{"id":1025,"date":"2008-07-28T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2008-07-28T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-28T11:00:00","slug":"guest-post-the-importance-of-being-hillary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/07\/28\/guest-post-the-importance-of-being-hillary\/","title":{"rendered":"GUEST POST: The Importance of Being Hillary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
I am very excited to be able to start your week off with a guest post from <\/span>Gloria Feldt<\/a>, who <\/span>last week wrote<\/a> about barriers that still stand in the way of American women’s search for equality. This week, Gloria is back with a wonderful post on a woman who’s run for the presidency has helped to strip some of those barriers down. –Kristen<\/span><\/p>\n

The Importance of Being Hillary<\/span><\/p>\n

by Gloria Feldt<\/p>\n

Like Kristen said in her post \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now That the Dust Has (Sort of) Settled<\/a>,” Hillary Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s candidacy for president is still fascinating to ponder. I was recently asked to write an article on the topic for the ILF Digest<\/a>, the journal of a think tank I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been a fellow of (I find this terminology amusing, but have never come up with an acceptable alternative\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcan you?) for some years. It won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be published for a few weeks but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to share an excerpt here because it takes up where Kristen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s questions were leading:<\/p>\n

Despite many problems with sexism in the culture and media that made themselves self-evident during Hillary Clinton<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s campaign, there are even more reasons to be optimistic that Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presidential run will be a net plus in motivating women to enter politics. I predict a sea change in women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s participation in politics up and down the ticket and in non-elective political roles as well, for these reasons:<\/p>\n

1. Seeing gives the potential for being<\/span>. The message chanted at Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rallies: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes she can!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has clearly been delivered to younger generations. All young girls hereafter will grow up knowing it is possible for a woman to be president. And Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s willingness to stay in the race despite all the challenges, despite constant calls for her to bow out, despite what must have been intense exhaustion and disappointment, is exactly what women of all ages with political aspirations need to see. In her speeches, she often mentioned \u00e2\u20ac\u0153two groups who move me: women in their 80\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and 90\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s who come out in walkers and wheelchairs and say they just want to live long enough to see a woman elected president, and families who bring their children and lean over and whisper in their daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ear, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHoney you can be anything you want to be.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Now they know they can.<\/p>\n

2. <\/span> Women were energized as never before<\/span>. Rep. Carolyn Maloney said at a recent event sponsored by Lifetime Television<\/a>, which along with three major women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s magazines has spearheaded a massive multimedia campaign called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Every Woman Counts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a>, that even though Clinton lost the primary campaign to Obama, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think she lifted up the self esteem of women across the country, across the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Observing that Clinton raised $190 million in the primary race, Maloney said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think she helped all of us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One measure of how much she has helped women become more engaged in politics is that in past races, women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial contributions<\/a> amounted to less than 30% of the total. For the first time, fueled by excitement over Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s candidacy, half of the contributions to a presidential candidate came from women. And, in fact, over 40% of Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s contributions came from women as well, demonstrating women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s importance to the Democratic party and women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understanding about the strategic importance of giving their fair share of the proverbial mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s milk of politics in order to get their fair share of influence on the public policies they want. As North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Bev Perdue pointed out, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Everybody is involved in politics whether they realize it or not.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Since men have little motivation to change the power structure, women have little choice but to become the change we want to see. Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s willingness to put herself out there will motivate more of us to try.<\/p>\n

3. Media sexism has been called out, and that roots it out<\/span>. Rep. Maloney went on to say at the Lifetime event that there was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a big undercurrent of sexism, misogyny and stereotyping\u00e2\u20ac\u009d against Hillary Clinton during her campaign for president. But the point here is Maloney made her claims at a public, mainstream media-sponsored event. That would not have happened in the past. The nonprofit Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Media Center mounted a campaign called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sexism Sells, but We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not Buying It\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> in collaboration with several media justice organizations They got the attention and the responses of major media executives and producers, as well as on-air apologies<\/a> from Chris Matthews, David Schuster, and others. Even Katie Couric\u00e2\u20ac\u201dtoo late, sadly, to make a difference in this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s primary reporting but with luck influential enough to change the way women candidates are treated in the future\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfinally had enough and spoke out publicly<\/a> on the subject. Change will be slow and imperfect, but it will happen.<\/p>\n

4. Hillary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post-primary awakening led her to embrace her leadership role as a woman and on behalf of other women.<\/span> Throughout the campaign, she downplayed the importance of her gender, saying as she did at her Beacon Theater birthday bash early in the campaign when she was still considered the front runner, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For me it is a great honor and humbling experience to be the first woman president. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not running because I am a woman but because I am the most qualified. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Since the campaign, she has been much quicker to champion women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rights. For example, she led the charge to challenge the Bush administration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proposed new regulations<\/a> that would redefine many birth control methods as abortion and allow medical providers to refuse to provide them. She seems to have learned a lesson about being her true self; other women will take courage from that.<\/p>\n

At Hillary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s birthday event almost a year ago now<\/a>, Elvis Costello performed to a standing ovation. Then the Wallflowers joined Elvis onstage; the decibel level elevated ten-fold, whipping this audience of aging rockers into frothy enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

When comedian Billy Crystal came up to close the evening, little did he know just how prescient he was when he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hillary is making this campaign not so much for the old rockers but for the new ones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Gloria’s Heartfeldt Politics Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n


Image credit.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am very excited to be able to start your week off with a guest post from Gloria Feldt, who last week wrote about barriers that still stand in the way of American women’s search for equality. This week, Gloria is back with a wonderful post on a woman who’s run for the presidency has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}