Presidential Politics and Gender

An honest review of my past attempts to use the presidential campaign to discuss the workplace issues of race and gender requires me to admit that I’ve used the campaign to consider the issue of race more than gender.  I’ve done a lot of posts on the issue of gender in the workplace–but not so many directly connected with the presidential campaign.  My fault.

Given the likelihood that gender won’t be a campaign issue much longer, it deserves another look now.  Once this campaign is done, employers will still have to deal with the gender issue, just as they will the race issue.  One is no more important than the other.

Hillary has been quoted as saying she’s trying ”to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling” in America.  Maybe so, but as one of my recent posts noted, there’s evidence that the glass ceiling in corporate America has been reinforced and is far from being broken.  If true, breaking the “highest and hardest glass ceiling” may be a long way off.

Consider a few things that Hillary has had to put up with because she’s a woman.  She’s somebody’s wife and not just any somebody.   Hillary has been heckled by males who want her to iron their shirts.  She’s been called a bitch.  There’s the constant attention given to her clothes, her cleavage, and the quality of her voice.  She’s been expected to project both toughness and warmth simultaneously–no small challenge.

When she got tough, she was called too negative.  When she cried in New Hampshire, she was playing some form of the gender card.  Most polls reflect doubt about Hillary as commander in chief.  Women are less plausible military commanders than men.

What’s particularly galling for women who once saw Hillary as the certain Democratic nominee is that she’s more qualified than Obama no matter how you measure qualifications.  It’s one more example of a more experienced, better qualified woman being passed over for a man with lesser credentials.

Everything mentioned above rings true with many women in the workplace.  An uneven playing field.  Different standards.  Sex discrimination.

Hillary may have missed a big chance to meet the gender issue head on.  When she was asked to discuss the gender dynamics of the presidential campaign with the New York Times, she declined.  One of her handlers said there was no way she could address that issue in a frank way without being misunderstood.  Obama was forced to do that with the race issue when Reverend Wright raised his head, and it’s generally agreed that Obama’s speech on the subject of race in America helped him.  Hillary could have done the same thing if she had been willing to take the chance of addressing the misunderstandings about gender, like race, that have held our country back and making the case that it’s time to get past those misunderstandings and take a different course.  We’ll never know how that would have played.

Men and women are different.  Until we can talk about that openly, we’ll still be dancing around gender issues that shouldn’t be issues.  We’re different biologically, which may cause some other differences–emotional, psychological, intellectual.  Even if the non-biological differences are caused by how we are shaped by family and society, they’re still differences.  Not bad differences.  Not weak differences.  Differences that if accepted and utilized will make any workplace, any government, any institution better.

We’re not there yet.  After this grueling campaign, some will say we’re not even close.  But one of these days.

1. 

   John Phillips says:

   May 25, 2008 at 10:51 am

   Thanks for using my post. Good carnival.