What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (46 page)

MS
: There’s this recent clip—Hillary was just recently interviewed by somebody who asked her “which designers of clothes do you prefer?” and she just looked at him dead in the face and said, “Would you ever ask a man that question?” It’s so amazing that even as secretary of state that women are subjected to that. Women seem to have to walk that line between being too girly or too masculine, because women who are ambitious and powerful and speak their minds are often portrayed as “bitches” or anti-male—all
these negative, unattractive things that are still associated with powerful women oftentimes holds women back because there is that backlash.

MW
: That was the original backlash. At The White House Project we decided to work with, how can you be tough and caring? How can you bring yourself to the table? We did tons of research on that—we did it across party, we did it in focus groups, we worked on it like mad. And it really surprised me that what you’re saying was true. But I’m just saying, I think we’ve come some place and that Hillary helped us get there. Because women don’t want to be put in either of those categories. You look at somebody like Janet Napolitano. She comes across as tough. But people love her! Men and women love her. So there are some people who have done a good job of that. I think there’s more flexibility for that now.

MS
: Going back to Hillary’s run—you would have thought there would have been momentum from that, to move women farther along, and yet I think at one point last year the number of women in Congress actually went down. Does that concern you? Do you see progress being made that’s tangible?

MW
: Oh, for God’s sake, yes, but it didn’t have to do with Hillary. It has to do with all kinds of things. When The White House Project started going into states and training women to even run for the positions that lead Congress, people were like, “We have a training program that trains twenty women.” Come on. We are so far behind. That’s why The White House Project trained 100 at a time. We can’t do it unless we have tons of women running. Now we have more women running than we’ve ever had this year, right? So that’s good. But you can’t get there without having numbers of women put in the pipeline. The problem with women is, again, how much money it takes and we have no childcare. We’ve trained
enough women to hear all of their objections. They don’t like the climate. They don’t like what’s going on in politics. It’s gotten even worse in terms of its lack of cooperative work and ability to get things done. Women don’t want to waste their time. I think that’s a huge problem right now, when you’ve got these kind of races, with this division and the nastiness that’s going on. That really makes it hard. And when you don’t see enough women there and you know that you’re going to have to deal with these issues, because they do come up when there aren’t enough women. It is a hostile climate. And we haven’t had a national childcare period in forty years. What do you do with your freakin’ children? It’s so outrageous.

MS
: You’re such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom on this. I remember seeing the statistics in
Miss Representation
, and this was also in your book, about how we are ninetieth in the world in terms of women in national legislatures. Obviously, there are many other countries who have already elected female heads of state. What do they know that we don’t? How is it possible that we’re supposed to be the most progressive nation and yet here we are lagging so far behind?

MW
: Well, first of all, they don’t have winner-take-all elections. In most of the countries that have elected women leaders, women in power are parliamentary, so they run as part of a party and if they win, the women that are up there get to go in. Winner-take-all elections are deadly. And second, they’re willing to establish quotas. Because we are living the big lie that this is a meritocracy. The biggest lie in America is that America is a fair country, that it’s a meritocracy, that our institutions are meritocracies—they are not! So quotas are seen as affirmative action! That’s why we are so far down, because these countries have quotas. Women are also so scared of quotas in this country. White men are a quota, really! That’s what it comes down to. And so, the reasons are the winner-take-all
elections and the fact that we won’t establish quotas. That’s how those women got in.

MS
: How symbolic would it be to have a woman as president? What would that milestone mean for women and the world? Is it similar in the way that electing Barack Obama was?

MW
: Yes. We did focus groups before we ever started The White House Project with all kinds of women and they would say, “Oh my God, having a woman president would change my life every day, because seeing somebody like that, at that level, particularly someone who represents and shares our values—someone who is moving other women along and is connected to women and is not trying to be man enough for the job—that will change how we see women as CEOs, that will change how we see women in daily life. I would feel more respected every day.” And I think that’s the bottom line: it would bring a great deal of what women in this country are seeking, which is real respect, because we don’t really respect mothers, right?

MS
: I know you’ve written books on all this, but if you had a magic wand, are there things that you would want to see immediately changed to make it a more realistic possibility? Are there things that we could be doing right now?

MW
: There are things that we could be doing right now, but the most important thing is that we could actually change the way we do money and politics. If we could change the money, I think we could change things fairly soon. Because women would run. Get a real movement around national childcare, change the money in politics, and I think one of the things we could do is to change the way we do our voting to really make
every vote count, like the FairVote organization, founded by Rob Richie. You have instant run-off and other ways that you count votes, so it isn’t just winner-take-all elections. There are things that could be done to give outsiders a better chance. You can vote one, two, three—priority voting. Those are big ways to change. If you really started to say the way you run for office in this country is not about money. You can’t raise money. You get so much money from the government or whatever and quotas would do it right away. Admitting that we’re not a meritocracy and we are eager to have diversity and that we believe in research would help, and then we could say diversity means better government, and so we are going to make sure that we get a diverse government. There are ways it could happen.

