What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (16 page)

And the third thing, and this is the part that I take on the road most often, is that I have found that since I’ve begun to support gender equality—since I’ve tried to do it at home, as well as in my professional work—my life is much better. My relationship with my family, with my children, with my parents, with my friends, with my colleagues, is so much richer. So the argument that I make consistently to men is that gender equality is not a zero-sum game—it is a win-win. And, in fact, gender equality is the only way you’re going to be able to have the kinds of relationships you say you want to have, so it’s in our interest to support it.

MS
: I don’t know if you saw the film
Miss Representation
, about the media’s impact on our perception and what that results in. It makes me think—especially for you, as the father of a boy—of how boys are just inundated with images of women and girls as sex objects. You have a son whom you are raising who can obviously see past this, but how do we raise our boys to see women as leaders and not as pretty things?

MK
: I want to say first, this is exactly what Zachary has written about in his SPARK Summit blog post: the effect of the media’s sexualization of girls on boys. And he says, “When I’m hanging around with my guy friends, they all talk about girls in exactly those ways,” and he realizes it’s really destructive. He told a story yesterday—he said he went to see a movie with some friends, another boy and two other girls, and they were all sitting there, and they had a trailer for the
Twilight
movie. And when Taylor Lautner ripped off his shirt, all the girls went, “Oh!” and he said, “I felt really terrible about my body, and I immediately went home and did a hundred sit-ups” [
laughs]
. So boys are being constructed to have the same kind of view of their bodies as girls do. So he understands completely the effect of these media images on boys, as well as girls.

So how do we combat this? First, media are not monolithic. There are many, many alternatives, and especially in this era of Internet proliferation and critical engagement with media and social media, for every awful image that we encounter, there are also positive ones, or positive ones to be abstracted from the things that we’re watching. I think that the key to parenting is not to use media as free babysitting—that is to say, park your kid in front of it and go off and do what you want to do. The thing to do is, of course, to engage with your kids, to help your kids develop a kind of critical engagement, a critical capacity to engage with the media that they’re looking at. So I’ve watched
Toy Story
, for example, probably fifty times. I’ve memorized it. Why? Because when Zachary was three and four,
we watched it several times a day [
laughs]
, and, yes, like many parents, I was bored to death after a while. But he was mastering how narrative works, how a story develops, how you move from one idea to another, and so it was important to watch it over and over and over and over again. And so once he had the idea of how a story goes, we were able to have conversations about what else might have happened, or what do you think of this character. And to develop that, I think, requires what children actually really need, which is a lot of time, a lot of attention, and a lot of love. The form that that comes in—a heterosexual couple, a gay couple, a lesbian couple, a single mom, a single dad, whatever—is a lot less important than the context. That’s what kids need, and that kind of media engagement is very critical.

MS
: You said you thought we would have a woman president in 2016. What do you think are the most important areas to focus on or to change in these next few years to allow that milestone to happen, to pave the way?

MK
: I am congenitally optimistic. I don’t think you can be an educator without being an optimist, because I have to believe that if my students engage critically with their world, their lives will be better for it, so my job is to help them engage more critically. And I can’t be a political activist without believing that change is possible. And, frankly, just look around—the evidence of this is pretty incontestable. Five years ago, I stood in front of my students and I said to them that there will be marriage equality in the United States by the end of this century. “You will live to see it,” I said to them, “but I won’t.” I was so wrong. We will have marriage equality in this country by the end of this decade, maybe even by the end of this year. The old barriers are falling faster than many of us ever expected, and, yes, of course, there’s tremendous backlash, lots of obstacles—I’m not Pollyanna about this, but I am optimistic. I do believe, as Martin Luther
King, Jr., said and as Obama keeps quoting, that the arc of history points toward greater equality and greater justice.

What will be the markers to me of whether or not there will be a viable female candidate in 2016? My guess is the public reaction when people start announcing their candidacy, and the biggest, most hopeful moment I can point to that would tell you this—you’ll find this ironic—is, nobody really raised an eyebrow when Michele Bachmann declared. Nobody said, “Oh, but she’s a woman.” Nobody seemed to pay any attention to that. “She’s a lunatic”—that’s what people said. That’s what they paid attention to. I’m serious! Nobody really said, “Well, she’s a woman, she’s not qualified.” So, as the new slates are going to be forming in 2014, probably earlier, even, we’ll begin to have the exploratory committees—let’s see where the conversation goes. I have a feeling that if Hillary Clinton and Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin begin to form exploratory committees—or some of these other women who I think are really potentially at this point perhaps vice-presidential material—it’s very possible that in the next round, we’ll have some women who are potential presidential candidates or potential vice-presidential candidates. So maybe we’re not talking 2016—maybe we’re talking about 2024—but still, as this develops, what I think we will see is less and less of, “Well, no, she couldn’t possibly be president, because she’s a woman.” We won’t hear that. It won’t even register, and that’s how we’ll know it’s time.

