What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (11 page)

MS
: I feel like we’re at a little bit of a confusing moment. Sometimes I feel like everybody’s talking about women and the influence we had on the election—whether it’s responding to sexist attacks or rape rhetoric that’s misinformed—but on the other side of things, there’s this whole backlash. Where do you think we are in the status of women today?

JB
: I think there are always going to be people who are threatened by women’s progress. And, I mean, it was so scary for a minute there, when you had these men in positions of power, talking about how the body shuts down after a rape so you can’t get pregnant, and let’s get a sonogram, a vaginal sonogram, before a woman wants to have an abortion. I always say, get out of my uterus! Stay in Congress, and get out of my uterus. Worry about other things. So you always have people like that, I think. But it was a beautiful thing to see how they were dismissed, summarily dismissed, by the electorate—it was great.

The second election of Obama was even more exciting to me than the first, primarily because people stepped up and they saw what these people, these others that I just mentioned, were trying to do. Not just to women, but to immigrants, poor people. And you hear stories about how long they waited in lines to vote. People heard and saw what was going on. And even Romney, he’s still in shock that he didn’t win, because he was tone-deaf to what was really going on in the country. And a lot of these people who tried to roll back Roe v. Wade, and roll back this and that, they also are in for a rude awakening. Now, having said that, I think that the Supreme Court is very, very precarious at the moment. They have the power to do
all sorts of damage to very hard-won fights that we’ve made over the years. I worry about the Supreme Court. I really do.

MS
: I was watching Diane Sawyer, who was interviewing all of the women senators—this was right around the time of the fiscal cliff—and they were saying that if they had all been able to sit in one room together, the whole thing would have been resolved. Do you think that’s a little bit true? Again, it’s so hard to make these generalizations, but if we did possibly have more women, reasonable women, in all these negotiations . . . ?

JB
: I think you would. I think definitely, if you had
reasonable
women, then yes. That word would have to be very prominent. If they’re reasonable women, they’re going to be thinking about the pragmatic solution to what’s going to happen to the country. I mean, even now, this sequester—you know, I’ve never even heard of this before, or the fiscal cliff. In all the years I’ve been voting and watching politics, this is the first time this has ever become an issue. It’s almost because the extreme right wing in the Republican Party is just creating these canards to stop Obama from becoming a great president. I think it’s unpatriotic, frankly, the way they have been trying to get the country to go backward and not deal with these issues. Reagan was able to work with the Democrats; Lyndon Johnson was able to work with Republicans. Come on.

MS
: On
The View
, you have Elisabeth Hasselbeck representing the conservative viewpoint, and you often also have guests on the other end of the spectrum from you politically. Whether it is with Elisabeth or your guests, you seem to, at least most of the time, be able to discuss issues and diplomatically disagree. Wouldn’t it be great if they could have that same type of ability in Congress? What communication advice would you offer to congresspeople to prevent the partisanship and gridlock we see today?

JB
: Well, never take it personally is number one. I’ve had arguments on the air with Elisabeth and other Republicans, even Bill O’Reilly. But I don’t take it personally. I don’t feel any personal animosity to any of these people. A lot of times, what you’ve got is people who are very, very stuck in their positions. A lot of times, it can’t be resolved. This is why the Founding Fathers made it majority rules, because sometimes that’s what it’s about.

MS
: We were talking earlier about this whole idea of just speaking your mind. Women and girls, especially, can often feel hesitant to speak out or stand out too much, and, again, you have always seemed to have this natural ability and courage to speak your mind and just be your authentic self. You don’t seem to really care so much what other people think. You have conviction in your own beliefs. Where does that come from?

JB
: Sometimes girls are like that because they don’t want boys not to like them. They think a mouthy girl doesn’t get the date. And believe me, when you’re a funny or mouthy woman, like I am, men are not attracted to that. They don’t like that. You have to be willing to forfeit your Heidi Klum credentials [
laughs
]. Maybe she’s the wrong example, but you know what I mean: a model who keeps her mouth shut and just looks gorgeous. You can’t have everything. I would say to these girls, “Which is more important to you—is it more important to impress a boy, or is it more important to speak out?” I always encourage my daughter to speak out. Even when she was a kid, she used to have feminist arguments with boys in the class; I remember that. And I thought,
Good. Good for her
. The boys are not as important as her making her point. So that’s one reason I think they don’t. Also, I was always encouraged to talk in my family. I always say this to interviewers—they ask me this question a lot, and I always give the [same] answer: they never told me to be quiet. No one ever said, “Be quiet, Joy.” And believe me,
I must have irritated them plenty. But, I don’t know, they just thought I was amusing or something, and they let me just yak it up. So you don’t tell girls to be quiet. Stop telling us to be quiet; we’re not going to be quiet.

MS
: I wanted to ask you about the role of comedy, because I think it is not just entertainment. I do think that there is something especially important about women being funny, since we often take ourselves way too seriously. I’m friends with Kathy Najimy, and she talks about how sometimes, even talking about politics, if you add a little humor, it can feel more palatable.

