The White House Project

I was lucky enough to have met with Benazir Bhutto when she was a guest at a White House Project event nearly ten years ago. Commanding and quick-witted, Bhutto spoke movingly about women’s leadership and its integral importance to democracy. The next and last time I would see her would be at this year’s Council on Foreign Policy lunch in New York shortly before she was to return to Pakistan. I was impressed with her statements on democracy, yet what struck me most was her answer to the question “What would you have done differently during your term as Prime Minister?” Bhutto’s insightful response was that she wished she hadn’t felt the need to appear tougher to compensate for being female – a persistent issue for women who run for and hold office.

I talked with Bhutto for a few minutes afterwards, and have trailed her return to ostensibly share power with Musharraf, and when that fell thru, to stay and participate in the electoral process. But during the last several weeks of violence in Pakistan, the thought that I have had most frequently is that she came home willing to die. It was hard to imagine that it would end any other way.

Bhutto’s murder will be widely covered in the days to come. Yet there are women throughout the world who are not well known like Bhutto – women who also care so deeply about how their country is governed that they risk being raped, disappeared or murdered when they run for office. Just last week, Margaret Wanjiru – a parliamentary candidate in Kenya’s general elections – was reportedly attacked while campaigning in the capital. And there are women like Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, who once elected, lead under conditions that expose them daily to the danger of being assassinated.

Women in the United States are not usually subjected to such extreme forms of violence and intimidation when they enter the political fray. Yet there are many women in this country who dare not run for office for fear of rough treatment in the press, or because politics is such a “dirty” business. A threatening prospect, perhaps, to many women. But it won’t kill you. Benazir Bhutto may have been a contentious political figure, but she was a pioneer in women’s leadership, paving the way for women to lead on the global stage. And if more women led, and more voices and options were on the table, as we say at The White House Project, it could “change everything.”

Monday should have been a great day for Senator Hillary Clinton, as she worked to regain her footing and momentum in the Iowa Caucuses. She appeared on NBC’s Today Show to showcase a hard fought endorsement by the Des Moines Register and Tribune. While being interviewed, she flashed on the screen with a wide grin that was hard to maintain after a grilling that was out of proportion to the occasion (and I have not complained about the press treatment of Senator Clinton heretofore).

But my afternoon was shaken by an article by Jonathan Tilove, a National Correspondent for the Newhouse News Service, citing a Web search, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, had conducted to look for “racist invective” aimed at Senator Obama.

What she found was a mess of misogyny directed towards Senator Clinton that was far more distressing.

The article quotes CJ Pascoe, with the Digital Youth Project at Berkley’s Institute for the Study of Social Change, who thinks Clinton attracts vitriol that a more conservative candidate like Elizabeth Dole would not.

Personally, having studied Dole’s press coverage when she ran in 2000 (before the Internet and Social Networking sites were impacting politics), I think today she would have attracted much of the same invective directed at Senator Clinton.

It’s not about party or ideology, it’s about gender.

Here’s a sample from Tilove’s article and it gets worse:

“Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich,” with more than 23,000 members and 2,200 “wall posts” Internet graffiti in which discussants have fantasized about Clinton being raped by a donkey.

Eschewing the slightest wit or subtlety, some high school boys in Olathe, Kan., created “Punch her in the c—!!” With about 200 members, this group features the discussion topics “Why we hate Hillary Clinton,” “Why you REALLY hate Hillary Clinton” and “What will we do if Hillary becomes president,” which drew two replies “death” and “shooter in the cooter?”

“Another Facebook group, more temperate in tone and with about 13,000 members, is “Life’s a bitch, why vote for one? Anti-Hillary ’08.” Like several other anti-Clinton sites, this one promotes a T-shirt: “Hillary for President. She Puts the C— in Country.”

“The proprietors of the Facebook group “Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Run for President, She Should Just Run the Dishes,” with 2,159 members, offer a preemptive disclaimer to offended visitors: “Do not message just to say how sexist we are and how the Lord will strike us down for hating women. That is just ignorant. It’s been really hard to respond to all of the e-mails without saying the C-word, don’t make us start now.”

This is not about Hillary Clinton. She is a stand in for the changes in gender roles that are happening everywhere. Men are scared about their own identities in light of these changing roles, and women know this. When you add a safe space; a face space, for this fear to be acted out, you get the raw underbelly of this fear.

I don’t know if Senator Clinton will win in Iowa, or the presidency. But by standing up for a job she wants, she has become a stand-in for the vitriol of a country where we act like gender is not an issue.

It is.

And the many men and women of good will need to acknowledge its existence and speak out for a new ethic on a new ethic for this powerful tool I am using right now.

One of the best received lines in the democratic debate yesterday was one Senator Clinton is using, “No more cowboy diplomacy.”

It’s a phrase The White House Project www.thewhitehouseproject.orgcoined to headline the release of our research about messages that women candidates could deliver with authority about national security during the 2006 mid-term elections.

We had no notion that it would ever be picked up again, especially in a presidential election, but I feel proud that it’s out there in the world.

