What Hillary’s candidacy means — and doesn’t mean
Hillary Clinton is running for president again, sparking yet another round of discussion about the role of women in electoral politics. I’ll admit, as someone who studies gender and politics and has therefore been greeted with “So, Hillary Clinton?” as a conversation starter since at least 2006, I can only get so enthusiastic. Women running in elections, and even winning them, doesn’t radically change politics. These incremental steps are progress and can help change policy, but gradually, and with strong limits.
North American women participate in politics at a higher rate now than ever before. The current U.S. Congress has the largest percentage of women in history (19 per cent), as does the House of Commons (24 per cent). Women make up a significant portion of elected officials of both right and left parties in both countries (though more on the left).
Women also have voted at higher rates than men in both the U.S. and Canada for decades, and continue to be leaders in civil society. These numbers are far from parity, and are mediocre in international perspective (where Canada ranks 48th and the U.S. ranks 72nd in terms of women in parliaments). But a woman elected to office is no longer an anomaly — particularly if she’s wealthy, well-educated and white.
Clinton is also a part of an historic American pattern: women whose husbands’ political careers helped launch their own. She is the first first lady to hold elected office, but many have held sub- stantive policy roles during and after their husbands’ tenures. “Widow’s succession,” or wives taking seats vacated by their husbands’ deaths, was a primary way for the first women to enter both the Senate and the House. And the name recognition and political connections that come with being a politician’s wife help overcome the difficulties of winning an American election, such as primary battles and weakly disciplined parties. Her destination may be new, but the path she’s walking on has been walked before.
Women as voters and legislators lean to the left in North America, but that doesn’t mean women in office radically shift government positions. Clinton is substantially more feminist and socially progressive than any of her Republican counterparts. She’s also a centrist Democrat, and the American left is already roundly criticizing her, especially on foreign policy. (If Clinton wins the nomination, we’ll mostly hold our noses and vote for her in the general election — what choice do we have?)
Changing who is playing the game of politics doesn’t change the rules of the game, or the barriers to progressive change. A woman in the White House can’t evade a conservative or obstructive Congress. A historically high number of women in Commons doesn’t mean that the majority Conservative government woke up feminist the next day.
That a woman can be a top candidate in a major party shows that North Americans are, in general, taking women more seriously as political actors. But that was also true eight years ago, when Clinton ran the first time. The sexism she faced then hasn’t gone anywhere, and women running for office or leading governments still face it, in public and in private.
Just as U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign, nomination and election has not solved American racism, neither will Hillary Clinton’s campaign, nomination, or election solve American sexism. These shifts in who holds political power show that who counts as a political actor is changing. They don’t change how systems of power work to exclude women, visible minorities, LGBT people, the poor and others.
As an American expat who longs for change back home, I’m not expecting a second Clinton presidency to usher it in. Instead, I’m vesting that hope in the people demanding a better world from the streets, the press, the Internet and the grassroots. That’s where the chance for a different America lies, because that’s the only place that has ever made one before.
Changing who is playing the game of politics doesn’t change the rules of the game, or the barriers to change