Marianne Schnall - What will it take to make a woman president?: conversations about women, leadership and power

WHAT WILL

IT TAKE

TO MAKE A

WOMAN

PRESIDENT?

Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power

MARIANNE SCHNALL

SEAL PRESS

What Will It Take to Make a Woman President?

Copyright 2013 Marianne Schnall

Published by

Seal Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

1700 Fourth Street

Berkeley, California

www.sealpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

All quotes and material included in this book are from Marianne Schnalls exclusive interviews, most of which were conducted specifically for this book. Some individual quotes were excerpted from interviews that originally appeared in publications including CNN.com, Feminist.com, The Huffington Post, Omega Womens Leadership Center, and Womens Media Center; some also appeared in Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness, and Finding Your Own Voice. Portions of the Maya Angelou and Kirsten Gillibrand interviews also appeared at The Huffington Post and Feminist.com. Portions of the Marianne Williamson interview also appeared at The Huffington Post.

ISBN: 978-1-58005-497-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schnall, Marianne.

What will it take to make a woman president? / by Marianne Schnall.

p. cm.

1. WomenUnited StatesInterviews. 2. Women political activistsUnited States. 3. Women presidential candidatesUnited States. 4. PoliticiansUnited StatesAttitudes. 5. WomenUnited StatesAttitudes.

I. Title.

HQ1161.S378 2013

305.4092dc23

[B]

2013031218

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Kara Davison

Interior design by meganjonesdesign.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

To my incredible daughters, Jazmin and Lotus, and all
the other extraordinary girls and women around the world

May your sense of self-worth, abilities, dreams,
and opportunities be limitless

NOTE TO READERS:

More interviews with politicians, public officials, celebrities, journalists, writers, and other thought leaders can be found online at womanpresidentbook.com, and in the e-book edition of this book.

CONTENTS

T HIS BOOK STARTED with a question. When Barack Obama was first elected, my family and I were talking about how wonderful it was to have our first African American president. My then-eight-year-old daughter, Lotus, looked at me through starry eyes and deadpanned this seemingly simple, obvious question: Why havent we ever had a woman president? It was a really good question, one that, despite having spent two decades running the womens nonprofit website Feminist.com and writing about womens issues, I found difficult to answer. But it is these types of questions, often out of the mouths of babes, that can wake us up out of a trance. Many inequities have become such a seamless part of our history and culture that we may subliminally begin to accept them as just how it is and not question the why or explore the possibility that circumstances could be different.

It does seem a bit crazy when you think of it: When so many other nations have women presidents, why doesnt the United States? Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister of Great Britain three times. Argentina, Iceland, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Finland, Ireland, Liberia, Chile, and South Korea have elected female heads of state. Yet the United States, presumably one of the most progressive countries in the world, lags dismally behind. We have finally elected an African American president; when will we celebrate that same milestone for women?

The closest we have come to having a woman president was Hillary Clintons nearly successful primary campaign against Barack Obama in 2008. In Obama, she had a formidable opponent, one who also broke through important barriers. Though it was a tight, fascinating, and at times contentious race, Obama prevailed. As Hillary observed in her powerful concession speech, Although we werent able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, its got about eighteen million cracks in it. She added, speaking to the emotional crowd gathered at Washingtons National Building Museum, And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. That has always been the path of progress in America.

Fast-forward a few years later to the 2011 primary season, when I was talking to an editor at CNNs In America division about writing a piece for them. I was about to cover the Womens Media Center awards, where I would be interviewing people like Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Sheryl Sandberg, Arianna Huffington, and others, so I asked CNN if there were any questions in particular they wanted me to ask. They said they were interested in the attendees impressions of why women have gained such little momentum in Washington just four years after having a near presidential contender, and what we can do to get more women into the pipeline of political leadership. Taking that one step further, I decided to add a question related to my daughters query by asking, What will it take to make a woman president? That article wound up on the CNN home page and received hundreds of comments, both positive and negative. The popularity of the article made me realize how important and timely this topic really was, and that it was worth exploring even further.

So here it is: my journey to get answers to some of these questions through speaking to some of the most influential journalists, activists, politicians, and thought leaders of today. Why havent we had a woman president? What will it take? And why is it important? While I use a woman president as a symbol, this book is also about the broader goal of encouraging women and girls as leaders and change agents in their lives, their communities, and the larger world. It also explores the many changing paradigms occurring in politics and in our culture, which the recent election seems to confirm. I hope to spotlight these positive shifts, as well as identify where the remaining obstacles and challenges are, in hopes that by looking at these themes from so many sides and perspectives, we can move closer to meaningful and effective solutions.

Certainly, we need to imagine not only a world where a woman can be president, but one in which women are equally represented in Congress and many other positions of leadership and influence in our society. While it was history-making to have elected twenty women to the Senate in 2012, 20 percent is still far from parity. Women are 50 percent of the population, yet they occupy just a fraction of that in elected office. The United States currently ranks seventy-seventh on an international list of womens participation in national government. And the numbers are not much better in the corporate world: a meager twenty-one of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and women hold about 14 percent of executive-officer positions and 16 percent of board seats. Women are in only about 5 percent of executive positions in the media. Across the board, women are rarely adequately represented at the tables where important decisions are being made.