting—this is a smaller subset of that, but I just see now every single woman senator who joins the United States Senate, it’s like each one of them grows another half foot taller. It is exponential, the power that women feel when they are joined together in common purpose. And I was so proud. One of the first things, particularly the Democratic women senators ever did together, was come together when Planned
Parenthood was on the ropes. And the power that they gave to us and the power that they felt together, of standing together for what was right, was incalculable and people respond to that.

MS
: Just looking at what’s happening to women these days, we are expected oftentimes to give and give and often deplete ourselves and forget to take care of our own health and well-being. You seem to be somebody who is so tireless and always out there. What do you do to practice self-care or to keep yourself centered, which I think is often a challenge for us busy women?

CR
: I don’t practice self-care. I’m not really good at that. Look, I am privileged to have one of the most amazing jobs. . . . I organized low-wage workers for many, many years, women who had no options. The one option they had was to fight for something better than the job that they had, so I live every day with the understanding that I am enormously privileged to be able to not only have a living and have a job, but to every day go and do something that is extremely important and rewarding. So I feel like I live in a rarefied world, and that’s what keeps me going.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
F ONE OF
the lessons to come out of this book is that women need support systems to succeed, this book is a testimony to that. I simply could not have done this work without my team. First off, there was my wonderful literary agent, Tracy Brown, who not only was the one who encouraged me to do this book, but mentored me through the process and became my biggest advocate—and allowed me to bounce everything off him—constantly offering me helpful and thoughtful feedback, advice, and suggestions. More than that, he is just a very special person, warm and smart and so caring—I am so thankful to have had his guidance for this book and beyond.

I also have to thank my tireless transcriber Helene Rodgville—not only did she transcribe nearly fifty interviews in less than six months (often after a hard day’s work herself), she would frequently share her personal reflections and reactions to the interviews with me. Since Helene was often the first person to hear these interviews (she also had the unique privilege of hearing the audio and their voices), it was so gratifying to know she was enjoying the interviews and being affected by them.

And I must extend special thanks to Angela Joshi for her enormous contribution to this project from beginning to end. Angela was the editor on my first book,
Daring to Be Ourselves
, and she did such a great job on that project and was such a joy to work with that I knew I wanted to work with her again on this book. She did the first pass on editing the transcripts of the interviews, improving them with her insightful comments,
clarifications, questions, or tweaks. Angela is a brilliant editor and such a good-hearted and insightful person and I always love working with her.

The next person I have to thank is my husband Tom Kay—not only did he constantly provide ideas, feedback, and suggestions, but his support in helping take care of our children made this book possible. Whether it was his taking the kids to get frozen yogurt after school as I awaited a call from a congresswoman or delivering yet another tape to the post office to be sent to the transcriber, he helped me as much as he was able. He is not only my soul mate but also a very loving and involved father to our two daughters.

I also want to deeply thank and express appreciation for the whole team at Seal Press—especially Krista Lyons, who believed in this book from the start, and Laura Mazer, who picked up this project midway through and served as the book’s master steward and editor and whose encouragement and valuable feedback were vital. I have such enormous respect and admiration for the work Seal does and it was the perfect home for this project.