The Day After the Iowa: What We Learned About Race, Gender and Class
Last night was a win for our country. People turned out in unprecedented numbers across the tundra of Iowa to vote for candidates that represent the divisions that have plagued us far beyond our political parties: race, gender and class. History was made when the first viable African-American man topped the democratic field in Iowa, and when the runners up were a boy raised poor in the South and a seasoned woman leader.
As an advocate of women’s issues for over thirty years, I am thrilled that we finally have a truly viable female candidate for president. I was one of the “second-stage” women who sat around kitchen tables and helped to create what became the modern women’s movements, who held babies and cooked spaghetti while we plotted out legislative strategies, who went out into the public world to support our families always torn with guilt and hungry with ambition and visions for a different world.
It was women my age - the 65 and over’s - who wanted all of our work to count last night in Iowa, women who don’t want to die without seeing a woman president. Our generation could forgive the flaws, admire the competence and vow not to die without seeing the decades of our efforts amount to something historic that could make our changes permanent.
Yet women not only come in all races and classes but also ages - and the variable of generation was a huge factor in last night’s caucus. It was most apparent in young women, who supported Obama over Clinton by a 40% margin http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2008/1/4/iowa-women-turn-the-tide.html.
Is this an indication that young women in Iowa believe the gender issue is solved?
Young women are at the height of their power, and thanks to the second wave feminists who worked to pave the way - women over 65 especially - they have enjoyed a few years of reprieve from some of the issues of gender discrimination. On top of that, they still have the power of youthful beauty and desire. While I am sure that young women are grateful for Clinton’s run and admire her, last night’s caucus suggested that she doesn’t represent the change that young women seek, because they believe, thanks to us, that that type of change has already happened.
Clinton’s own cohort – women 45-59 – has experienced the discrimination, and they know the gender gap still exists. They see Clinton as representing them - but they want her to represent them perfectly. They are not as willing to cut her slack for a vote they disapprove of or not being “know-able” precisely because they know that the world will hold Clinton, and any women with this kind of power, to standards twice as lofty as any man. Call it “internalized oppression” if you want - these women know through their own experiences that she will be harshly judged, so they do it first and find her wanting.
Gender matters still, yet we act as if it is done.
Most of us who led the second wave came out of the civil rights movement. We were inspired by it, learned from it, and led where we could. I celebrate last night for a victory that we also feel, where our nation’s troubled history with race, class and gender took an inspired turn for the better. That victory belongs to all of us, but as we celebrate we must remember there is still work to be done by and for women, as we are the group who cross “all of us” but still don’t own “all of it”.
The race isn’t over by a long shot, but the issue of women supporting women is something this campaign can get us to cop to and think about.
Party will always trump gender, issues and values will and always should count first. But if we want to be a fully representative democracy, we have to look at the fact that as much as I celebrate and admire Barack Obama, a woman of his age and stage would not have had the opportunity to make this historic mark in Iowa. She would have been counted out long before she stood up.
http://atlantaga January 5th, 2008 at 7:53 am |
though i agree with your observations i have to take exception the the adjective “viable” used to describe Mr. Obama. It is in the unconsciencous prejudice that this reference emerges. pls. don’t diminish the he’s running or winning with such reference. it’s so joe biden-ish.
http://BelfastNorthernIreland January 6th, 2008 at 3:05 pm |
I think the author’s use of viable possibly refers to the Iowa Caucus process…a term used to describe a candidate who has enough supporters to continue on (i.e. 15%). This is a technical term very much associated with the causus process. Could it possibly be that the author was thinking in those terms, rather than displaying any unconsciencous prejudice???
http://NewYork,NY January 6th, 2008 at 11:22 pm |
As a young woman and self-identified feminist, I share Ms. Wilson’s excitement at the prospect of a woman president. But I whole-heartedly support Obama, and I do not see this as a betrayal of my feminism or a sign that I think the gender issue is solved. It’s not that I think that the “change” she alludes to has already happened - that of gender equity. It is that there are equal, if not more pressing, issues which we confront as a nation - ugly partisan divisions, protracted war, political pandering to corporate interests - which need to be addressed. I believe that Obama is the best candidate to bring the change that we need, and I think that many other young women share that sentiment - all the while knowing that gender is most certainly an issue which begs our attention and activism.
