Gloria Steinem had a compelling op-ed in the New York Times this morning that reminded me a lot of one of Ennis’ previous posts about women leaders in rural India. First, some excerpts from “Women Are Never Frontrunners:”
THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.
Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?
If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy. [Link]
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p>Of course, there is another equally compelling argument for why the media “gives Clinton a hard time” and why the voters are so quick to discount her considerable experience, to the point of bringing her to tears. Many voters (like the majority in Iowa) may just want a clean break from the past. They don’t care whether Clinton is more capable than Obama or not. They don’t care if she’d be “a better President on day one.” They just want to rid themselves of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton monarchy and the baggage that comes with it. Perhaps, as Obama says, offering people hope and possibility and having the ability to bring new blood into the broken political process will make up for the experience and insider-Washington-knowledge needed to survive and be an effective President in Washington. There is a lot of credibility behind that argument. Then again, Steinem might also be right:
If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits. [Link]
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p>And that brings us to Ennis’s post and the study
by Esther Duflo and Petia Topalova about women elected to local office in rural India:
Using opinion surveys and data on local “public goods”–like schools, roads, and water pumps–Duflo and Topalova find that the villages headed by women invested in more services that benefited the entire community than did those with gender-neutral elections, nearly all of which were won by men. But as the opinion polls showed, for all their effectiveness, the women’s governance was literally a thankless effort, with the new leaders getting lower approval ratings than their male counterparts.
Why study the experiences of Indian villagers to understand the costs and benefits of female leadership? Countries that come closest to gender parity in government, like Sweden and Finland, are economically advanced democracies with universal health care, child care, and generous maternity and paternity leave policies. Contrast this with the list of nations with zero women in national legislatures–Kyrgyzstan and Saudi Arabia, for example–and the pattern becomes clear: Women in government are associated with lots of good things… [Link]
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p>Is it any wonder why Clinton might have cried? It is entirely possible that she has a lot in common with a rural Indian woman 🙂
First, the encouraging news from India’s social experiment with female leadership. Duflo and Topalova found that communities with women as pradhans had larger quantities of key public services overall. Nor was quality sacrificed for quantity–facilities in the women-led villages were of at least as high quality on average as in the communities with traditional male leadership. The greatest improvement was in drinking water, the public amenity found to be most valued by women in earlier research (PDF)–with 30 percent more taps and hand pumps in the women-pradhan villages. So while the female pradhans were working for the general good, they were working particularly hard to provide the services valued by their fellow women. They were also less corrupt–villagers with female-headed councils were 25 percent less likely to report having to pay bribes to access basic services like getting ration cards or receiving medical attention.
Now, the bad news. India’s female pradhans were remarkably unappreciated for their efforts. Despite the objective upgrades in village amenities, both men and women living in villages headed by women expressed lower satisfaction with public services. This was true even for water–the level of dissatisfaction was 13 percent higher in women-led communities. In fact, there was even greater dissatisfaction about health facilities, a public service not even controlled by the local village council… [Link]
As of the time of this posting, Clinton is up in the New Hampshire primary with a 40% to 35% lead over Obama (with roughly 30% of the vote counted). If she wins (a huge comeback based on all New Hampshire polls up until today), people are going to ask if the tears were for real, and if that’s what gave her the edge. They are also going to use exit polling data to figure out which group of voters were most responsible for her victory. Even if she loses but comes close, people are still going to ask what caused the “surge.” Maybe, just maybe, the women out there knew that even if the tears were fake, the gender bias may be real.
Abhi, I really enjoyed Ms. Steinem’s op-ed today except that she hugely discounts the “bump” Hillary Clinton gets by virtue of her dynastic presence/background. All that said, I think her tears were real (is this really a debate?) — the woman looked exhausted and defeated during her first few days in New Hampshire, and I’m sure the stress of the campaign is wearing on her. I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead, but I do think women face unique challenges when they run for office. Sadly, my ovarian solidarity is not enough for me to want to support Hillary Clinton.
Gotta love J-PAL, though. 🙂
I am sure they were real too.
Having sent a daughter to college recently I know sincerity when I see it. There is a yearning for being fair among women since there is such a long history of gender ignorance in humankind. Hillary Rodham has worked long and hard for the Presidency and has been an exceptionally good representative. She is most similar to, among India’s women legislators, Maneka Gandhi. Maneka may sound preachy, even annoying, but she means every thing she says and follows every little bit of what she preaches. She too has been an exceptional legislator and brought about substantial change in her constituency, only had different ambitions. The world would be a different place if more women ruled nations rather than just homes.
