Single Ladies at the G-20
by Carlyn Reichel on April 15, 2009 in Opinion
With President Obama nestled snugly back in the White House after his European tour, and the first lady having personally lifted J. Crew out of dire economic straits with her wardrobe choices along the way, we can finally take a moment to pause and reflect on the past few weeks. As the “charm offensive” toured the Western world, I felt a little like we needed a Santa-tracker device to keep tabs on our wandering leader. England, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Turkey, and Iraq - all in a little over a week. And everywhere Obama went, the cameras were sure to follow. One particularly striking image came early in the trip: the group photo of participants in the G-20 summit in London.
It was a diverse image, a powerful symbol of the divergent cultures represented in this world meeting to face truly global crises. The different tie choices alone could have formed a great cooperative international color wheel. But, as I’m sure you can see the point I’m winding up to here, there were exactly two representatives not wearing a two-button, double-vented cut of the standard Armani suit in black, blue, or charcoal gray. Germany’s Angela Merkel and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner were the only ladies at the G-20 conference.
You go girls. Way to represent.
Big ups to Germany and Argentina for holding down the fort, but that’s a pretty sad state of affairs, actually. We can readily point to many countries that have had lady leaders at some point in their history. It’s easy to pull out the one-off citations of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Gandhi, but it gets harder to go down the list from there. There are of course many other examples from other countries, and many other female heads-of-state in non G-20 countries of the world. HKS alumna and president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf jumps immediately to mind. But the point remains, a picture taken at any point in time over the last 50 years of world leadership would look no better than the one taken last week in London. And not many of the countries that can boast having had a prominent female leader can claim to have had two.
The point is not to have had a token, single lady take the reins of power for a brief term and then right back to the status quo we go. The point is to reach a place where it’s not remarkable to see women in roles of authority. Or any underrepresented group for that matter. Yes, we have our first black president, congratulations to us. Having crossed this barrier, though, will we lose the urgency of awareness and sink back into our comfortable prejudices and complacencies, happy that we can point to President Obama as proof that we are no longer trapped by our cultural mores? Wouldn’t the true test of a “post-racial” America be how long it takes us to elect our second and third president who isn’t a white man? (Apologies to Ben Polk.)
Alternately, will we just move on to the next minority group waiting to have their “turn”? Women next, followed by Hispanics, Asian Americans somewhere around the year 2030, and we’ll see if there’s time to work in Native Americans or homosexuals somewhere along the way. Of course, we might have to double-up to get everyone through the electoral mill efficiently - either someone has to settle for the VP slot, or someone has to run as a Republican. Your call.
Clearly these are not constructive approaches. As of two weeks ago, in what had to have been his fiftieth televised appearance since inauguration, President Obama was still receiving questions from the press along the lines of “what’s it like to be a black president?” This is the wrong question - it can only serve to reinforce Obama’s presidency as an exception rather than the new rule.
The ultimate goal would be to look at a picture of world leaders and not be struck by the fact that only two are women, because it could just as easily have been that only two were men, and that’s just how the elections came out this time around. To hold a presidential election and not have the historic hopes of a group attached to any single candidate because he or she is one of many qualified representatives from that group. It’s getting there that’s the hard part.
Sadly, after almost two years at HKS, I’m not entirely sure what the right questions are as yet. But I do know for a fact that women are less likely to self-nominate for office. I do know you have to ask women three times to be a candidate when you only have to ask a man once, if ever. I don’t think it’s too far a leap to assume similar rules hold for other historically marginalized groups as well. So maybe a good question to start with would just be: “Will you run for office?”
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