The Iowa debates made me proud. In the way they were conducted and thanks to decisions by candidates of both parties, which must have been made beforehand, there were “no more cowboys.” No one in either posse drew their guns and fired at each other. There was no discussion of Governor Huckabee’s comment about Mormons and Jesus and the Devil on the Republican side (what a relief).

But there was a bit of a lassoing on the Democratic side when Senator Obama was asked about how he was going to make such a dramatic change from the past with so many former Clinton advisors in his camp. He ended his answer by saying he hoped that when he was President ,Hillary would also be advising him.

It drew laughter, but it also has drawn me to the conclusion that everyone outside the Clinton campaign should always refer to the first woman who has a shot at the presidency as Senator Clinton.

Recently, I appeared on the NPR program “On the Media” where the topic was what we should be calling “Hillary.”

The discussion made me a convert to calling her “Senator Clinton.” Having studied how difficult it is for women candidates and leaders in all sectors, to keep their “authority,” I’m surprised I hadn’t really thought this thru.

And in a time of war, because only recently have we begun to feel that it is normal for women to lead on issues of security, (Thanks largely to having seen Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice as Secretaries of State), it’s important to bolster women candidate’s credibility by using their titles.

I thought about it particularly because of the Republican debate where, in answer to a question about the national space program, former governor Huckabee suggested that he would like to put “Hillary” on the first rocket to Mars. I wondered if he would have felt as comfortable saying that we should send a United States Senator into space?

Of course the Clinton campaign uses “Hillary.” Her advisors want voters to feel close and connected to her and probably to make a distinction between her and former President Clinton. That makes sense.

But I don’t think Tim Russert or former governor Huckabee, or Senator Obama should be calling her by her first name.

Corporate women tell me that when they stand up to make a presentation and a male colleague makes a comment about the nice suit they have on they feel their clout shrinking.

As The White House Project’s Barriers and Opportunities Research showed women running for executive positions have to watch everything they wear; every phrase, every decision about what to stand in front of (better behind podiums and in front of major buildings) to make sure they are seen as leaders. We know from all our research on women and authority, and the subtle and not so subtle ways it is eroded.

If you want to hear the “On the Media” discussion, click here.

The media has been abuzz with predictions about the impact of Oprah Winfrey’s campaigning on behalf of Barack Obama. Many wonder if her star power will do the same for a presidential candidate as it does for books. Calling her South Carolina appearance in front of a crowd of 29,000 “Oprahpalooza,” Katherine Seelye analyzed her speech’s pointed ways of engaging African-American voters in the New York Times. Marty Kaplan remarked on the Huffington Post that the antiwar message Oprah delivered during her weekend appearances sent the message to the country and its politicians: “If Oprah can feel it and think it and say it, then you can feel it and think it and say it.”

The question we at The White House Project want to hear your thoughts on is: what effect will this icon and agenda-setter for women across the world have on women’s political participation, in Election 2008?

The growing hot competition among Democratic front runners Clinton and Obama is showering more attention on Iowa women than they have had in decades, in part because polls show Obama’s new found lead is being driven by women.

Iowa is 51% female, and women were 54% of caucus voters in 2004. They are also 52% of the people who consider themselves “likely voters.” You can see why, with only a few points dividing them Obama and Clinton are both competing for this powerful group.

“Who’s woman enough for the job?” maybe the most amusing competition we’ve enjoyed in my lifetime.

Iowa has a quite a legacy when it comes to strong women on both sides of the aisle.

At least two women should have been governor. Roxanne Conlin who ran in 1982 and Bonnie Campbell, who ran in 1994 and went on to become the first Director of the Violence Against Women Office in the Department of Justice created during the Clinton administration.

Mary Louise Smith who chaired the Republican National Committee from 1974-77 was another rising star in Iowa politics. Mary Louise was a friend and colleague who gave me an early warning about the ascendancy of a new conservative right wing in her party. And she was naturally one of the first casualties of that growing faction who finally triumphed with Ronald Reagan. He booted the socially progressive Mary Louise Smith out of leadership on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Race is not Iowa’s strong suit. The state is 93% Caucasian. When I lived there, I was working on both gender and race in the late 1980s the folks swore they weren’t racist because they didn’t even know anybody who wasn’t white. Yikes.

But gender is another matter. I cut my teeth on gender politics in Iowa because there were women leaders, and the right wing knows just where the soft spot for work is– the role of women. So this focus on women voters is delicious.

Both Clinton and Obama are doing their job well. You can go on the web and view testimonials from women who plan to take their daughters to the caucuses to vote for Clinton. And as the founder of Take Our Daughters to Work, I can tell you there’s nothing more irresistible as an incentive to fathers than seeing their daughters light up with new found aspiration and ambition.

But Oprah Winfrey also lights up a crowd. When former President Clinton tried to spark a race initiative during his presidency, he didn’t get any traction. But Winfrey WAS the race initiative: she used her platform to get folks to read literature written by racially diverse authors. I never underestimate her power to sway the people.