Nice post, Abhi. I’ve always felt that Clinton has to appear tougher and more hawkish to be taken seriously. I’ve heard people say that she is a tad “too ambitious.” No on says that of the men who are her opponents, because of course, ambition is unequivocally a positive trait in a male. I do not doubt that her tears are real. Yesterday (and given the opinion polls about the NH verdict), she must have felt that the dream of a lifetime might slip through her fingers. Especially as she sees herself as an activist-politician who has fought against entrenched interest (and found both success and major failures), the success of Obama’s vague platform of “change” probably stung:
I was especially disappointed with Edward’s ungracious remarks on Clinton’s display of emotion, and his insinuation that she was not tough enough to be president because of it:
According to CNN, Clinton has the support of older Democratic women in New Hampshire. The college towns have had a larger-than-expected turnout, and the implication is that Obama will benefit. So it’s looking very close.
Also, Duflo produces awesome empirical analysis. Yeah, women economists!
This is also one of the most unfair and entrenched realities for female leaders — oftentimes they are not taken seriously unless they lead in “masculine” styles/archetypes, and then they are critiqued when they do. The NYT did a great write-up on this last month.
Edwards has certainly been a Clinton-bully, lately.
I know! Isn’t it [empirical analysis] sexy? Randomized microeconomic trials make me totally weak in the knees 😉
But were they spectacular? Not that I care. About the veracity of the tears, I mean.
I don’t feel very strongly about one of Clinton or Obama over the other. One has a track record of execution, but has a record of statements that might seem like she is focus-grouping. The other has a great voice, but doesn’t have much of a track record of execution at the senate level. I feel like they would both do a great job (maybe Obama a little more to the left, but it is yet to be seen how pliable he will actually be when faced with the compulsions of actually getting policy and laws through), given a Dem Congress, which I hope they get, unlike the previous Dem president.
1 · Camille said
I do not think Rodham Clinton is coasting in on Bill’s laurels. It’s not like she’s Ann Romney. If anything, she has made major strategic and policy contributions to Bill Clinton’s career. She knows how to play the game. Assuming that they both as young people had presidential ambitions, and consciously planned to position themselves as such a couple, this is the only way it could have happened. Imagine what the late night talk-show hosts would have said if the former First Gentleman ran for office after his wife completed her presidential term.
Also, according to CNN stats, the tears had an effect: 43% of the women who decided to vote today chose Clinton, versus the 36% who decided to vote for Obama today.
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Only because everybody goes for alpha males. Maybe politicians should try some negging and peacocking too?
Duflo’s stuff is very cute and awesome. Although some of it is a bit freakonomical (in the bad sense of the term).
Yes, and the general extremely poisonous statement that’s made is whether you’d want somebody who’s prone to emotional swings with their finger on the nuclear trigger. Golda Meir had to deal with that kind of nonsense, if I remember right, and so does Hill.
Did he now? That was really pathetic from $500 haircut boy. What exactly did he say?
I am glad the future of the most powerful nation in the world can be determined by some handy glycerin and functioning lachrymose glands (not implying that she faked it, like another woman in a diner, but she could have, if she just wanted to play into a narrative).
Camille: a love of empirical analysis and the MIT poverty action lab, certain Amy Winehouse songs, and jeera in scrambled eggs. Maybe we should swing the pendulum the other way and move to Canada.
Rahul, you tell me about how spectacular it was. The tear, I mean.
i wont be surprised if it shifted momentum – if you saw the context of the question and the response, it came straight from the heart – and the thing is, for those who have seen the vid, it wasnt about the tears but her obvious passion for her country and the desire to keep it from falling back (among americans i know, that is a rallying cry) – i just think cnn is really lazy if they restricted their survey question to women.
another vid that might have had a dramatic impact on the vote was one from a clinton meeting in which some guys got up and started shouting, ‘iron my shirt’ .
port, I don’t know of any other candidate who could successfully contest a Senate seat in a state she hardly lived in. I think Hillary is competent and has certainly contributed to Bill’s success and has done plenty on her own. That said, she is only in her second term as a senator and has not run in a highly contested general election. How is that substantially different from Obama, who has 8 years of state legislative experience and is in his first term as a U.S. Senator? I think Senator Clinton has accomplished quite a bit without having to draw on her husband’s achievements when she campaigns, but she often uses fuzzy descriptions to take credit for many of the “successes” of his term in office. It doesn’t sit well with me.
Related, but not entirely on-topic: Do you think, if Hillary won the general election, the Dems would have a more difficult time in the 2010 midterm elections?
