What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (70 page)

MS
: Did you ever think of running for political office?

SF
: It’s funny that we went this far into this conversation before that question came up.

MS
: I’m sure you’re asked that a lot.

SF
: That’s okay. I always say thank you. It’s a vote of confidence to ask that of someone. And it’s what we need to do, right? To find more young
people who come from underrepresented communities, women, and ask them, so it’s good. I typically try to ask the audience or whoever asks me the question, “Well, will you consider it, too?” It can’t be just one person. There’s got to be a lot of us considering that. So, because I’m talking a lot about how important it is for young women and underrepresented folks to run for office, I always say I try not to be a hypocrite, and so that’s something I would consider if it were potentially the right time and the right opportunity. And maybe that’s something that would happen, but it’s not something that I’m focused on at this second.

MS
: Talking about younger women, how old are you?

SF
: I’m thirty-one.

MS
: I always feel like there’s this misconception that young women are very complacent with these issues and not engaged or involved or concerned. What is your reading on younger generations of women? Do you think that it’s true that they’re not as aware of what’s at stake?

SF
: I think that young people of my own generation are engaged and do care about these issues, and there’s some research showing that they do. And . . . it can’t be uncommon that there would be this generational misunderstanding. No, you’re not going to get someone who’s twenty right now to understand what it was like before
Roe
. They didn’t live then; they’re not going to have the same emotional reaction and connection to that, but they have a connection to a different type of issue and a different perspective. And they understand the importance of
Roe
, how it fits into that, but they’re looking at the fact that even though we have
Roe
, the vast majority of the women in this country have barriers to accessing an abortion because it’s prohibitively expensive, considering what has happened
to the insurance regulation and the Hyde Amendment around paying for it, and because it’s become so difficult logistically to access. So many clinics have been closed, there’s an attack on Title X funding, and, for contraception and things like that, there are waiting periods and parental-notification requirements and all of these barriers. So the fight’s just going to be different for each generation. What’s good about that is, it forces all of us as a movement to continue updating what we’re fighting for and not to get stuck in yesterday’s language, yesterday’s hype, because then movements don’t keep moving forward. They don’t attract new support, because they’re not resonating with what the fights are today. So I consider the reproductive-justice framework, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, and that’s a framework that connects more with young people today and with what they’ve seen in their lives of reproductive-justice struggles. And it connects more with our social-justice movements, which are really important to millennials and really important to all of us succeeding in this capacity. So I’m really optimistic about the changes in language that we’re seeing from several of the national reproductive-rights organizations and the ways in which a lot of people are really grappling with this different framework of reproductive justice. And I’m optimistic that this is going to connect us to a lot of people who do care about these issues but haven’t been part of the movement so far.

MS
: You were saying earlier that we have to start with girls. What would be the one message you would want to instill in young girls today? What do you think is a message that’s most important for girls to hear?

SF
: I think it’s twofold. I think we have to make sure that they do realize there are still systematic barriers for women. Even though it doesn’t apply to them personally, because they might be a more privileged child, they have to understand the different outcomes in life for women around the
world and in the United States and realize that there are both important fights going on and important barriers to grapple with. And then, beyond that, they have to realize that they are the generation that can fix a lot of it, and that they can have a big impact on these concerns. So it’s not a defeating proposition to realize this, but [they need] to understand that when we say, “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up” or, “You can do anything you want to do,” that’s true, but you have to realize what kind of challenges you face in doing that. So it’s both politicization and empowerment that have to happen.

CELINDA LAKE

“We can’t have true equality for girls if they never see themselves in penultimate leadership positions. And it isn’t just a question of not seeing a woman as president. Not seeing a woman as chief of staff in the military. Not seeing a woman as the leading general or leader of any of the major branches of the military. Not seeing a woman governor in their state, ever. Not seeing a woman head of a major company in their state. . . . This really influences how they see themselves, so it has a profound impact on what girls think is possible for themselves.”

C
ELINDA
L
AKE IS
a prominent pollster and political strategist for Democrats and progressives. She currently serves as president of Lake Research Partners. Lake’s polling and strategic advice helped candidates such as Jon Tester, Tim Walz, and Governor Bob Wise defeat incumbent Republicans, and her expertise guided Senator Mark Begich to victory, making him the first Senate candidate in Alaska to oust the incumbent in fifty years. She has focused on women candidates and women’s concerns, having worked for Speaker Pelosi, Governor Janet Napolitano, and Senator Debbie Stabenow. Lake worked for the largest independent expenditure to take back the House and has been a key player in campaigns launched by progressive groups such as the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, HRC, EMILY’s List and more. Additionally, she recently helped elect Annise Parker as the first openly gay mayor of a
major U.S. city. Lake co-authored the book
What Women Really Want
with Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, which examines the way women are changing the political landscape in America. She also served as pollster for Senator Joe Biden’s presidential bid.

MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think we’ve not, as of yet, had a woman president?