Iowa also has a strong history with the peace movement, and the war in Iraq tops the Democratic agenda. Obama’s early stance against the war gives him clout with women who are a part of that legacy. But for the last several years, our White House Project polling shows that voters would trust a women president at the same level or more than a man to deal with homeland security, foreign policy and the economy; a sea change in the last decade. They even trust a woman president more than a man on the important security predictor human rights.

Let’s look at it this way: Aren’t we a lucky.

We have race and gender at the top of the ticket of a major party. As a feminist and child of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, I don’t know if I could have imagined this scenario.

We have a black man saying he is the women’s candidate, and a white woman who allies herself with a black leader, Al Sharpton, who always challenges our nation on race. Is this a race and gender bender election or what?

But stay tuned: the debate on Thursday should be a lulu. And turnout for the caucuses is key. I have lived thru many an Iowa blizzard and a big snowstorm could end up trumping both race and gender in the end.

In 1984 I won a hotly contested Des Moines City Council election against many men. But sometimes I think, the race was really all about my hair.

Yes, after every speech, people would come up to me…a few with questions or comments about what I had said…but far too many to tell me I had “great hair.” Now what I actually have is hair so coarse that it stays put. But I learned something: there is such a thing as “political hair”…Ann Richards had it too…it just doesn’t move.

People deny that gender matters, that they even see “gender.”

They do this about race as well. To be fair…they want to BE fair…acting as if ours is a meritocracy and like these differences don’t matter, that they have become “invisible.”

It ain’t so.

But what WILL make them “normal” is when there are numbers of women leaders vying on the Iowa planes competing for the presidency. The same goes for corporate board rooms and executive suites, for that matter.

Until then, gender does matter.

What will move beyond gender to agenda is when women are in there in numbers large enough that it’s normal. THEN and only then will we be able to focus on AGENDA, which is just where our attention should be.

One of The White House Project’s earliest pieces of research was a study of how the press treats women when there is one woman. We looked at the press coverage of Elizabeth Dole in the 2000 presidential primaries as well as a senate race and the races of a record number of women who ran for Governor that year.

We call these studies, affectionately, our “hair, hemlines and husband” studies.

The results: whether male or female reporters: women candidates are consistently treated less substantively and more personally.

Why? Not because the press is monolithic or even misogynist: the press’s job is to cover what’s different and when there is ONE woman that’s a no-brainer– her gender as marked by appearance. The problem is that this kind of coverage, subtle as it may be, slowly erodes women’s authority.

As a top notch reporter covering Dole said to me when I asked why she led her story with Dole’s appearance, she was quick to reply. ”If you think I’m going to ignore Elizabeth Dole’s green suit, you are crazy”. Poor Dole switched her position on gun control just before she came to New York, and the press still chided her for not wearing black in New York as an opener.

One woman is always “gender” And has to prove “she’s man-enough for the job.”

Think Margaret Thatcher, the tough former leader of Great Britain.

Two women is a cat fight of a comparison

When you get to three or more in a race or a third in a legislature, guess what– gender does recede and agenda can prevail.

It’s why there’s been so much coverage about whether Obama is “black enough” and Clinton is “tough enough.”

When you are the one and only, you have to live into stereotypes and outside of them, be an insider and an outsider.

When it comes to gender, things have changed. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for Vice President, they actually wrote about how she had nicer legs than her opponent, or how much better she would look in a wet t-shirt contest. Now the gender coverage is not as blatantly gendered but it still erodes a woman’s authority, and women already struggle with authority, even Senator Clinton.

So monitor the press coverage, call or write a reporter who slips.

As a former Iowan, it’s great to see the state get 15 minutes of fame. I loved New York Times reporter Adam Nogurney’s piece and the picture on Sunday featuring the good looks and eats of Iowa, a place that New Yorkers love to diss.

But mostly, it made me nostalgic for the every four-year opportunity to have almost any candidate for a burger or a party.

This is a special election– the 10th anniversary of The White House Project that aims to advance women into leadership across all sectors and that has been building a pipeline to the presidency by training and women all over the US from every region to run.

We have learned some things during our first nine years, and with all this attention to Iowa and having a woman frontrunner for the presidency, this seems like the time to share what we know about gender, power, the presidency and you.

It’s the perfect time because at the top of the tickets we have not only gender, but race, class and religion being front and center.

And because we have a woman who isn’t talking about gender as a problem, even when others do, but expecting attacks as a frontrunner.

It’s also perfect because in this election gender is pushing gender. Having tried to get male candidates to pay attention to our issues, or even use the “w” word (woman) with a female in the race, it’s pretty heady to have the boys now vying for being the best women candidate. (Look no further than the front page story about Barack Obama in last Sunday’s Times.)

And we girls feel very excited about having the formerly “soft” issue of health care be the new “hard” issue that all the candidates claim and claim to have the best solution for. We are pasted across all their webpages, courted and fought over. It’s way better than being the prom queen. Stay tuned.