😉
You’re calling it cute because she’s a woman, aren’t you? [kidding] Hey, she can put the freak into my economics any day. [am I being inappropriate?]
Our e-love on SepiaDestiny is well-documented! Let’s make a love-match and skip northern border-wards! Didn’t we share a distaste for gimlets, as well? I also love bhurji; do you still love me?
I think HC’s tears were genuine. She was probably exhausted and saw the dreams of a life-time being wiped out with the loss in Iowa and the polls in New Hampshire at that point.
Having said this, let us not forget that double standards work both ways. If a male politician had displayed the type of emotion Hillary did for the reasons that she did, it would have pretty much destroyed him. After all it was Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, who was undone when he cried after his wife was attacked by, I believe, the Manchester Union.
I have a certain admiration for HC’s intellect and humanity but I have to agree with George Will who said of her record while she was first lady, that the two things she took a leadership role were the attempt to introduce universal health care and the nomination of Zoe Baird to be attorney general and in both instances she blew it. In the case of the former, she setback universal health care by at least a decade because she was determined to do it her way and was not willing to accept any compromises.
She has a good record in the Senate in terms of working with all sides – even her detractors acknowledge this but let us not cite her record as first lady to support her qualifications to be POTUS. As someone who would like to see this disastrous administration replaced with something more enlightened, I fear that if HC is the nominee the Democrats will likely lose the general. She just has too high a disapproval rating – whether fairly or unfairly – to be elected.
actually i’m a little pissed now. i thought i’d link the footage of where hillary ‘teared’ up but i cant find it. youtube’s just inundated with the clips but they all start too late in the sequence… where she has started answering the questioner. out of context it just looks like she’s dissolving into emotion, but it wasnt like that. i wish i could find that original clip. it shows her in much more favorable light.
Rahul, my trials are anything but random, and I’m only interested in macro.
Yeah, I only go for the most conservative alpha, cuz that’s usually the best indicator of whether my confidence-level is warranted.
They just called it for Hillary
It was Ed Muskie, whose performance completely changed the implication of the traditional association of manhood and muskiness. Again, it is such a pity that people decide their support based on this and whether Nixon sweats or has a shadow that couldn’t really be masked by makeup.
Yes, double standards work both ways, but there is just a lot more traffic in one direction.
My sentence got cut off: my response was, “Rahul, you know I don’t regress and tell! ;)”
Abhi, what outlet called it? NYT only shows 63% of districts reporting (but if there are not 5000 voters in those districts, I would understand the call).
NBC
like a fat kid loves cake (did i just ruin my reputation by making a bad econ joke and quoting 50 cent on the same thread?).
hilla the pundit-killa!
Rahul, you are quite right – it was Muskie.
Re double standards, HC’s tears, et al: can you imagine Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir or Indira Gandhi breaking down because they had not done as well as they hoped in an election?
I talked to my mom in India 40 minutes ago and let her know that Clinton was beating Obama in NH. My mom doesn’t like Obama (said she heard him give a speech on TV once that she didn’t like) and she said, “Oh, I like Clinton. I will be so happy if she wins. I want a woman to win. If Obama wins I won’t vote in the general election.” That was pretty femi-nazi of her 🙂
HILLARY WINS!!
More on this later.
The tear(s) while helpful or not in N.H., will hurt her overall in the country. She doesn’t have to be masculine to run a country but she should appear presidential and not weak. Edwards has already started this line of attack and it will continue. Check out this clip, and then check out the first comment there.
Unfairly or not, some will judge her on her tear(s). I agree with notsoyoungdesi, while Senator Clinton is capable, her ability to polarize the electorate is a huge downside and the tear(s) is just grist for the mill.
have you even seen the clip that’s being referenced here. at what point was it about losing the primary.
No, because that is my favorite Fitty song to quote! Let’s go make out!
HRC wasn’t crying because she was losing the primary; she teared up (read: DID NOT CRY) because someone asked her how she was doing and how she was taking care of herself on the trail. I don’t think her tears (or lack thereof) are a liability. I think what makes her a liability is the divisiveness she stirs in people and her pro-executive power approach to foreign policy.
Let us not split hairs!
I saw the clip where she teared and her voice broke and it was as she talked about all of what she felt a passion to change, etc. If she had won in Iowa and the polls showed her to be well-positioned in New Hampshire, IMO, she would not have become as emotional.
