Someday A Woman (Feminist!) Will Be PresidentThe new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a huge gender gap in support for Hillary Rodham Clinton as the next president of the United States.
"Clinton receives significantly higher support among women than men (49 percent to 29 percent)."
Yeah, a twenty-point gender gap is huge! And as Sam Rosenfeld over at TAPP points out, a gap this large strongly suggests that there is some serious "gender solidarity going on."
All other political questions aside for the moment, the potential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton represents the very first time that a woman has a genuine chance at the highest office in this land.
We are long overdue.
And if Senator Clinton were to become President Hillary Rodham Clinton because of gender solidarity, the first woman president would surely be compelled to remain true to her feminist principles. (Or, she could betray us all and morph into another Margaret Thatcher.)
It's worth remembering that women's vote was not taken seriously by mainstream politicians until the gender gap made front page headlines in 1980.
Few things have frightened the political establishment as much as the possibility that women would one day vote as a bloc. As feminist scholar Nancy Cott observes, this fear came to the fore when women finally won the right to vote on August 26, 1920:
"The depreciation of women as individual voters in the early 1920s was light compared to the imprecation against a woman bloc. The major political parties, political commentators and right wing pressure groups discouraged feminist influence in political life and ridiculed or incriminated attempts by women to organize apart or against existing structures of male power. Defenders of politics as usual felt it necessary to slay the specter of a woman's bloc again and again, to denigrate, repress and ridicule it as fiercely as if threatened them (*1987:114). "
We've come a long way since the 1920s. If Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the nomination in 2008, it is almost certain that women will vote in record-breaking numbers. We might actually achieve that long held feminist dream of gender solidarity.
There are plenty of 'ifs' and 'buts' that I won't address here. But suffice it to say that the needs of American women have been neglected for so very long that a female president who owed her office to women would be the recipient of one of the longest laundry lists of demands in the history of the country!
One thing is certain: American women are never going to catch up to European women until we put feminists into the highest offices of the land.
Graphic via Women are Wonderful
*Cott, Nancy F. The Groundings of Modern Feminism. New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
Gender Politics Gender Gap News Hillary Clinton 2008 Poll Woman President Democrats Feminism Patriarchy
