Do Women Get It? Not Enough of Them.

Every candidate running for political office is by definition flawed. After all, they’re human. It comes with the territory.  Still, just as the excitement in supporting a candidate can mask obvious imperfections from that supporter, so also the scrutiny applied to a candidate can magnify or even concoct imperfections a voter might not even have considered.

The higher the office sought, the more we get of both – adoration and imperfection.  There’s nothing new and nothing different regarding the candidates that are in the arena this political season.  Therein lays the importance of listening and reading what the candidates actually say and less about what is said or written about them. 

Unfortunately most of the American electorate goes to the polls with that homework incomplete. Such promotes an entrenchment of opinion that leaves Presidential elections pretty much decided by a handful of people in a handful of states. 

However, this Presidential Election is different…or at least it should be.

Without regard to policy differences, party loyalties, temperaments, history, or personality quirks there is one monumental difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – gender. Trump writes off the difference like it was just another card in a campaign poker deck – the woman card he pronounces it.  Clinton has only just started to address this reality.

The fact that a woman is running for the Presidency of the United States, representing one of the two competing political parties, is more than a big deal…it is a mammoth, colossal, gigantic, enormous deal.  It is even more consequential than Obama’s historic ascension to office as an African American, and it impacts the entire world. That it is being given short shrift is driving me nuts.

The subjugation of women has its origins at least beginning with recorded history, who knows before that.  Since that time women have been the chattel of men and still are throughout much of this planet’s civilizations.  Vast population centers in the Far East, India, Central Africa, the Middle East, and underdeveloped social pockets frozen in time still engage in total control or even misogynistic behavior toward women as an acceptable standard.

Enlightened “free” nations, notably in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, tout their record of equality between the genders.  Oh really?  Women were barely allowed to even participate in the governing process until well into the last century, despite that they represented more than half of all nations.

The US, considered by “patriots” the most freedom loving of all, has been a bulwark in resisting equality for women throughout its history. To this day Conservatives fight the transition to female equality on the floors of nearly every legislative body in the land, refusing to address or outright opposing economic and health care discrepancies.

In the US Congress today women represent less than 20% of both the House and Senate.  There are only 5 elected female governors, and state legislature percentages are equally dismal. This is not an accident or simple choice.  It is caused by a restriction of opportunity and historical inertia.

The gender deficit in business is appalling in the US, yet that fact is consistently delivered as ho-hum news. What does it take in this Country to embrace the fact that human social development regarding the equality of women is far from complete?  Why is it so easy to ignore the obvious?

The head scratching part for me is that the problem is not gender specific. It is not just Conservative men that want to retain the status quo. A significantly large subset of women in the US is indifferent to Clinton becoming President or opposes the idea because she is a woman!! I am not making this up.

“I’m not crazy about Trump, but I’m not going to vote for that Hillary” said a woman I know in her late 60s (who I happen to like a lot). “Why?” I asked. “I can’t see her as President.” she answered “She’s too conniving.” Conniving??  Clinton conniving, Trump not?

Donald Trump is a fool, with a dangerous narcissistic personality disorder.  However, he gets a pass from a major segment of the American electorate, including a wide swath of women. Why? He does because he sells his persona as the authoritarian male.  Frankly, it is a dated model that in recent decades has had little success and needs to be put out on the village green, like an old Sherman Tank, as an historical relic.

Why are women in the United States so tacitly accepting of the suppression of women around the world?  You attack that repressive and discriminatory behavior by seeking to eliminate it in the culture you live in.
 
Every woman in the US should start with the assumption that she is going to vote for Hillary Clinton if only because she is a woman, then build the case why Trump is the better choice (good luck with that). 

I have four granddaughters, the oldest only three, and I will only consider them growing up in a nation where they view their opportunities at any level to be no different from their male counterparts.  A female American President is a giant step in that direction, and the time to take that step is now.