A ROOM full of estrogen. Political estrogen. Sounds like a good time, right? This was the case last week at a book discussion and signing sponsored by the Center for Politics' 2006 National Symposium Series on Women and Politics. Kelly Anne Conway and Celinda Lake came to discuss their recent book, "What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live."
The authors were from opposite ends of the political spectrum but came together in a bipartisan effort to analyze the state of politics as they pertain to women. Invariably, the question of a female in the White House was raised. This broken record pervades politics and distracts the presidential election from consequential issues. As it stands, polls show that a woman will likely not be elected president in the near future and, indeed, she should not be as long as this cult of gender continues. Americans, feminists, pundits, polls, amateur philosophers and students need to stop speculating.
In the end, it is not necessarily gender that matters but, rather, political ideology. Women may be erasing distinctions in their private lives through what Lake and Conway call "informal female networks," but women are exacerbating distinctions where they matter, in the political sphere.
Because of this, female representation at the heights of politics may not be as monumental as some would like to think. Many women who are able to sacrifice the kind of time it takes to get to the top are out of touch with the average American woman. Indeed, Donald Rumsfeld and Hillary Clinton probably have more in common than Hillary Clinton and the average working mother in say, Kansas. It is mystifying that women clamor together with such fervor for someone whose representation is a shallow facade.
The question of a female president is asinine when women fill the ranks of political and business positions at all levels. This fact seems far more important than clamoring for one figurehead at the top of American politics. Women's professional and political victories over the past 100 years far outweigh any female victory for the White House, whether that victory comes in 2008 or in 2080.
The White House Project, a group dedicated to seeing a woman in the Oval Office claim to be non-partisan. They are simply dedicated to seeing women advance professionally in all sectors. In a large survey conducted by the WHP Americans were first asked about their comfort level with a woman as president of the United States. According to this 2005 poll, 11.3 percent of women are very comfortable with having a woman as president, while 30.5 percent are not very comfortable with the idea. The remaining women were either somewhat comfortable or not at all comfortable. Amazingly, the number of women who expressed discomfort with a female as president outweighed the number of men by eight percentage points. That is to say, according to this poll, a woman will not be elected president in this country any time soon.
Somehow I am not so dismayed by this. It would be a mistake to put a woman in office in part or in whole because of her gender. It is also a mistake and a misconception to continue to hold fast to the idea that women are victims of the political process and that their systematic victimization somehow awards them a position at the top for the sake of "equity." Think I'm exaggerating? The mission statement of The White House Project says, "By supporting women and the values that allow women to succeed
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