Khoofia,
Were you speaking to me? I have seen the clip, it’s from a league of their own, and it’s rather well-known. The “There’s no crying in baseball line” is going to be attributed to those tears(s), the first comment underneath is in fact from some podunk who says exactly that. The point I was tying to make, probably badly, is that the stereotypes regarding women leaders will be reinforced with her tears and will not help her win any votes with those people who question whether Senator Clinton is tough enough to lead. And it will be used as fodder against her, evidence John Edwards.
I think we would need to do some curve fitting to determine that.
It wasn’t clear that was the sole reason, it could be a combination of a lot of things. But that’s neither here nor there. So her voice cracked and she teared up. So what? It is not a reflection at all on strength of character. Which of us truthfully believes that the other candidates haven’t spent a single moment feeling sorry for themselves when they are in trouble? (Except Kucinich and Keyes, maybe). You know, unlike sitting for 10 minutes reading a children’s story in shock and confusion when the country was hit by a horrendous attack and then spending the day hopping, skipping and running across the country – now that’s weakness.
Rahul, I respectfully ask you to back off since port’s indifference curves now show that, on SepiaDestiny, I am strictly preferred. 🙂
no JJ. wasnt talking with you – was replying to nsyd.
anyway. two exceptional people won the primaries today. congratulaitons america. this is going to be a good year.
I agree with you. If you go back to my original post on the subject, the point I was making was not to fault HC for getting emotional but addressing the issue of double standards working both ways. A male politician who reacted the same way under similar circumstances would probably be undone – whereas HC gets a pass, especially from women. This is not a value judgment: given that I tear up on fairly minimal provocation when watching movies, I would be the last one to question suitability for office because of a display of emotion.
In any event, congrats to HC for a remarkable comeback!
My bad, Khoofia. It’s a long way to go before we can say that it’s going to be a good year for America. Neither Mccain or Hillary have this locked up, I think Super Tuesday will be a better indicator of where the respective parties choose to go. But your right, there is definite reason to hope that the two leaders chosen in these primaries will be a vast, tremendous, stupendous, clear improvement over the current president, at least in terms of credentials, if nothing else.
Now that we seem to know who won this one, perhaps we can discuss Steinem’s OpEd a bit more. I don’t think she properly addressed the interplay between race and gender at all. They’re not totally independent. Osama’s race is important because he’s a man, and Hillary’s gender is important because she is white. It’s not that his race is less important than her gender, or at least, that’s not a generalization without a helluva lot of qualifiers, so that ultimately it does not apply to Clinton-Obama. And it’s so weird that she totally left out mentioning Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who held the same seat Osama now holds in the Senate, who is both black and a woman, and who actually did run for President in 2004. So her starting premise is setting up a bit of a straw-person – the person she serves up very nearly does exist as described!
Also, the US seems a bit off by itself in terms of woman leaders. Both Canada and (of course) the UK have had female PMs, and both have had female Heads of State (Canada currently has a black female Governor General).
I was also a bit put off by commentary that seemed to imply that only Obama represents change – Clinton’s candidacy and possible victory equally represents change. An interesting thing to ask – could either of them choose the other as a running mate, or have the waters been so muddied already that it’s out of question? Could Edwards beat both in the South on Super Tuesday?
dearest darlings, by delightful design of destiny, i have come to think of you as perfect complements.
just saw the clip, and a few others. there was another clip of tucker on msnbc, where he used the phrases ‘school marmish’ and how she looks so ‘unappealing’ when she is stern – i could never imagine the same things being said about male candidates.
honestly, i thought the tears were real, and i thought they were attributed to not only physical exhaustion, but also because, to be somewhat idealistic, she was alluding to her patriotism. it’s heartening to see someone express how much they care for the country. it’s also disheartening that the tears are attributed per se to her being a woman – if the same conditions were upon a man, and he let a few tears come to his eyes and his voice falter, people would likely look at it from the sense of how patriotic he is that he has allowed his strong exterior to be compromised just a bit. i don’t understand why the same can’t be said about hillary clinton, esp. b/c she is a woman who has rarely, if ever, shown this sort of ‘weakness’ publicly before. i’d rather people put the candidates on equal footing, and fault them for things that really matter and that actually concern the fate of the country, rather than for a few tears that surfaced and pulled back within the span one bloody minute.
portmanteau, i’ve said this about hrc in the past – when she chose to run for the ny senator seat. call me naive, but i hated her obvious bid for the presidency that that move signaled, considering she had no tie to the state. however, i would have said the same thing about any male politician in the same circumstances.
Here is one rebuttal I found.
Now that Hillary has taken NH, perhaps the more urgent question is whether Americans are willing to consider a Mormon for president–or an ethnic Italian, or a short (Kucinich), corpulent (Richardson) man, or a man with hair transplants (Biden)?
