What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (65 page)

Richards has appeared in a range of media venues including Fox’s
The O’Reilly Factor, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Talk of the Nation, New York One
and CNN. Richards spends a good deal of time consulting to a variety of projects, including the HBO documentary
Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words
and a PBS documentary on the women’s movement in America,
MAKERS: Women Who Make America
. She is the president of Soapbox: Speakers Who Speak Out, the creators of Feminist Summer Camp and the foremost feminist lecture agency.

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think we have not yet had a woman president?

AMY RICHARDS
: I think that we haven’t had a woman president because I don’t think that the vast majority of people trust women in conventional forms of leadership. I don’t think that people want women telling them what to do. And, unfortunately, that’s the role of what a president does,
either symbolically or actually. I think that people don’t want that because they resist it, and I think people don’t want that because they fear it. They fear for the woman herself and they fear for themselves—that our country won’t be as protected with a woman guiding it as it is with a man. And those are very outdated notions of protection and security, but I think that they are
deeply
embedded in many people.

MS
: What will it take, do you think? What factors or conditions are going to change this? Do you feel like we’re near a consciousness where we would be ready to elect a woman president?

AR
: I think that having Barack Obama, not because he is an African American, but having a male president who tries to be less masculine, or who doesn’t have his masculinity to prove, is a step in that direction. He didn’t have military service. It never dawned on him to have military service. He came from a community-organizing background. He, in many ways, had what would be considered a female legacy. That’s the argument that has been used against him. “But he hasn’t been on the front lines!” And that’s obviously a generational difference. But I think that his presidency definitely laid the foundation because of the type of male leader that he is and has been. I don’t know that we’re ready to elect a woman president. As much as I’m ready to vote for one, I don’t know that the rest of the country is. And I think people like Hillary Clinton now—because she lost—I don’t know that if she starts running for president, that they’re going to like her again, and that’s just sad. You know, they said, “Oh, she has such great approval ratings now.” I was like, “Right—because she was secretary of state, not president.” There’s been a lot of things out there that have sort of proven that women in conventional forms of leadership are as capable as men, but I don’t know that arguing that at large is yet going to be acceptable.

MS
: It seems like such a tricky conundrum, because on the one side it’s this notion that women aren’t perceived as “tough enough” to handle some of the things that you would have to deal with as president. But on the other side of things, there’s what Sheryl Sandberg talked about in her book, the likability factor—that when women do act that way, that they are perceived as less likable. I don’t know what to do with a catch-22 like that, or where the entry points are for change.

AR
: And I think there’s resistance to it. . . . Sheryl Sandberg is not a good example, because I do think that Sheryl is comfortable with those positions of power that some women are not comfortable with. I think that women’s discomfort with those levels of power is multifold. I think some women don’t want to be in those über levels of power because they don’t like how power has traditionally been used against people. That if you’re powerful, that means that other people are disempowered, and what does that mean? So there are some women who have an emotional hurdle when it comes to conventional forms of leadership. I also think that there are a lot of women who just don’t want that responsibility. Think about it—they’re often raising their kids, they’re running their households—even if they have tons of help, to add that level of responsibility is very terrifying to a lot of women. And I think women do take it very personally, and become very entrenched in it, and so there is that responsibility that they . . . not that they’re avoiding responsibility in their lives, but that added level of responsibility.

I also think that with that power comes a
huge
compromise, and I see a lot of women, again not the Sheryl Sandbergs, but I see a lot of women who would rather plateau their careers at a certain point and they’d rather feel like they’re really making a difference. There’s this great study at Princeton University, looking at women in undergraduate leadership, and they found that women were not reaching the top levels of
leadership. They’re becoming vice president and managing editor, but not editor-in-chief and not president. And they were sort of saying, “Well, why is that?” And it was
not
institutional barriers; it was women saying that they find the top position is such a figurehead role, and “If I’m going to give my time, I would rather feel like I’m really making a difference.” Women could have bought into that—I mean, you could argue it the other way—but I found that so profound because I do feel like a lot of women are like, “I want to work really hard, but I want to work really hard in a way that I know is meaningful.”

MS
: I guess the conundrum, then, is the fact that if women aren’t in those top positions, then we’re not reflected. Even looking at Washington, where we have more women now in Congress than we’ve ever had—but it’s still so far from parity—and yet, look what they’re voting on. These are women’s bodies, these are women’s rights and women’s lives. Why is it important that we have more women’s voices and more diversity in leadership positions, not just in Washington, but throughout all sectors and industries?

