In an earlier diary, I pointed out that while Hillary Clinton rightly
calls out sexism in this campaign, she has not delivered a speech about
gender or sexism comparable to the one Barack Obama gave about race.
I have been waiting for her to explain why it is important to have a
woman's perspective and experience represented in the White House and
other high offices. I have been waiting for her to tell us how her
experience as a woman would inform her service as president. Her failure
to use the incredible platform she has had to call attention to what women bring to leadership is one of my many disappointments with her and one of
the reasons I am supporting Barack Obama.
In response to my earlier diary, one person pointed out that I did not
explain why a woman's perspective and experience matter. So go beyond the fold to: the speech that I would write for Hillary. The speech I wish Hillary had
given.
[Updated to reflect comments pointing out a necessary correction.]
The Speech that Hillary Never Gave
by L.R. Melina
On August 27, 2008, one day after the 88th anniversary of the
constitutional amendment that recognized women's right to vote, my name
will be put forth at the Democratic National Convention as a candidate for
president of the United States.
I will not be the first woman to have votes cast in support of her quest
to be elected to that high office. In 1964, Republican Margaret Chase
Smith became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for
president by one of the major parties. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm received
152 votes at the Democratic National Convention.
Ellen McCormack, Patricia Schroeder, Patsy Mink, and Carol Mosely Braun
are among those women who have had their names on primary ballots.
I have been described as "the first woman to be a serious candidate for
the presidency of the United States," but that is not true. Other women
who have run for this office were every bit as serious as I have been this
year. The difference was that before this year, a woman was not taken
seriously as a candidate.
This is not because the other women were less qualified than I or lacked
experience. Margaret Chase Smith, who was nearly 23 years old before women
were allowed to vote, entered politics as other women have, through her
husband's career, assuming his seat in the House of Representatives after
his death. She was the first woman to be elected to both the House and the
Senate and had served there for 24 years before running for president on
the Republican Party ticket. She was the first member of the Senate to
stand up to Joseph McCarthy at the height of his power, denouncing the
tactics of the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee in a courageous speech
credited as the turning point in that ugly period of our history.
Shirley Chisholm was both the first woman and first African American to have her name put into
nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention. She was a founding member of the Congressional
Black Caucus, opposed the Vietnam War, fought for abortion rights, and
successfully championed legislation providing employment insurance
coverage for domestic workers and protecting teachers' jobs while they
were on maternity leave.
When Shirley Chisholm was asked why she was running for president
against "hopeless odds," she answered: "to demonstrate the sheer will and
refusal to accept the status quo."
That I was taken seriously as a candidate this year is due not to some
unique set of leadership qualifications that sets me apart from other
women but is due to the leadership of women who came before me, women who
refused to accept the status quo and refused to back down even though the
odds were hopelessly stacked against them. Those who oppose women as
leaders say they do not have the required strength, but these women have
lifted me up.
I would have hoped that by now, I would not have had to make a case for
why women should have the same opportunity to lead this country as men.
And for many people, I do not. But there are still some people who
question whether women have the stamina for the hardest job in the world
and the fortitude to make tough decisions. There are still those who
suggest that our country, which has championed democracy around the globe,
should back down from electing a woman as leader because other world
leaders might not show her respect. But we are far behind the rest of the
world in recognizing what women have to offer as leaders.
Women have headed governments in Ireland, the United
Kingdom, Israel, Germany, Sri Lanka, Peru, Moldova, Central African
Republic, Portugal, South Korea, Yugoslavia, Dominica, Bangladesh, France,
Norway, and dozens more. These women were black, white, Asian, Latina;
European, African, Caribbean; Christian, Hindu, and Muslim.
Right now, 16 women head the governments of their countries. When will
America, the champion of equality and fairness and dignity throughout the
world, elect a woman to lead this great nation?
Women leaders have left their mark on this country without being in
government, often putting their own safety and reputations at risk. Ida B.
Wells was a journalist who documented lynchings and founded the NAACP.
