The Highest Glass Ceiling

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Continuing the work theme of this month’s Flower Child, today I focus on a special anniversary connected to our country’s political jobs — and who decides who gets those jobs.

In the 1800s, women’s suffrage leaders in the U.S. were inspired by the social and political gender equality of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. In that society, women had the same rights and responsibilities as men, which meant they had real economic, social, and governing authority. (The U.S. Constitution was also inspired by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the world’s oldest continuous participatory democracy, but left out the critical component of gender equality.) Funny, they didn’t teach us Flower Children any of this in school.

After decades of struggle by those 1800s suffragettes and others into the 1900s, 106 YEARS AGO TODAY the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women across the U.S. the right to vote. But we still haven’t elected a woman to the top job in our country. What gives?

I was so excited to vote for the first woman president of the United States that I bought a suffragette-white suit at a thrift store to wear for the occasion. Back then, before Covid diverted us to ballot boxes, I was still voting in person. It always gave me a thrill, and this time was even more thrilling: I was voting for our first woman president. It was finally happening!

Some years back, I’d made a bet with a co-worker (the same one I called “Bob” in this post) that a Black person or a woman wouldn’t become president in our lifetime. I’d been pleasantly surprised to lose the first part of that bet, though I never did take “Bob” out to the dinner I owed him. Now, I was going to lose the second part — and I’d never been happier to lose a bet.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t my first choice; that was Elizabeth Warren. But when Hillary won the nomination, I got behind her. And I thought she could win. We already had a Black president, so it felt like anything could happen.

As it turned out, anything could in fact happen. At the election night party Rafael and I hosted, we were hoping to celebrate like we had in 2008. Instead, our friends started going home early, downcast and dejected. I cried for days. I’d wake up and remember what had happened and get upset all over again. It felt like someone had died.

And what did 2024 bring us? A rerun. This time I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed in my country. Women had the right to vote, but we still hadn’t elected a woman president. And white women had been especially disappointing: 51% of us had voted for a highly unqualified rapist instead of a highly qualified woman.

How is it that when I apply for a job, I have to show I’m qualified, but the highest office in the land comes with no such requirements?

And how is it that we women aren’t doing better with our hard-won right to vote?

To be clear, my intention is not to blame women (though I’m disappointed in white women); the electoral college is a key culprit behind our current state of affairs, plus a bunch of other factors you can read about in the illuminating book Tyranny of the Minority. And women did come through overall compared to men, by a slim margin, with 53% of our vote for Kamala Harris. Black women did much better than white women, of course, as did Black men. And white men … well, I’ll let the numbers speak for them:

I don’t take my right to vote for granted; I haven’t always had it. When I turned 18 in 1979, I wasn’t a U.S. citizen yet, though I’d been a resident alien since I was three. So I was especially excited to vote five years later — and to vote for a woman vice president, Geraldine Ferraro, though she and Walter Mondale didn’t win. It took us another 36 years to elect a woman VP.

Women in the U.S. have had the right to vote for over 100 years — so why was it so hard to elect a woman VP, and why can’t we elect a woman president?

But wait, I’m forgetting: we’ve actually had quite a few women presidents! We had them in Veep, The Diplomat, Don’t Look Up, 24, Scandal, Madam Secretary, For All Mankind, House of Cards, and a number of more obscure movies and TV shows.

Hey, that’s something. Will & Grace shifted our culture’s perceptions of gay people; maybe seeing women PLAY presidents will help women BE presidents?

There’s an old riddle: A father and son are in a terrible car accident, and the father dies. The son is rushed to the hospital for surgery, but the surgeon sees him and says, “I can’t operate on this boy — he’s my son.” Not so long ago, this used to stump people. Now, we’re more used to seeing women doctors. We’re also more used to seeing women leaders, both in other countries and on our TV screens.

Will that help us elect a woman? It certainly won’t hurt. It helped the women’s suffrage leaders to see a living model of what they were trying to achieve. Girls and boys growing up now can see women holding high offices, if not yet the presidential one, and even seeing women presidents on their TV and movie screens helps normalize the idea of a woman president.

Despite my frustration that our country’s so behind in this regard, we’ve made SOME progress in my lifetime. Geraldine Ferraro made big news just for being a vice presidential candidate. Now, a woman running for president isn’t a major headline.

After that horrible 2016 election, I got rid of my white thrift-store suit. But I’m not getting rid of my hope for the future. Electing a woman won’t solve all our problems; women can be bad presidents, too, and though both Hillary and Kamala would have been IMMEASURABLY better than the Orange One (duh!), we don’t need more neoliberals running our country.

But we do need to break this glass ceiling. Let’s get our hammers ready. And by our hammers, I mean our votes. Let’s use our right to vote well, before they take it away from us again. You know they’re trying.

Although I didn’t tell a story there this month, this post was inspired by the suffragette theme of last weekend’s Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! I highly recommend you watch the replay here, and consider subscribing and/or attending future slams. The stories were all excellent, and they will for sure make you laugh and cry. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

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