http://Astoria,NY January 8th, 2008 at 6:01 pm |
The high number of young women not voting for Clinton is not an indication that these women feel gender equality has been achieved. Although The White House Project is is focused on gender, Americans in general are considering many factors as they decide which candidate will best represent them. I think it would be wonderful to have a female president. But I believe that when choosing a president, all candidates must be held to the same standards. If I compare Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton without considering race or gender, I find Obama to be the preferable candidate. When a female presidential candidate surfaces who strikes me as the superior of the candidates, I will vote for her. In the meantime, I will vote for the best person for the job.
http://AtlantaGA January 8th, 2008 at 6:54 pm |
So glad to read this blog -very informed opinions. I’m going to recommend it to friends.
http://BelfastNorthernIreland January 10th, 2008 at 10:56 am |
Come on…please!!!!!! Would someone please comment on the first and second entry above, e.g. the first entry suspects unconscious prejudice on the part of the woman who wrote the article. I wrote the second entry. Do you think it was a case of underlying prejudice? Or just the term ‘viable’ used as it often appears in a technical sense, e.g. describing the caucus process? I really protest the idea that the author has this kind of belief system, unconscious or otherwise. Someone back me up on this, please!! Or not, for that matter, but do explain!!!
http://Astoria,NY January 10th, 2008 at 12:37 pm |
Emily,
I completely agree with you. I think it’s pretty clear that Wilson was using the word “viability” as it pertains to the caucus process.
Robin
http://Brooklyn,NY January 10th, 2008 at 4:27 pm |
Actually, if you read carefully, Wilson uses the word “viable” to refer to BOTH Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (she references Clinton as “the first truly viable female candidate”). And whether she’s referring to the caucus process or she means “a mainstream candidate who has a shot-in-hell of securing the nomination and winning the presidency,” I don’t have a problem with the term. By either of these definitions, Victoria Woodhull wasn’t viable. Jesse Jackson wasn’t viable. Pat Schroeder wasn’t viable. Alan Keyes wasn’t viable. Carol Moseley Braun wasn’t viable. There just wasn’t a chance in hell that any of them would be elected, and they certainly didn’t (or wouldn’t have) received a slice of Iowa pie. This time, however the odds are, for the first time, excellent that we will elect either a woman or a black man to the White House.
http://Astoria,NY January 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm |
It would be nice if Wilson responded to some of these comments.
http://Clarksville,MD January 13th, 2008 at 4:58 pm |
I only have to read the responses posted here to ‘feel’ the pervasive hypersensitivities that now impede reasoned debates. It is far too easy to ‘parse’ out what we do not agree with and take issue with it than to engage on the substantive issue at hand which to the best of my understanding is focused on the possibilities inherent in this election; that being the ascendancy of a woman or a man (and for that matter why not a woman and man or whatever order you may prefer) to the highest office of the land. We are simply threading on the edges of radical deconstructionism rather than coherent relevant discussion. I am simply tired of the presumed prejudiced or racial first approach in thing to do. Frankly, I can find far too many words or phrases that have racial undertones much as you and I can find same that connotes gender biases in the general lexicon. But that will too tiring an undertaking in life, and I’d frankly prefer other things that are far less disheartening.
Does anyone have suggestions of how first we could reasonably vet the candidates without the filters of race, gender, or religion? Or am I too naïve?? I would hate to have candidates passing a litmus test that goes like this “the guy who I would like most to have beer with!”
http://NewYork,NY January 16th, 2008 at 10:43 am |
As a number of readers have already suggested, the use of the term “viable” in this post was meant to describe a candidate’s ability to secure their party’s nomination. –Eds
http://Boston,MA January 22nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm |
Amen.
http://Charlotte,NC February 28th, 2008 at 11:08 am |
I am stunned at the animosity directed at Senator Clinton by some and can find no other reason other than she is a woman. She is smart, hard working, get’s things done yet is continually called to task for all kinds of things where Obama gets a pass. African Americans have developed a strong sense of community support but many women (particularly white educated women) seem to have no sense of the benefits they have received directly from the women’s movement. and all the hard work of women like Senator Clinton. Do they really think they got into medical school, law school, grad school just because they’re smart and worked hard. Ask Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor about that.
Why do you think older women (like me) and working class women support Senator Clinton? Their life experiences are a continual reminder that gender and mutual support matter.
Thank goodness for Marie Wilson, Gloria Steinhem, NOW, League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood and a whole lot of women who have worked for decades to get us to this point. I sure hope we don’t blow it.
We need some real conciousness raising sessions. Things have changed but they haven’t changed that much when you look at the pay gap, the education gap, the dearth of female CEO’s, etc.
Mary K