AR
: One of the things I love about
MAKERS
, for instance, is I feel it overemphasizes that change often gets made by people who don’t set out to make change. That they are accidental in their leadership. Kathrine Switzer, who opens
MAKERS
, is this marathon runner, and she’s wanted to run a marathon, but then at a certain point she says, “Oh my gosh, I
have
to finish this race, because if I don’t finish it, they’re not going to think girls can do it.” And Sandra Day O’Connor, when Reagan called her and asked her to be on the Supreme Court, her immediate instinct was no. She didn’t want to fail. She’s like, “But that’s not where my level of expertise is,” and somebody said to her, “Would a man ever say that?” and they said, “You need to accept this, not for yourself, but so other
women can have that opportunity.” When Ruth Simmons was offered the presidency of Brown University, she said no, and a colleague of hers at Smith said, “You
have
to say yes, because if you don’t say yes, they’ll never ask another woman.” And so I agree that I think that the way to get a woman to be president, in some ways—or more women to consider putting themselves in positions to potentially be president—is to almost say, it’s actually not about you; it’s about other people who want to be able to execute these choices in their futures and we need somebody to be the first and we need somebody to put them out there. I think time and time again, you see that—that women are so much more likely to act when it involves the potential for somebody else, not just the potential for them.

MS
: It’s interesting. Part of it is trying to entice women, because we also want women to go in and change the paradigms of power and leadership and yet, can they even do that? It’s a catch-22. I’ve been hearing that we might first need a “test” president that could possibly wind up being a Republican conservative, our Margaret Thatcher, so we can just see a woman there, and then maybe the next one can do a little bit more of what she wants. Could you imagine a scenario like that? I think it was Celinda Lake who said she thought we could maybe have a Republican conservative woman first, because it was too much to think of a woman and a Democrat. Like it was almost too much for people to take. Do you think there’s a little truth to that?

AR
: Well, I think the way I’ve heard it argued in the past was that Democrats will vote for a woman just to see a woman in office, whereas Republicans aren’t going to vote for a woman just to see her in office, so it would have to be a Republican to get them to vote. And so what would make the difference in actually electing a woman is having her be Republican. But I also think that feeds a lot of stereotypes, because a woman who is
going to run to be president is going to have to act a lot like a man. And though the Democratic Party is as masculine as the Republican Party, I do think that there’s a lot historically that more associates masculine values with the Republican Party and more feminine values with the Democratic Party. So I think women are going to have to go to an extreme in order to be accepted. And that’s the way it’s going to work. So I do think that even if she’s a Democrat, she’s going to have to present overly conservative in that role.

MS
: Gloria was one of my first interviews that I did for this project, and I remember her talking about these fixed gender stereotypes that we have—that it’s just as much about transforming the gender roles we apply to boys and men, too, because part of the problem is that even male leaders can’t show their full circle of human qualities. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if it’s in the media, or how we change some of these very fixed notions that have become subliminal about masculine leadership.

AR
: I think what’s also happening right now with political power is you’re having a generation of people who were entirely raised with a very cynical approach to politics. So when I see people not wanting to run for office, it’s not because they don’t want to rise to the occasion of leadership, but they don’t find the government effective and they don’t find it to have that power over their individual lives. Obviously the president of the United States will always have an extreme role in our lives, but I think a lot of people are like, “Why do
that
? I could be so much more effective if I’m the president of a company, than if I’m the president of a country.” So I think that getting this next generation to run is going to be a great challenge. . . . You know, in other generations, you served your country; that’s what you did. You went into the military, you gave back. And this generation, and our generation is included a little bit, entirely lost that. It’s like, “No,
my country serves
me
, I don’t want to serve my country.” And I think that that’s a big hurdle to get over, across genders. But it’s the cynical approach. And I do think, yes, we can have very sensitive men who are able to argue a very feminist position on a lot of issues, whether it’s healthcare reform or birth control coverage, and they can think of their mothers and their daughters, or even themselves. I do think that it makes a difference if women are actually in that conversation. And I’ve loved hearing Kirsten Gillibrand talk about that and lots of other women who just sort of say, over and over again, that it does feel different when there are more women there.

MS
: What kinds of structural changes need to happen to support more representation of women in Washington and in leadership positions in general?

AR
: I think some of it, when it comes specifically to this type of political power, it’s campaign finance reform, because I feel like women don’t want to have to go out and raise those massive amounts of money that it now requires. They feel guilty. They feel responsible. They don’t want to do it. So I think campaign finance reform is a huge part of women running for office. I also think the news media has to change. I mean, it is still shocking to me how many times you read an article and it comments on a woman’s clothes and just her appearance—and women feel humiliated by that. It’s just not something they want to have to go through. So I just think the news media really has to be mandated to only describe a female politician in the same exact way they would describe a male politician.

MS
: How can men be a part of the solution?

AR
: Not only do you need to sort of step aside, but I think you need men to really say politics looks different and better when more women are part of it—like to acknowledge it and to recognize it as a clear
advantage
for the country when there are more people having this conversation. And I have to do this as a white person. . . . I have to say no to an event, because I know that there are already five white people on the event. And I have to be like, you know what, I’m just not going to go to that, because you don’t need other [white people]. And I think we need more men to really be man enough [
laughs]
to say, “You know what, I’m not going to run for office because I
do
really think it’s time for more women to be in this position.” And that sounds sort of namby-pamby, but I think it’s true and realistic that it’s not just about more women saying yes, but more men saying no. And realizing that it is going to benefit them if Congress looks a little bit more representative . . . and the presidency.