It isn’t because they’re following the boys, as Gloria Steinem so inartfully put it and it isn’t because they are traitors to their own sex as Madeline Albright suggested, it’s because their own life experience is blessedly free of the struggles that faced their mothers and grandmothers when they came of age in America.
Roe v Wade has been the law of the land since before these young women were born. If a woman in college today wants an abortion or contraceptives to prevent pregnancy she simply goes to her campus clinic, family doctor or HMO and its her’s for the asking.
Middle class college girls feel no shared victimization by abortion clinics being closed down across the south and the heartland, nor are they personally affected by the constant attacks on Planned Parenthood. After all only poor, uneducated women rely on those places for family planning.
Why should the advancement of women even be an issue in their lives when thanks to Title 9, the barriers to athletic and academic achievement have been mostly eliminated. Girls now go to college on athletic scholarships, just like the guys, and who among them has even heard of a Home Ec class? Young women can choose medical and law school or any other advanced degree program without fear that their gender will hold them back. When you add in the fact that they can become firefighters, police officers, construction workers or join the armed services, young women today see themselves on an level playing field.
Oh sure, they know that women are still being paid less than men for doing the same work, but today’s college student doesn’t really believe that it’s going to happen to her. She’s too smart, assertive and capable to be paid less than a man for her labor. And true, sexual assault and date rape are a bit of a problem on campus, but what’s that got to do with women’s issues, it’s just boys behaving badly.
The sad truth is that if college girls today acknowledge the fight for women’s rights at all, it’s acknowledged as a fight that’s already been won. For them sisterhood has something to do with traveling pants, Blake Lively and America Ferrera not an old relic like Gloria Steinem.
The fault, I’m afraid, lies with us, the women who fought the original fights and understand in only a way someone who has been in the trenches can understand, the fight not only isn’t over, all the gains we made have been steadily eroded over the past decade. We were so thrilled that our daughters would have it better than we did that we forgot to teach them never to let their guard down, and most of all, to support each other, because when one of us gets ahead we all do.
That’s why women over 40 are supporting Hillary Clinton. She’s spent her entire career leading the fight for women’s rights. She hasn’t just been a good vote, like Bernie Sanders, but a living embodiment of what it means to work harder, stay stronger and never give up if you want to succeed in a man’s world. Few men have had to endure the relentless personal attacks based in sexism and fear that she has, unless it’s Barack Obama, who has had to endure relentless personal attacks based in racism and fear.
I’m voting for Hillary Clinton because I believe she’s the best candidate, bar none, running for president and the most qualified person to serve in that exalted position. But I’m also voting for Hillary Clinton because she looks like me, has shared my life experiences and will make the world a better place for my daughter and her daughter. Rapper Killer Mike recently said about Hillary that “a uterus doesn’t qualify you to be president.” Why not, a penis has qualified everyone else to be president for the last 227 years.