Authors: Marianne Schnall
MARIANNE SCHNALL
: Why do you think it is that we’ve not had a woman president so far?
MARIE WILSON
: In the most general terms, it has to do with the deeply unchanged culture in America, which has not changed since women entered the work force. The role of wife and mother is still the primary role that women have been in and that women are seen in. Even the First Lady is often seen as the Madonna, you know, if she tries to take on something, as Hillary found out and Michelle Obama has learned from. It’s why Kathleen Hall Jamieson told us when we started our work, Marianne, that you have to change the conversation around women and around the presidency, as well.
But there are the questions that have to do with where our presidents come from: they come from the governors and we don’t have enough female governors; they come from Congress and we don’t have enough women in Congress. We don’t have enough women in power for it to be normal for women to be president. The primary thing we are dealing with,
I think, is the culture’s perception of where women belong. While slowly changing, it is still [prevalent] all over the country, keeping women out of leadership and in their roles.
So it’s a cultural issue that I think people have a hard time grasping. And I think some of it is that there’s a denial that women haven’t achieved upper positions. People do think that we just haven’t had a woman president because one hasn’t come along. It eludes Americans—they think that women are in the pipelines, that women are everywhere. If you ask people how many women actually are in a governorship, for example, they would think they’re half the governors of this country, because there’s such a denial that we as Americans don’t put women in power. There’s this assumption that women are already there. So I think it’s some of culture and some of this, “Well, they just haven’t come along.” It’s very frustrating, but it’s the same thing that happens with women at the CEO level, with women on the boards, because America is really in denial about the lack of women who are in the pipelines or any of these top leadership positions in the country. I swear, it’s one of the big things that holds us back.
MS
: The other more general question is, what do you think it will take to make a woman president?
MW
: Well, having said all that, I think if Hillary ran today, she might win. I think it’s interesting. I think what has changed is you’ve had women in the secretary of state role that is so visible and you’ve had Hillary particularly doing so well in this last four years. I think it will be a wild and fervent “we want change” kind of move—and that’s not anything speaking but my gut. I think there’s a real possibility, quite frankly, that Hillary Clinton will run in four years and that she will win.
MS
: What special qualities do you think a woman president would bring to the table that the world most needs now?
MW
: There’s been a lot of research on that in terms of what women bring, but what we know is, by and large, their on-the-ground approach to war and peace. Also, women have a real propensity for collaboration and when they’re in government—if you look at the legislature anywhere else—we know from research that women are more apt to work across the aisle, which is desperately needed right now.
Plus, women have the experience of the private world, which is getting more and more important because you need to have people who understand what goes on with children right now, people who understand poverty and its effect on children and education. And women have that experience—education is women’s top issue. Women understand the value of education. They have more compassion for the poorest people in this country, who happen to be women, right? That is going to be a real issue. And women have recently brought things to the table that we are now dealing with, with Elizabeth Warren and other women who called attention to the issues we are having in our economy long before the men would pay attention. Women are still calling out those issues. But I think the polls have shifted—you can’t pick up a poll lately without seeing that women do a better job on so many issues and are trusted by the American people now on almost every issue that is a part of the presidency, at the same level as a man.
MS
: What are some of the factors that you think deter women from entering the political pipeline in the first place?
MW
: Well, there’s a big deterrent in terms of how you have to raise money. And now it’s even worse, because of the Supreme Court decision. First of all, we learned at The White House Project that because it’s not normal
to see women in power and leadership—and certainly in governorships, et cetera—that they again are not as comfortable saying, “I can do that.” Therefore, we need to train women. I’ve been saying lately that maybe we should train every woman to run when she’s in high school. I do believe that. Because if women are trained, then they will run because they want the experience. There are lots of ways to make women more visible.
There’s even neuroscience now, telling us that 80 percent of our brains are gendered, and what women bring—because of the way the brain is structured—is this affinity to see the bigger picture and to ask more questions, and men tend to go straight to the solution. We can see what’s happened with not having both perspectives, and I think right now women’s perspective of looking at the whole picture before you make the decision is really important. We can always get guys in there who will say, “Now is the time to move,” but we can’t get as many guys in there who have the kind of brain that says, “Wait a minute, I want to see every way this will play itself out.” We are seeing actually in the board meetings—the more women who get on boards—the guys on the board say the women get in there and they’re not just interested in being right, they’re trying to help with what the right thing is to do. So these attributes that rest both in what we now know about our brains and that come from being in the private world—because women have had to think long term, they’ve had to look at all of the factors in order to be in leadership at all—those are now coming to the fore.
I got tickled when the
Harvard Business Review
, about a month ago, these guys that have been studying leadership for years, came out with this “astounding” thing—ha!—and they published it in the
HBR
, on sixteen of the most important characteristics of leadership. They were talking about company presidents and how women are better, and they’re like, “Look at this! Why aren’t we putting women in?” When you get somebody like Warren Buffett standing up all the time and saying we’re never going to make it if we don’t use all our resources, particularly those of women.