Harriet Tubman was the leader of the Underground Railroad that brought
slaves to freedom. Whenever I felt my courage might fail me, these women
lifted me up.
I honor them, their bravery, and their vision. I hope that my candidacy
will not only lift up other women and girls, but that it will make their
paths a little easier, just as women like Pat Schroeder made mine a little
easier.
Pat Schroeder was a champion for the Equal Rights Amendment, the Family
and Medical Leave Act, and the rights of women in the military. She also
made her mark on the House Judiciary Committee and National Security
Committee and was the first woman to serve on the Armed Forces
Subcommittee. In 1988, she ran for the Democratic nomination for president
but was unable to raise enough funds to mount her campaign. She was more
than qualified, but she wasn't taken seriously.
When she announced she was withdrawing from the race, tears came to her
eyes, and the pundits said that by showing emotion, she had set back the
cause of a woman in the White House by 20 years. This year, I found that a
woman would not only be accepted as a serious presidential candidate, but
she would be accepted in the fullness of her humanity, with her toughness
and grit and determination, with her intelligence and analytical ability,
as well as with her tenderness and her tears.
This has been, of course, the dilemma for women in leadership: how to
bring our experience as women into policy making without being discounted
or marginalized for highlighting experience that is sometimes different
from that of men. The experience of being a woman, of course, is shared by
more than half the citizens of this country and it deserves to be
reflected at the highest levels of our government, even though as women we
do not all think alike or have the same aspirations for our lives. What we
do all share, however, is the desire to determine our own lives and the
desire, to think for ourselves, and to have our voices heard. In that, we
are no different from men.
While women have made much progress over the past decades, we continue to
bump our heads on a glass ceiling that allows us to see our way to the top
but prevents us from getting there by invisible obstacles.
Women know there is a double standard in which vulnerability in a woman is
called weakness, collaboration is called indecisiveness, and determination
is called castration. In an effort to be taken seriously in a world where
men have defined what it takes to be a leader, women have had to learn to
hide their tears and their anger, their caring and their horror. They knew
they had succeeded in showing their toughness when their sexuality was
questioned or they had a nutcracker named after them.
That kind of sexism diminishes us all, and if my candidacy has helped to
bring it to greater awareness so that it can be acknowledged and
eliminated, then the painful moments of this campaign have been worth it.
No one knows about sexism better than women old enough, as I am, to
remember when there were no laws against sexual harassment in the
workplace, when a married woman could not get a credit card based on her
own income, or when a woman was forced to quit her job as soon as her
pregnancy began to show. You might say those policies didn't discriminate:
they hurt women in executive and academic jobs as well as women in
clerical jobs and the service industry.
When the country needed women to work in factories and farm the fields
while men were at war, to maintain budgets and feed their families on
wartime rations, women rose to the challenge, but when they began asking
for equal pay and equal opportunity after the men came home, they were
told their place was in the home.
Many women do choose to stay in the home, to use their intelligence and
leadership in one of the most important jobs in this world--raising
children with developed minds, healthy bodies, and strong moral values. I
know from my own experience how rewarding it is to see a child grow into
an intelligent and capable young woman and know that I had a part in that
growth.
But whether a woman stays in the home or works outside the home,
volunteers her time in an organization or seeks the highest office in the
land, the only limitations on her should be those she places on herself.
While we have come a long way in this country toward improving
opportunities for women, there is more work to be done. No one knows this
more than those women who have been working for 40 years or more to build
a world in which women's voices are heard with respectful attention, in
which women know they will have the opportunity to develop their gifts and
contribute to their world in whatever way they see fit.
For many of these women, this campaign brought to the surface anger and
resentment about the ways women historically have not been taken
seriously. It is important to note that anger and resentment is not about
Barack Obama. In a campaign season that was all about hope, many women
allowed themselves to hope that their experience and perspective would
finally be represented in the highest office in the land by someone who
shared that experience and perspective.
When I talk about a woman's perspective, I am not suggesting that women
see a world that men cannot see, but I am suggesting that sometimes men do
not see it. Perspective is simply the angle from which we view the world.
