THERE is still some dispute as to who was the first woman to run for president of the United States — Victoria Woodhull who entered the fray in 1872 or Belva Lockwood who offered herself as a candidate 12 years later.
Woodhull was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35 when she tried her luck. So some historians wonder whether she could be considered the first female presidential candidate. But there is no dispute about who was the most competent of the 15 women who staked their claim for America’s top post.
Yes, Hillary Clinton was perhaps the single most qualified candidate in all of US history. She was first lady, senator and secretary of state. Clinton is the only woman to have ever won the presidential nomination of a major party. Two women did win the vice-presidential nominations of major parties: Geraldine Ferraro (Democrats) and Sarah Palin (Republicans). But if any woman was thought to be capable of shattering the “highest and hardest glass ceiling” it was Clinton. Now the likelihood of a woman becoming America’s commander-in-chief seems more remote than ever.
In a way, history was repeating in the case of Clinton. In 2008, she lost the race for Democratic presidential nomination to a comparative newcomer. This year too she suffered defeat at the hands of a newcomer.
How could this happen? Was sexism the reason as some have suggested?
There is no denying that America’s political culture is deeply gendered.
Many Americans perceive their presidents exclusively in military terms, as commanders-in-chief. It is almost 227 years since the United States became a democracy. But the world’s oldest democracy never had a woman occupying the White House when countries like UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Turkey, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Israel had already elected women as prime ministers or presidents.
We should also remember that America is a country where women couldn’t even vote in every state until 1920 when there had already been nearly 30 presidents. This also explains why the United States ranks 75th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures behind countries such as Rwanda, Cuba, Sweden and South Africa. The number of female members of Congress will remain the same after this election, stalled at 104.There will be one more woman in the Senate, bringing the total to 21. In the House of Representatives, the number of women will go down by one, to 83.
Only one woman won a gubernatorial contest on Tuesday. The number of female governors is down to five from six. But we can’t say that sexism was solely responsible for Clinton’s defeat. If sexism and media’s anti-women prejudice were the factors that worked against her, she would not have become one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Perhaps one reason for her defeat was that she was most recognizable and reminded the voters of two Democratic administrations — first by Bill Clinton and later by Barack Obama. While Americans wanted change, she was offering more of the same.
This means it would not be correct to attribute her defeat to her gender. The fact is that Clinton was defeated because she was Clinton who deservedly or not has a trust problem. A reputation for corruption, whether it was the email scandal or the leaked disclosures regarding the Democratic primary added to her problems. Moreover, she was offering the policies many Americans thought were not good to their country. In a way, this election was a verdict on Obama›s presidency too.