You’ve got thought leaders now talking about this. So you know you’ve got research, you’ve got thought leaders. And now you’ve got two or three television programs on at once! We worked like mad to get
Commander in Chief for
six weeks! Now you have the
Veep
program. There are all these visualizations of women in leadership now—these make a difference. I like to watch all these programs that show women in these tough roles—as spies or detectives or even the president—because I see when other people watch them it shapes what they can’t see in their own community. So I know you’re right about your timing of this book, because I think this is moving in the right direction. And most important of all, because we’ve had these secretaries of state, because there are women in leadership positions in other countries, because we now know that wars are not going to be won the way we’ve been fighting them, we are looking for some of the ways that women are liable to deal with . . . with not blowing our world up, let’s put it that way.
MS
: Now it’s funny, because I remember when I had first decided to do this book, and I had gotten an email from Gloria and she made the point that she thought I could do it because I understood that from a tactical point of view, it’s not about biology, but about the issues. For example, it’s not just about electing any woman, but a woman who actually represents pro-women principles and causes. How do you feel about the whole conundrum of having women in politics who aren’t progressive when it comes to women’s issues?
MW
: Yes, it has to be that you get the right values. You have to have women who support those issues that allow other women to lead and bring other women along—issues that raise women out of poverty, make sure that women are safe and able to control their reproduction, and to have access to childcare. You have to have women who want full lives and
lead in both the public and the private world for women and men, or you’ll never change things.
MS
: The other part of the issue is how can we help women learn to trust and value and use their natural wisdom and instincts so they’re not just perpetuating the old paradigms of power and leadership? How can we embody the “feminine” qualities that we bring to the table, which oftentimes are not associated with being powerful?
MW
: Well, that’s the issue, isn’t it? That’s the first thing I thought about after I had worked on The White House Project for a few years was this: how are we going to get women to trust themselves, and how are we going to get the world to trust women? But how women can trust themselves, Marianne, I know now: we start to form groups. This is what The White House Project trained everybody to do, which is get a circle around you. And I say this in every speech: all women need about five women who really see them—who will give them good feedback, tell them the truth, and who will encourage them and give them courage to trust themselves and trust those values that are different. Because it’s hard, when the world keeps shoving this other stuff at you, to really trust that the way you see the world is okay. So you have to have that. I think every woman needs that. I need that, don’t you?
MS
: Absolutely! You made that comment about starting leadership training for girls in high school; I remember in the film
Miss Representation
when Caroline Heldman made this point: “When children are seven years old, boys and girls say they want to become president in roughly the same numbers. By the time they’re fifteen however, the number of girls who say they would like to be president drops off dramatically, as compared to boys.” Why do you think that happens and what can we do to change that trend?
MW
: Well, that’s what Take Our Daughters to Work Day and
Mother Daughter Revolution
were about. The more powerful women get, the more the world intervenes at pre-adolescence to say, “Guess what? You are going to be judged by your body.” I’m looking at my feisty eight-year-old granddaughter and seeing how much the world is coming in on this confident, brilliant little girl—about her hair, about how she looks. And that is actually still at the very top right now, because if you look at adult women, they’re wearing little skirts like little girls. I kind of disagree with some of the stuff that’s been written and done lately about girls, because girls are not mean—they mean to have power. But when the country, the culture, the people around them keep talking about how you get power one way, which is to be a good girl—to look good and to be good—then it’s hard to keep the idea that you could be a tough little president. That’s the stuff they worked on for years at the Ms. Foundation: How do you keep girls strong and healthy? How do you sustain girls’ resilience? And frankly, the more power women get, the more it starts coming at them. I think that’s starting to change. But I think we have to remember that culture keeps coming back at you and pushing it in the other direction.
The good news is to remember that little boys want something different. We have grown men now actually doing different kinds of jobs, wanting to be parents. A recent poll showed that 63 percent of working men and women who have children under eighteen would trade more income for more time to be with their families.
MS
: When I did that CNN article about what will it take to make a woman president, out of all the reflections that were shared in that piece, the one that people were intrigued by the most was what Gloria Steinem said: “In the last election I supported Hillary Clinton, because I thought she was simply the most experienced, but I felt it was too soon for a woman to win and that may still be the case, even though she transformed people’s ideals.
Because we are raised by women, and so we associate women with childhood. Men especially may feel regressed when they see a powerful woman. The last time they saw one they were eight. So one of the most hopeful things we can do in the long term, is to make sure that kids have loving and nurturing male figures, as well as female figures, and authoritative and expert female figures, as well as male figures.”
MW
: Well, I think that’s what’s happening. You do see more men in these roles now. I read an interesting interview about men who are college educated, and they’re starting to take caregiver jobs because of the economy, and they’re saying things like, “Wow, you get paid to have good, meaningful work.” I do think that when we value the work that has been largely unpaid and underpaid—mothering, domestic workers, caring for young and old—then the role of women will not just be the role of mother. It will start to have more value. And, yeah, Gloria’s right—the last time you saw a powerful woman was when you were eight years old. The most powerful woman in your life is a mother. Elizabeth Debold—who was first author on our book
Mother Daugher Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women
—talks eloquently about how boys are immediately cut off from the person who they are most dependent on: their mother. It takes a “superhero” to cut off the person who is nurturing you and be told not to be like her. It’s so tough on little boys.