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON

“I do think that women are uniquely qualified for leadership. And I think that it is very rewarding to make a difference
—
to do something that you know makes a difference in quality of life is the reward. There’s a lot that’s hard about public service, there’s no question about it. But it’s very rewarding to have an impact, and I really think that is something that women should step up to the plate and do.”

K
AY
B
AILEY
H
UTCHISON
is a regarded businesswoman and public servant with more than forty years of experience in the public and private sectors. She represents clients in banking, energy, transportation, telecommunications, and public policy.

Hutchison spent more than two decades as a public servant. In January 2013, she stepped down from her seat in the United States Senate. As a U.S. senator, she served in the Senate leadership, having first been elected vice chairman of the Republican Conference and later elected chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, the fourth-highest ranking Republican senator. Hutchison served as the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, and Science. She was also the chairman of the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee and served on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In addition, the senator served as chairman of the Board of Visitors at the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point. She is the author of several books celebrating women who have broken barriers, including
American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country, Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers
, and her most recent book,
Unflinching Courage: Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas
.

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think we’ve not yet had a woman president? What do you think it will take to make that happen?

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON
: I think that from my experience, early on, women running for elective office had to prove that they could do a job—that they could be effective, that they could represent the populace of whatever their district was—and there was a proving ground. I know when I was first running, everyone assumed that I would be weak, that all women were liberal, and I would say I was conservative, but then I would end up being weak and not voting for what I said that I believed in. And I think now that we have had women serve, be effective, have the same résumés and experience that men have—I think we’re on the cusp of having a woman president, I do. And I think that Barack Obama had experience, and he had the guts to try, even before it was clear that he would be a serious contender. I mean, when you think that he challenged Hillary Clinton, that was pretty bold, and yet he took that chance, and we’ve got to have the woman who will take a chance and have the experience to show credibility and move on.

MS
: There are certain pressures and stereotypes around women leaders that I’ve been hearing a lot in my interviews. On one hand, you can’t appear to be too soft, because you have to appear like you’re tough enough to handle certain situations that you might be confronted by in that position, but on
the other side, sometimes there’s also negativity that comes from women being perceived as too tough or too ambitious or powerful. As a woman leader yourself, were you aware of this? Did you feel like you could just be yourself? Did you feel the weight of some of these stereotypes and pressures, and do you think it’s getting better or easier in terms of the public perception of women as leaders?

KBH
: Oh, yes. I’ve gone from it being a disadvantage to, in reelection to the Senate, it being sort of a neutral. And then today, I think women have an advantage. So, yes, I think it’s changing and, yes, in the early stages I think you had to show toughness. But today I think you can be yourself. People want what women have the advantage in, and that is integrity and honesty and sincerity and their willingness to listen as well as act. So I think that it was an obstacle to overcome just what your demeanor was, but now I think you can be yourself. I think we have some women who are tough, and some who are more soft on the outside, but firm. And I think you can kind of be what you are.

MS
: That’s certainly good to hear. With this last election there was a lot of talk about how history-making it was—in the sense that we do have this record number of women—and yet it’s obviously far from parity. Why do you think there still is that lack of equal representation in Washington, and what do you think we can do to change that?

KBH
: Well, it’s going to happen naturally, because I believe that now women have the credentials, they have the stepping-stone experience, and I think that it’s equalizing out. You know, maybe it’s not quite there yet, but now it’s just getting the candidates to come forward. And I think more and more are, as we see. When I came to the Senate, there were seven, then nine, and then it just grew and grew, and I think it’s going to continue to
grow and grow, because I really do think now it’s an advantage. I think it’s women believing that it’s their time and they’re ready. So I think every year it’s going to get better.

MS
: Sometimes this gets framed as just equality for equality’s sake, but why is it important that we have women’s voices represented in Washington and in leadership?

KBH
: It’s important because in a legislative body, you need the variety of life experiences. And I learned this when I was in the state Legislature and when I was in the Senate. In the state Legislature, I passed a bill for the fair treatment of rape victims. And when we got the bill to the floor, the men weren’t against it, they had just never had the experience of the unfairness of the judicial system for rape victims. And we then passed a law that became the model in America, because every state was lacking in fair treatment. There was a different standard. And our law became a model. When I got to the Senate, I teamed with Barbara Mikulski for the Hutchison/Mikulski bill that was The Homemaker IRA, and it was because of an experience I had: I was single, I started an IRA; I got married and couldn’t contribute the same amount to my IRA. They allowed $250 for a spouse, which is, I mean, you might as well not do it. And yet you could put aside $2,500 if you had a job. And I said, no way is it [fair]—women who work inside the home should have the same retirement opportunities that women who work outside the home have. Nobody was against it—it was just that they never thought of it before. They’d never had the experience. So in a legislative body, you need the variety of experience to be able to represent the variety of the people.