JB
: Well, I think that [female comedians] are powerful. I think that humor is a powerful tool to use. It’s a great talent to have, because you can disarm people. You can make your point. Ask anybody who has to give a speech—very often they’ll say, “If I start with an anecdote and get them laughing at the beginning, I own them; then they’ll listen to me.” When I first started stand-up comedy, I think part of my motivation for getting into it was that I felt powerless as a woman in this society. I was becoming invisible. I was already thirty-nine. After thirty-five you become invisible, pretty much, certainly to men. I was just becoming more and more invisible, and I was like, I have things to say. I have to do it. As hard as that was, I got up on that stage with a microphone in my hand, and I went there. Of course, no one was going to listen to me if I was just talking, so I had to make them laugh, and then they listened to me. So I think that it has a very powerful effect on people.

MS
: Even in the media, women hold only about 3 percent of top positions. As a media figure—through
The View
and through your talk shows—what do you think of the state of media today in terms of women’s representation, both behind the scenes and as news anchors and personalities?

JB
: I think there are more of us. There are a lot of women now. I was just watching MSNBC before, with S. E. Cupp and this girl Krystal Ball, and they’re terrific. And then Rachel Maddow’s on that station. You have Andrea Mitchell, you’ve got Mika Brzezinski, just on MSNBC. Then CNN has Candy Crowley, who I think is great. And, you know, Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric and those kinds of newspeople on the networks all these years have been very important. I think there’s quite a few of us.

MS
: I was thinking about
The View
, and it brought to mind this quote from an interview I did with Gloria Steinem. She said, “If we’re by ourselves, we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truth and their experiences and find they’re not alone in them.” I think that
The View
is kind of modeling that for us. How do you see the cultural significance of what takes place on
The View
in terms of this forum for women to talk and share their opinions?

JB
: I think in the beginning they were calling us a “coffee klatch” or “a bunch of hens”; somebody said one time “yentas.” We’ve been called all sorts of things—these disparaging remarks about women sitting around a table, discussing anything they feel like talking about that day, things that are in the news. It basically is an extension of the kitchen table where we all grew up. When I grew up—I grew up in Brooklyn, in a tenement, and my grandmother lived on one floor, and my parents and I lived on another, and my aunt was on another, and we had dinners together, and we’d sit around and have dinner or coffee and just talk, play cards—we called it a neighborhood. And I think that people—because this country is so spread out—are missing that a lot. I really do believe that’s one of the biggest problems, this lack of community that’s going on. I hear constant
complaints from people that they don’t have a community, and I do my best to bring groups together all the time in my personal life. I do believe in it. And, yeah,
The View
kind of shows you what it could be like.

MS
: In terms of leaders today, man or woman, what traits or qualities do you think are most important to have?

JB
: Intelligence, integrity—those are the two things that come to mind. And a certain humanity, a “menschiness.” That’s why I like Obama. I think he has all that. You would never catch him cheating on his wife. It’s not going to happen. And he’s very, very smart. I think that he might be difficult at times, because they say he doesn’t want to bend too easily, but you need to be flexible, too, I guess. Pragmatic—that’s another thing. One of the reasons I liked him and I voted for him was that I think he’s pragmatic. I think he wants to solve things.

MS
: There have been all these studies saying that oftentimes it’s women themselves who are sort of reluctant to aspire to leadership positions, that they have to be convinced to run for office, or even just to advocate for themselves or negotiate for a raise. What advice would you offer to girls, and young women particularly, on finding their worth, following their calling? What words of wisdom would you give?

JB
: I believe that young women need to take care of their financial house. If you have a way of earning a living and you can save some money so that you can take risks, I would suggest something like that. Because, you know, women stay in bad marriages because they don’t have any money. They stay in abusive relationships because they can’t get out, because they don’t have the ability to move or change. So I would say always make sure that you’re financially stable, so that you can take a risk. You shouldn’t
have to stay in a job. One of the benefits of this country is that we have the freedom to move around. This is not Afghanistan. So you shouldn’t stay in a situation that you hate. And the way that you get out of that is when you have some money. That’s one thing I would say to them.

WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THE MEDIA

In 1984, NBC’s Tom Brokaw described Vice Presidential Nominee Geraldine Ferraro as a “size 6” at the Democratic National Convention. On the day Condoleezza Rice became America’s first African American female national security adviser in 2001, a front page
New York Times
story reported that “her dress size is between a 6 and an 8.” Broadcast news outlets have called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a “bitch,” “harpy,” “nutcracker,” “ugly,” and far worse. Media outlets regularly obsess over female politicians’ hair, bodies, clothing, and motherhood choices
—
a double standard that is virtually never applied to male politicians. When journalism treats female politicians like ladies first and leaders only a distant second, the public is led to believe that women are less qualified to lead
—
and less electable
—
than their male counterparts. The roots of this double standard go beyond the content itself, to an institutional bias within the media industry
.