Politics is harder on women

Politics is harder on women | The Australian

Although this is an old article, but I found it resonating with the current situation in Indonesia

Michael Costello | January 11, 2008
Article from: The Australian

WHO becomes president of the US is not only a matter of great moment to America but to the world at large. So I've been watching the US election process with intense interest these past 12 months. There have been many gripping stories, such as the rise of Barack Obama, the collapse and resurrection of John McCain, and the emergence as a genuine contender for US president of a man, Mike Huckabee, who sincerely believes the world was literally created by his god in six days some 6000 years ago.

But what has been most fascinating has been the hostility of the broad media to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate who bounced back from a big defeat in the first contest in the presidential race in Iowa to an unexpected victory in New Hampshire.

I know accusations of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are all too easily and freely thrown around, and are often easy excuses for a candidate's own failings. But there is something different about the treatment of Clinton.

Interestingly, hostility can come from women. For example, she was bitterly criticised by many women because she stayed married to president Bill Clinton despite his infidelity with Monica Lewinsky.

In doing so, she is accused of having sold out women everywhere, only because she needed her husband if she was to become a senator from New York (which she did by brilliant local campaigning).

The argument further goes that she needs him even more if she is to become the president.

Now the first rule of any marriage is no one outside it has any real idea of what's going on inside it. Nobody seems to have given credence to the idea that Hillary Clinton might have stayed with her husband because she genuinely wanted to preserve their marriage and their family and was prepared to forgive him.

You may think she was wise or unwise in doing so, but that's not the point: it's something normal men and women do every day around the world. Yet Clinton is castigated for it.

The reason people seem to doubt her motivation seems to be largely because she is manifestly extremely politically ambitious. She wants to be president.

The media's working hypothesis seems to be that any woman who pursues her ambition for the highest office with intensity somehow becomes less of a woman. The most complimentary description made about Margaret Thatcher was that she was "the only man in the cabinet". And remember that when Lady Macbeth was steeling her will to pursue the ruthless course on which she had set herself, she had first to call on dark powers to "unsex me here".

Women are not supposed to be like this. So Clinton has consistently been portrayed as being insincere, manipulative and calculating because women aren't supposed to be tough, focused, tireless, determined: that's what men are supposed to be for.

Now there is the New Hampshire election result. Here's an array of the reasons given for her victory. First it was only her gender that got her up. Now it's true that more women voted for her than for Obama by a margin of 12 per cent. Obama won 11 per cent more of the male vote than did she, yet I've seen nobody interpret this vote for Obama as being based on his gender.

Second, she is supposed to have won because she "cried", "broke down", had "an emotional outburst". Note the words. Well she did none of those things. I have watched the video a large number of times and I have seen no tears shed, and heard no more than a slight quaver in her voice.

One interpretation was that this was a sign of weakness that made her unfit to be commander-in-chief. An alternative interpretation was that it was a deliberate false display calculated to gain sympathy and votes. Note that these two interpretations are entirely opposite, but that did not stop them both running. I saw no one suggest that it might just be a reflection of a genuine emotional commitment to her ideas and her hopes for America, because patriotism is really only for a man.

A final contradiction was the treatment of the last New Hampshire debate between the candidates. In that debate, John Edwards joined Obama in getting stuck into her. Clinton refused to be intimidated and fought back. She hit Obama and Edwards where it hurt. She was described not as strong, aggressive, tough and forceful, which any man would have been in the circumstances, but as rattled, hysterical, showing her vulnerability, of giving Edwards her "Medusa look".

It's sure tough for women in politics. If they show emotion, they're accused of being weak and unsuited for the really big jobs, unlike men who are to be congratulated for showing their human side. If they don't show emotion, they are accused of being hard and ruthless, which in a man is seen as acceptable, indeed desirable, but in a woman is a sign of being manipulative, false and unlikable.

Obama beat Clinton in Iowa in significant part because he set up his full organisation there before she did. She only turned up in Iowa in a serious way later in the year. He out-organised her. In New Hampshire the opposite was the case. She was well in advance and she out-organised him.

But Clinton did something else in New Hampshire. As she put it, she "found her own voice". The successful Republican candidate in New Hampshire, McCain, also won because he rediscovered his own voice, which until a few months ago he had put to one side while he pretended to be something he was not. Both Clinton and McCain discovered that they had more chance of success when they were themselves, for good or ill.

That's the most important lesson of New Hampshire.