MEN AS ALLIES

I think it’s really important for feminists to understand that patriarchy takes aim at girls’ voices, but it takes aim at boys’ hearts. And it happens really early with boys, like five. Just really wrapping ourselves around that will open our hearts with empathy to boys and men. We have to raise our sons to remain emotionally literate, and not allow this bifurcation to take place. And it’s not always the fathers that are responsible; it’s sometimes mothers who will be the ones that infuse their boys with this toxic masculinity
.

Feminism is for men as well as women. I cannot emphasize that enough. And the only way we are going to make it is if we understand it and speak about it. You know, I do a lot of public speaking, and I look out at the audience, and there are always men as well as women, and when I talk about this, I can just see the tension go out of the men’s shoulders. It’s like, “I’m included. I’m included in this.” A lot of men can step out of the armor and be reborn. And some can’t. The ones I’ve married can’t
[
laughs
],
but not because they’re bad or dumb or anything
—
it’s just sometimes the wounds are really deep, and it just takes more courage than some are capable of, going there and peeling it away. But what we can do for men is help them see that this is not attacking men. On the contrary. It’s like the opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy
—
it’s democracy
.

        
—J
ANE
F
ONDA

Absolutely, [we need to take a closer look at the messages we’re sending to boys]. Most certainly. We talk to our children in ways they will understand about morality, about honesty. We tell them that it’s not good to lie and it’s not good to be deceitful. But I think we rarely have spoken to them about the proper elements of the relationship between a male and a female, a young boy and a young girl. I look back to my childhood, and from quite an early age, my recollection is that the girls I knew were either desirable, sexual objects or were potential victims
—
you know, people you could persecute, and it was okay to do that. So I think in the same way that in our schools things like sex education have now become standard and normal and entirely acceptable, lessons can be
learned about how to be in the world, how to be in society and treat everyone with the same measure of respect
.

        
—P
ATRICK
S
TEWART

Men can be feminists, too! Many men are feminists. We need feminism. It’s not against men. It’s about the empowerment of women. It’s the respect of women. Giving women equal rights, the same opportunities
.

        
—A
NNIE
L
ENNOX

We have to do a lot more educating of men, and I know that many feminists feel like they’re tired of that and they can’t do that, and da, da, da, da, da. And nobody’s more tired than some of us, but it seems to be really important
—
especially if we’re thinking of our sisters’ and daughters’ health. And not only that, so many of us by now have these wonderful feminist sons and grandsons who really are allies, and we should give them the respect as allies, in changing a lot of the things that are wrong and done against women in the world
.

        
—A
LICE
W
ALKER

BARBARA LEE

“I think it takes a while for women to realize what their power is, because we haven’t been part of this for very long. But I think what I have seen is that when women know their power, they really do know how to use it, not for their personal gain, but for the good of the country.”

R
EPRESENTATIVE
B
ARBARA
L
EE
is a forceful and progressive voice in Congress, dedicated to social and economic justice, international peace, and civil and human rights. She proudly represents California’s 13th Congressional District. She serves on the Appropriations and Budget Committees, is a member of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, is a senior Democratic whip, chair of the Democratic Whip’s Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity, and a co-chair of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus. Lee has been a strong proponent of safe communities, affordable housing, the homeless, low-income energy assistance, job training, making health care affordable and universal, just immigration policies, the establishment of a living wage, and protection of the right of women to make decisions about their reproductive health.

First elected in 1998 to represent California’s 9th Congressional District, the Democratic lawmaker has established a reputation for principled and independent stands, unafraid to take on the tough issues and speak her mind for her constituents, for a more just America, and for a safer world. As a social worker by profession, being an advocate for
people in dealing with the federal bureaucracy has been a priority. She has aggressively represented the needs of the underserved and vulnerable people in her district and throughout the U.S., vigorously advocating for a wide range of social and economic concerns and bread-and-butter issues that affect their daily lives. Her accomplishments are many, including authoring or co-authoring every major piece of legislation dealing with global HIV/AIDS issues since she was elected to Congress.