When it comes down to it, the United States government is really just a 240-year-old sausage fest. By “sausage fest,” I mean that the House and Senate have not only been dominated by sausage endowed lads with wigs and wooden teeth, but the very notion of leadership is based upon masculine ideals, whether we would like to admit it or not.
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You may be thinking that this sausage fest is coming to a well deserved end now that Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner of the Democratic Party. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, 104 women (76 Democrats and 28 Republicans) hold seats in the United States Congress, comprising 19.4-percent of the 535 members; 20 women (20-percent) serve in the United States Senate, and 84 women (19.3-percent) serve in the United States House of Representatives. This is 2016, and according to the Census Bureau, 50.8-percent of the United States population is female, and yet only 19.4-percent of the major government sectors are comprised of women.
After three waves of feminism and Hillary Clinton’s official nomination as the Democratic Representative, one could logically celebrate progress on the women’s liberation front. Unfortunately, this achievement is undermined by the unprecedented amount of hatred directed towards Hillary. Clinton’s incredible success as a lawyer, politician and activist have been mired by the media’s narrative and widespread vitriolic distrust. The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails have been largely uneventful, probably because she didn’t break any laws worthy of such investigation in the first place. This overblown media coverage contrasts starkly with George W. Bush, which involved him accidentally deleting over 22 million emails in 2007. The rhetoric regarding Benghazi has been equally overblown, primarily by right wing conservatives whose hatred has spread over to the left.
Ultimately, these criticisms stem from a deep rooted and largely ignored hatred of women in politics and more specifically, women in power. Usually, politicians are expected and encouraged to be powerful and authoritative, but as a woman, Hillary Clinton must not be too powerful. When she is, Hillary is deemed the “Lady Macbeth of Little Rock” or other names that disrespect and demean ambitious and successful women. Essentially, the Lady Macbeth archetype equates powerful women with immorality. However, the only way for her to ascend to power is to de-feminize herself. This is particularly relevant in the modern era in which women in power are expected to masculinize themselves in order to be taken seriously. In this sense, all notions of leadership, that is accepted leadership, are viewed from a masculine point of view. However, this essentially equates masculinity with power and femininity with weakness. Hillary Clinton is embracing definitions of femininity in leadership. She has been building alliances for years with the very same people that refused to endorse her in her campaign in 2008. She embraces her identity as a woman and a mother. We must stop looking at power through a gendered lens, and instead look and see how these gendered lenses inform our thinking. We must evaluate our progress not purely on a surface level, but how we as a society react to this progress which ultimately gives a better look at our cultural thinking. Progress is not a linear journey. The 19th Amendment led to a decade of complacency followed by a surge of women’s rights activists in the 1960s. We must look with our own unbiased eyes and really investigate how we treat women in power both politically and personally.
