Why do women need to be more perfect than men?
HAT’S stopping women from getting equal pol i t i c a l re pre s e nt ation? We have the same rights as men. Sexism is dead, I’m repeatedly told. Yet even now — when there’s a woman in No 10 and another running for the White House — men dominate the ranks of power.
So it must be the women, mustn’t it? Those who put themselves forward for election or promotion must just be a bit... hopeless. Not up to the job. They’re inexperienced (have another go next time, love!). They’re too experienced (Establishment!). They’re the wrong women! Hillary Clinton, the critics say, is the wrong woman to be President. Angela Eagle was the wrong woman to lead the Labour Party, just as Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Diane Abbott were before her. So all we need are perfect female candidates and it’ll soon be 50:50 at the top.
Except perfect candidates don’t exist. What there are are stronger and weaker politicians, those who learn from their mistakes and those who’ll make a soup sandwich of everything, those who are broadly honest and those whose mouths spew lies like fire hydrants spray water. To win, a woman should only need to be better than her competition.
But that isn’t what’s asked of Clinton, nor many other women who’ve sought high office. The aphorism of another trailblazer, Charlotte Whitton, applies: “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.”
With Clinton, what’s especially galling is the now-common claim: “She and Trump are as bad as each other.” Oh, did she ask Russia to conduct espionage against an opponent too? Did she call Mexican migrants rapists? And why haven’t we heard about her multiple business bankruptcies?
Often those claiming this are “Bernie or bust” purists. But even their hero, Sanders, wants them to be pragmatic. This week, while asking his supporters to back Clinton, he said: “It’s easy to boo but it’s harder to look your kids in the face who would be living under a Donald Trump presidency.”
Clinton was once popular — when she was doing a job, not seeking election. At the end of her tenure as Secretary of State, her approval rating was 69 per cent. There are complex reasons why that hasn’t translated from office to campaign trail but perhaps a part of it is an aversion to women claiming more power.
That goes for Eagle too. When she deputised for Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs, she was lauded for crushing George Osborne. The muttering started when she became a leadership contender. She lacked charisma, they said (Corbyn has the charisma of cardboard). She lacked experience (she’d been a minister and chaired the National Policy Forum). The contest defaulted to two less experienced men.
It isn’t just that Labour has never had a female leader: no female candidate has ever beaten a male one. And those female candidates weren’t all hopeless. Cooper was hugely capable. Kendall could appeal to swing voters. But the wo ma n w i t h mo s t c au s e to feel aggrieved is probably Abbott. In 2015, as Corbyn thrashed his rivals, she was the London mayoral candidate who most closely shared his views. She came third. And despite Corbyn being hailed as a breath of fresh air, Abbott had run on a similar platform in 2010. The electorate was different then — but notably the unions backed Ed Miliband.
Sexism isn’t dead yet. One of its vestiges is that we demand more of women leaders than we do of men. The feminist victory is when the female is allowed to be just as imperfect as the male.
Rosamund Urwin