Abhi, it’s not so much the question of a woman leader. It is the question of Hillary Clinton. She is not in the mold of Golda Meir, Maggie Thatcher or Angela Markel – a leader in her own right. She is more like Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Corazon Aquino – a dynastic candidate. The sense of entitlement in her own mind, the Democratic establishment and her supporters is a bit off putting. But may be the US is like developing countries when it comes to religiosity and female leaders. There was an article in the Washington Post a couple of days ago (I forget the author and hence can’t find the link) who said that we have to first vote for a “dynasty” woman candidate (the relative of a powerful male) in the US to make way for others to make it on their own. A poor way to break the glass ceiling in my opinion. I doubt Gloria Steinem would agree.
Angela Markel = Angela Merkel
I found Steinem’s op-ed to miss a lot of key points. Not only did she address the intersections between race and gender, she assumes that because a person’s race is constant (in her hypothetical) that gender is the determining factor. There are unique challenges that black women face that are different from those that white women face. It’s not a simple “who has it harder?” question. And while black men may have received the vote first, what about black women? Did the following years of Jim Crow intimidation apply to white women in the same way it applied to black men and women?
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Comparing Hillary to people (speaking about Indira and Benazir, don’t know much about Aquino) who had absolutely no individual achievements till they were thrust as representatives of the men they were associated it is completely unjustified. Whatever you might feel about Hillary, you have to agree that she is independently extremely accomplished, and is extremely talented, focused, and capable. You might not like her views, or might think that she politicks too much, but that is very different from insulting and belittling her credentials by calling her a dynastic candidate.
As for the op-ed itself, I didn’t really read it carefully. My eyes were rolling uncontrollably within the first paragraph, and in any case, Steinem lost all credibility with me after she happily trotted off into wedded bliss after condemning a whole generation of idealistic acolytes to spinsterhood 🙂
Well, port is most likely significantly underestimating the natural and sustainable level of inflation. And, I guess you are going post-traditional – “they said this day would never come”.
Thats what I am wondering also, Chachaji!!! Chachaji, You were unfair to Barak Obama in your last comment .. you called him Osama twice 🙂 What did he do to deserve that 🙂
And while it is undeniable that she gains a lot of advantages from the huge army of strategists and funding that the Clinton name brings, she also carries an enormous amount of baggage, often unfairly, for the same name.
I think you meant leaders, without the gender qualification. What about Rahul Gandhi? Or Sanjay Gandhi? Or the Bush dynasty? – an analogy, by the way, which just does not hold in the case of Bill and Hillary.
Rahul, Hillary’s personal and professional credentials are not dynastic – she is an accomplished woman. The “credibility” of her candidacy is dynastic. Most woman with comparable or better credentials will not get a second look from the political movers and shakers. That is not to say that there are not several male pols who are not running on family coat tails. We have one such unqualified leader right now in the White House.
My point simply is that for the first female president of the US, I would like to see a candidate who succeeds without a famous political husband, father or brother looming behind her.
It’s going to be a good race.
Still I dislike all this political dynasty crap, perhaps it’s because in a democracy, I associate that kind of behavior with banana republics having the semblance of candidates actually being elected.
Wh00ps! And can you believe the number of people who let that pass! Good grief!! He’s done nothing to deserve that. At all. Sorry folks. Obama not Osama. And it does not lie in my mouth to pick this nit, but it’s Barack not Barak. 🙂
As someone who supports Obama over Hillary, I was really frustrated when the media and my fellow anti Hillaryites overdid the bashing of Hillary when it came to the teary eyed incident. I am a very skeptical guy, but i do not think HIllary faked it. What she probably did was let her guard down on purpose but it was probably more of an improv thing. She felt empotional because of all the pent up stress, and she realized that instead of controlling it, just be natural and use it to her advantage. All these morons in the media bashed her and helped her mobilize her supporters in the last days skewing poll predictions in NH.
46 · Ruchira said
By this accounting, we should be all sympathetic to poor little Kucinich who never gets any love from the media, whereas Obama gets all the kudos and coverage for his great looks, which he can’t even take credit for (unlike Hillary’s “dynasty”) and baritone voice (ok, this he worked on through many years of smoking).
It is unfortunate that we feel the need to discount a person, whom we might otherwise consider (more than) adequately qualified, purely because they are able to utilize the political system to their advantage. The only reason to vote against Hillary should be if you felt that there are other candidates who would do a better job (whatever your definition of that is) as president.