CELINDA LAKE
: It’s a super good question. From my own personal experience, we had our first woman VP run for office in 1984—almost thirty years later and we haven’t had a woman president. That’s just amazing. If you had told me in my lifetime we would have the possibility of not having had a woman president, I would have been pessimistic, even by my standards.

One of the reasons that we don’t have a woman president is that we haven’t had enough women in the pipeline. We haven’t had enough women governors, we haven’t had enough women mayors of major cities. And the second reason we haven’t had a woman president is, it turns out, that it is extremely difficult to get women elected to executive offices. It’s related to the purse. It’s extremely difficult to get women elected to executive office, period, and the presidency being kind of the ultimate executive office. Then if we look at the two major things that voters think a president is supposed to deal with, war and the economy, those are the two issues that voters tend to have the most concerns about women on. Women are still running behind, just generic women candidates, are running behind in terms of being perceived as being good on the economy. And it’s not reinforced by our broader culture: We don’t have that many women CEOs. We don’t have that many women in manufacturing highlighted. So if you want jobs, if you want someone to compete in an international trade environment—in
some of the ways people think, particularly in a global economy, that to compete internationally is to wage the war of the economy—that’s very tough for women to be perceived as strong in that arena. Then the other aspect, of course, is military war. We haven’t had that many women generals—we have Claudia Kennedy, but we haven’t had our Colin Powell woman general. We haven’t had a woman joint chief of staff. We haven’t had a woman in charge of Iraq or Afghanistan. So in general, the political pipeline is very, very thin and the cultural pipeline is very thin. These two central areas are still very non-traditional areas for voters.

MS
: What do you think most often prevents women from advancing through the political pipeline? You’re an expert in electing women candidates—is part of it that not enough women run? I know that’s part of the discussion that came out of Sheryl Sandberg’s book, the idea that women oftentimes don’t pursue those types of positions. Do you find that to be true, or is it more a combination of both?

CL
: I think it’s less that women don’t run, than that women don’t win. When women run, they more often veer off into the Senate, than become governor; because they know that they are more likely to do well as a senator, to win election as a senator. So I don’t think it’s the ambition question. This is rarefied air to begin with, running for top office, but it’s rarefied air for men, too. So ambition is not the problem here. The problem is that when women run, they have a much harder time getting elected. And in some ways it’s easier for the first woman president to be a Republican than it is going to be for a Democrat, because the stereotypes of a Democrat and the stereotypes of a woman are the same. The stereotypes of a Republican counteract some of the stereotypes of being a woman.

The biggest problem is the trait of strength and toughness. People just don’t see women as tough; they have a harder time seeing them as strong
leaders. They tend to see them in collective leadership, rather than solo leadership. So executive offices in general are very hard for women to gain. That’s why we don’t have a lot of women governors. And the president is the penultimate executive office.

MS
: It’s so interesting, when I ask people if they think they’ll see a woman president in their lifetime and whether we’re ready for that, a lot of people answer by saying, “Well, if Hillary Clinton runs, we probably will.” I’m sure you did a lot of polling around the time when she was running—everybody seems to feel if anybody, especially a Democratic woman candidate, had a chance of winning, it would be Hillary. Do you agree with that, because she’s this unique blend of some of these things that you’re talking about?

CL
: That’s right. And she’s unique in a lot of those things we were talking about. She’s always been treated by voters as the exception. She’s had to demonstrate toughness in her political, as well as her personal life. And, frankly, just as George W. Bush III was validated by George Bush senior, so Hillary Clinton, still in the back of people’s minds would be, “Well, if anything did ever happen, she can talk to Bill.” So there’s a validation piece there, as well, that’s just reassuring to voters, as it was for George W. Bush. And I think people are worried, for example, that if we have a woman president, people will be more likely to attack the United States. Nobody’s going to think that Hillary Clinton or the combination of Hillary and Bill Clinton is going to hold back.

MS
: I think it was Anita Hill I was interviewing who was saying that she thought that because of the various stereotypes that you’re talking about, the first woman president may have to over-prove her toughness, may actually be more inclined to go to war or to show those traits, than she
might naturally, just because of the fact that she would be the first woman there. Do you think that that is going to be true, or goes back to what you were saying that the first woman president might even be a Republican?

CL
: Yeah, I think that they’re going to have to counter the stereotype in some way, and it’s easier for a Republican woman to do that. The dilemma for Republican women is they can’t make it out of their own primary. Only about 45 percent of Republican primary voters were female. About 58–59 percent of Democratic primary voters were female, so that’s one of the reasons why women in the Democratic side are having an easier time getting out of their primaries than Republican women are. If you look at the governors right now, we have four Republican women governors and only one Democratic woman governor. So it’s telling, I think. It’s also normally easier to elect a woman executive in good times than in bad. So the tougher the times, the tougher it is to elect a woman.

MS
: It’s interesting that you were saying that it’s not necessarily a question of enough women entering the pipeline, that it’s actually about being elected in the seats that they’re running for. I haven’t done extensive research on this, but during my interviews, many people are saying to me that studies say that when women run, they win. But you’re saying that’s actually not the case.