Why Are Women Always Last To Approve Of Other Women?
January 29, 2009 / 11:43 am • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier
Name the minority. Just think of one. At one time or another, that minority–Irish, Italian, Black, Mexican, Cuban, etc.–has taken the back seat to the more prominent, and usually earlier, American immigrant majority.
And yet one group, no matter the color, who always follows: Women.
Sarah Palin’s mistreatment this last election at the hands of the Left, the Press, and mostly, women generally, revealed the sexism and hypocrisy of a big chunk of the electorate. So, Sarah is back in Washington today to talk at the Alfalfa Dinner. What caught my attention in The Politico’s article was this:
Comprised of mostly older white men, the group didn’t induct women until 1993. Blacks were only welcomed in the 1970s.
Presidents, though, almost always attend and speak.
This isn’t a sporting club or a golf club, where guys get naked together in steam rooms. This is a political club that everyone attends. Blacks were welcome 20 years before women.
During the election, both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were subject to vicious, sexist attacks. In Sarah Palin’s case, much to my chagrin, she was savaged by many a conservative woman. She was “too young” or she should “be with her children” or she should have “done a better job with her daughter” or she was “too beautiful” or she “talked funny” or she should “be home with her husband.”
Women stand in the way of equality. In order to justify their own work-parenting-spousal-career choices, they must make themselves right and everyone else wrong. This behavior is bad enough in Mommy and Me play dates, it’s worse, when the cattiness eliminates good potential candidates.
Are American women willing to continue their inane double bind and risk losing out on America’s potential Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto, or Golda Meir?
The sexist men’s clubs tend to jump out and grab our attention. Women were only admitted in 1993? Wow. But the real stumbling block for a woman politician’s success is other women. They hold women candidates to standards they would never hold a man to. It’s time for women to let themselves off the hook and realize there is no “perfect” way to balance work and career. The Presidency is a sacrifice for all families who join their parent in the Oval Office. It is public service.
A woman could do the job. They have a few years to get used to the idea:
And aside from the real thing, club members always nominate a mock candidate for the highest office in the land. The “nominee” is then required to give an acceptance speech.
Should Palin be this year’s lucky nominee, she’ll be in good company: Three honorees have actually gone on to actually become president – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
20 Responses to “Why Are Women Always Last To Approve Of Other Women?”
January 29 2009 / 12:56 pm
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Women’s own hypocrisy is the single greatest roadblock in the fight for their own equal rights.
It’s the irony to end all ironies, but it’s the straight-up truth.
January 29 2009 / 12:58 pm
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Good question. The level of hostility directed at Palin was (is) truly eye-opening. Call me sexist, but I get a sick feeling in my stomach when I see women behave so viciously.
January 29 2009 / 1:02 pm
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By ascribing Sarah Palin’s tarnished image to “catiness”, aren’t you indulging in a sexist stereotype?
Women criticized Sarah Palin for a variety of reasons, the most important of which had to do with her qualifications and her policy positions. Women could see – like the rest of us – that Sarah Palin had a tenuous grasp of foreign policy, that she didn’t understand several fundamental concepts, that she was on the wrong side of the majority of women on a host of issues from gun control to abortion rights. Many women were offended by McCain’s obviously cynical attempt at pandering to them.
Women would have no trouble supporting “America’s potential Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto, or Golda Meir”, but they simply could not find those leadership qualities in Sarah Palin.
January 29 2009 / 1:45 pm
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“Many women were offended by McCain’s obviously cynical attempt at pandering to them.”
Why is the selection of Sarah Palin ‘pandering’? McCain knew he needed a true conservative to get the conservative base back on board, and he found that in Sarah Palin.
And why were only Palin’s credentials questioned? No one ever questioned Obama’s total lack of experience at anything. Or Hillary Clinton’s “experience”? The only experience she had is riding her husband’s coat tails.
At least Sarah Palin got where she did on her own merit.
January 29 2009 / 3:06 pm
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I felt very sorry for Palin. There is not doubt that her treatment was mean and down right vicious. No one should have to be exposed to something that horrible. Making fun of anyone is uncalled for and somehow it is so prevalent in the political arena.
I will have to say honestly, though, that as a woman, I also did not feel Palin was qualified. Her winking into the camera, her speech mannerisms, and the lack of foreign policy, were simply not Presidential enough for my taste. However, she certainly has time to work on those things and become a better leader.
In regards to women, well, I could write a very, very,long comment here. Every single place that I have ever worked at has shown me that too many women are cliquish, immature, and down right mean when it comes to other women whom they perceive to be different from themselves. More than once have I walked away shaking my head in disbelief at the vicious things they say about other women. Yet these same women belong to churches and other organization where they want to be perceived as leaders and or examples, and as fair and open minded, intelligent and compassionate. Something is not adding up.
January 29 2009 / 4:31 pm
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Men are used to situations in which former peers become their leaders, either temporarily or for the long term///women are generally less familiar with that, and have a hard time accepting other women as their leaders unless there is some VERY clear reason why “she got the job and I didn’t.” They don’t usually have the grace to put it down to the “breaks of the game.” And women are EXTREMELY concerned with status, even more than men are.