And because of the history of women, some of those views come from
positions where few men have been.
Our perspective as women is grounded in centuries of history in which
women collected water, gathered firewood, and tended the hearth,
responsibilities that are still part of a typical day for millions of
women around the world, often at great personal risk as it is in Sudan and
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Our perspective is grounded in the history of women like Joan of Arc, who
had to pretend to be a man to fulfill what she believed was her purpose on
earth and in the historical treatment of women as chattel to be given in
marriage with no rights of their own, a practice that is still employed in
some parts of the world today.
Our perspective is grounded in the history of women who left their
families in Europe and came to America on ships, seeking freedom and self-
determination, and it is grounded in the history of women who left Africa
on slave ships to come to America and be raped and beaten and forced to
curtsy to those who abused them.
Our perspective is grounded in the history and strength of women who rode
West in covered wagons, built sod houses and log cabins and tried to
scratch out a living from the soil.
Women saw to it that wherever they landed, there was community. They made
sure there were churches and schools and that the family remembered where
they had come from, their traditions and values, customs and beliefs.
The way our society treats men and women has changed over time, creating a
more level playing field. But the once deeply held beliefs that treated
women as property, denied them a voice in government, and ridiculed their
attempts at self-determination hang like a shadow over that playing field,
creating obstacles that are often more insidious because they are not
easily seen and because many of us would like to deny their existence out
of shame.
There are those who would argue that women have different leadership
qualities than men--that we are more relational and less prone to ego-
driven aggression. I will not stereotype women or men in that way. Men and
women often have been rewarded or reprimanded differently for developing
certain traits, and we all lose when any individual is discouraged from
developing qualities that would make any of us a more complete person.
As human beings, we all have access to qualities of leadership that I
value: compassion, integrity, determination, sound judgment,
accountability, and the courage to stand up for our convictions. We are
all vulnerable to arrogance, bullying, greed, and other human frailties,
but good leaders are willing to admit their faults and mistakes in a quest
to be, not perfect, but excellent.
We are a nation made up of people with a diversity of experiences that
have informed the ways we see the world. If this entire nation is to feel
governed, every person must know that their experiences are not simply
taken into consideration by people who think they understand those
experiences; we must have a diverse group of people in government who can
draw on their own experiences--not simply token representation of this
diversity, but a make-up in government that mirrors the diverse population
of this country.
If we do not succeed this year in seeing the dream of a woman in the White
House come to reality, I hope we will put aside the anger and resentment
of decades and work to elect someone who knows about other forms of
discrimination, marginalization, and those without a voice, someone who
recognizes the harm to every one of us when any one of us is considered
unfit or scary simply because of gender or race, religion or beliefs. That
will be an important achievement and an important government. But not for
one minute should we confuse a man with sensitivity to women's perspective
with someone who has a woman's perspective.
Ireland has had a woman as president for 28 consecutive years. It is said
that little boys in Ireland ask their mothers, "Mummy, why can't I grow up
to be president?" I understand that when a group has been in power as long
as men have been in control in this country, there is a fear that if they
lose power, they will not regain it. I do not seek a world in which women
dominate men and keep them out of power. I do not want little boys to feel
the way so many little girls have felt when they looked around and saw
that nearly everyone in a position of influence was a man. I do not want
power to be something fought over, won, and lost, because it is considered
a tool to advance individual prestige or narrow agendas; I want power to
be something that is shared for the mutual advancement of us all because
it is a tool to be used to serve one another and particularly to serve the
least advantaged among us, in order to lift them up.
We are facing grave crises in our country and in our world, and we need
everyone's intelligence and courage, talents and determination. The
challenges we face require the best and the brightest men and women of all
races, religions, beliefs and backgrounds. When we place limitations on
any person, we diminish the future not only for that person, but for all
of humanity. We cannot afford to do that.
Thank you, and God Bless us all.
Update [2008-6-4 11:30:50 by lmelina]: This "speech" is now available (in two parts) on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...