I clearly remember the day in September 2000 when I was sitting in my seventh-grade civics class discussing the process of electing a U.S. president and a boy made a comment that still annoys me to this day.
Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush were just weeks away from finding out who would take the reins of our country. A female classmate asked our teacher why we hadn’t had a woman for president yet.
After the teacher stumbled his way through an answer mostly consisting of “um’s” and “uh’s,” he said he wasn’t sure why, adding that we’d probably have one any day now. A woman just needed to win her party’s primary, then run in the general election, and then get a majority of votes in enough states to win the Electoral College, and speaking of Electoral College, please turn to page 58 where we’ll read all about it.
As we were turning our pages, a male classmate piped up with his annoying opinion.
“I could never vote for a woman for president. Every time she got her period, we’d have World War III.”
Other boys in the class laughed and joined in. “Women are bad leaders,” one said. “Who will raise all the kids if women are being the leaders?” another asked.
I sat there in disbelief. Women are bad leaders? Almost every teacher we’d had up to that point had been a woman. All our community and church events had been organized by women – every music recital, every Christmas pageant, every fundraiser, every potluck, every class party. I couldn’t think of any event in my life that women had not organized or led. And I certainly couldn’t have ventured a guess when Margie with the PTA or Betty at church had their periods.
It was the first time I heard that opinion about women’s supposed lack of leadership skills, but it certainly wasn’t the last.
Fast forward eight years when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were duking it out for the Democratic nomination. Even many self-identified “progressive” men (and some women!) were bringing out the tired trope about an angry woman on her period starting WWIII on the way to the fridge to grab a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in a menstruation-addled state. (Never mind that Clinton was 60 at the time and most likely post-menopausal.)
Women have been having their periods since, well, forever. It’s kind of part of the process of how we reproduce.
Yet somehow I missed the long list of wars that women have started in a hormonal rage. For some reason, fictional women starting hypothetical wars was a bigger threat than men, who *checks notes* have started pretty much every war in the history of the planet.
I also heard tired arguments about how men were “logic based” and women were “emotion based,” and obviously emotional people don’t belong in leadership. I heard over and over again about how men “aren’t emotional” as if anger is not an emotion.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen men have angry outbursts in professional or public spaces, whether it’s yelling, cursing, name-calling, throwing things or even punching walls. And I sure have seen plenty of male politicians sobbing on TV after they were caught in wrongdoing.
Clinton wasn’t the only woman in politics I saw ridiculed for sexist reasons. When they aren’t accused of being too emotional, women in politics are nearly always hit with the term “unlikable,” as in, “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s just something about her I just don’t like.”
Their voice is irritating, their laugh is annoying, they’re too serious, they smile too much, they don’t smile enough, they talk with their hands too much, they’re too stiff, they dress too masculinely, they dress too provocatively, they’re too old, they’re too young, they’re too ugly, they’re too attractive, and on and on.
There aren’t many women in politics who have gotten as much attention for their policies as they have for their appearance. Just ask Sarah Palin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Janet Reno, Michelle Obama, Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice or Carly Fiorina, to name a few.
To make matters worse, female politicians also have to contend with double standards for political etiquette. If they act too much like their male peers, they’re “too aggressive,” but if they aren’t aggressive enough, than they’re “incompetent” or “weak.” Women in politics are constantly walking a tightrope in heels.
I thought there was a good chance we’d have a woman president in 2016, but Clinton only managed to snag the popular vote, not the Electoral College. I started to gain hope when the 2020 election rolled around and I heard lots of people say, “I would take anyone but Trump or Biden!” But no women made it past the primary.
I dared to hope again this year, when again people were saying, “anyone but Trump or Biden.” Both had high disapproval ratings.
Trump’s primary challenger, Nikki Haley, said, “There will be a woman president in America. It’s either going to be me or it’s going to be Kamala Harris.” I appreciated Haley’s optimism. Many women saw the very real possibility of having the first female president. The excitement seemed palpable.
Many national polls at the time showed Haley beating Biden by a much wider margin in the general election than Trump. In one poll, more than 80 percent of voters aged 18-34 in battleground states said a woman could be an effective president and strong leader. Yet Trump was the one who ended up on the top of the Republican ticket.
And you know the rest. Biden dropped out, Kamala Harris took his spot, and suddenly the nearly 70 percent of voters who said they would vote for anyone who wasn’t Trump or Biden vaporized into thin air.
Last month Mexico swore in its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, beating her female opponent. We’ll have to see if Mexico starts the next world war since the 60 countries that have had a female leader have neglected to do so.
Women are currently leading Mexico, Barbados, Denmark, Marshall Islands, Tanzania, Samoa, Honduras, Italy, Peru, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Switzerland and Thailand.
I sincerely hope the U.S. can join that list soon. It’s time to show our girls and women everywhere that they are worthy and capable of the highest office in the country. Yes, even while on their period.