January 30 2009 / 12:15 am
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I am always astonished when I see someone say that Sarah Palin was “not qualified.” Has anyone noticed that the person who was actually elected to President was completely unqualified for any national office? But he’s a male with the right progenitors, so he gets a pass.
Palin was trashed because she wasn’t willing to promote the gender feminist agenda, and because the gender feminists cannot afford a politically conservative woman in national office.
In a way it’s amusing that some people are shocked. Women are ruthless. We have no moral brakes. It’s all or nothing with us. Men were disgusted when Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear, but women weren’t. Women were saying, “Boxing is a brutal, violent sport, and this is just part of it. It’s all horrible, so if you don’t object to it all, you can’t object to any of it.” It would be nice if women did more thinking and less feeling about the issues, but that really is just the way we are.
January 30 2009 / 9:04 am
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The Alfalfa club didn’t admit women until 1993, and the President usually attends?
I wonder if these two facts are in anyway related. Perhaps the Alfalfa Club began admitting women in 1993 because that’s the first year we had a President who wouldn’t attend otherwise.
I bet the Alfalfa Club decided that they preferred the tradition of the President attending their events to the tradition of excluding women.
I never vote for conservative candidates, so I never expected to like Sarah Palin, and I didn’t. I do agree that there was criticism of her that was clearly sexist, though I was extra sensitive to that because I was throughly discusted with the way Hillary was treated.
January 30 2009 / 11:28 am
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I fully agree with Trish above here.
Sarah P. not ‘qualified’? What a joke, to say that.
To criticize her ’speech mannerisms’, a bigger joke!
Some of us can not stand the speech mannerisms of the new President, but understands that it is small potatoes and that a person should not be judged on that.
Sarah P. was not liberal enough for most women and that was that.
January 30 2009 / 11:48 am
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Even a lot of very conservative people felt that Palin still had a long way to go before she could hold a high office such as President or Vice President of the United States. This is not an attack on her personhood but simply a fact.
January 30 2009 / 2:26 pm
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Viola…”Palin still had a long way to go before she could hold a high office such as President or Vice President of the United States”…maybe if you compare her with some theoretical perfect candidate…but if you compare her with actual candidates like Joe Biden…really??
“Speech patterns”…we are getting uncomfortably close to the kind of distinction among accents which has done so much to preserve class boundaries in Britain.
January 30 2009 / 3:08 pm
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Erica,
Uh, what do you uh, mean, uh, when you uh, say, uh, that people, uh, have trouble uh, understanding
Teleprompter JesusB. Hussein Obama?January 30 2009 / 3:52 pm
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That Melissa is something that has always baffled me. Especially when the conservative women going after Palin. I can understand why liberal women didn’t like her.
January 30 2009 / 4:40 pm
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Shane, stating my own opinion, is not “going after Palin.” I think she is pretty amazing in a lot of ways. I just would not want her leading this country.
David, “speech patterns” was a poor choice of words on my part. More importantly, she lacked knowledge and I simply did not feel she was qualified. We’ll just have to disagree on that one.
January 30 2009 / 4:55 pm
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Viola, thanks for response. If you say your issue with Palin is knowledge/qualifications. then I certainly believe you..but clearly, a lot of people are anti-Palin specifically because she does not follow the speech patterns associated with Nth generation wealth and with Ivy League graduates. How many of the vitriolic opponents of Palin have objected to the obvious lack of knowledge, and the apparent lack of seriousness, on the part of Caroline Kennedy?
January 30 2009 / 8:59 pm
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Yeah, Palin wasn’t qualified to be president (and actually, lest we forget, she was running to be vice president.) Yet the same people that said that thought that somehow Caroline Kennedy was qualified to be Senator from New York. I suspect that there was a class bias against Palin as well as a sexist bias.
January 30 2009 / 11:10 pm
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Palin was more qualified to be Vice-President than Barack Obama was to be President. At least she knows how many states there are.
If she really were not qualified, the left would not have been attacking her on a personal level.
January 31 2009 / 11:31 am
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Dr. Clouthier,
As usual, I agree with you on many levels, since your arguments always seem to me to be couched in luminous common sense.
I’m 63, and cite as my bona fides having been raised (and abused) by women, as well as multiple marriages/relationships/work situations, etc. involving women. I refuse to allow my experiences to devolve into unbridled cynicism, but the last 40 years have supremely tested my admiration of the opposite sex.
It’s apparent, imo, that Governor Palin was deemed a threat to the female electorate for one reason only, which is that she refused to trade on the one unassailable claim of modern American women, the Right to Victimhood.
If a person is defined by the enemies they threaten, the reaction of the Twitter Generation, “Feminism”, and frustrated homosexuals should be sufficient for any adult to suspect that Governor Palin’s adulthood is a remedy sorely needed by our country. Envy is the ugliest of human emotions, and its ascendance in the latest Presidential election should be an embarrassment to all of us.
January 31 2009 / 12:54 pm
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Any woman who says that she could not support Sarah Palin because she believes that Palin is unqualified is, I believe, herself unqualified to make such a judgment. Thus, I cannot support such women and won’t bother to seriously consider anything that they have to say.
January 31 2009 / 5:10 pm
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Palin is more qualified than BO to lead this country based on proven executive experience and proven Constitutionally mandated natural born American citizenship