Stop saying that a woman shouldn’t be president.
We have a long history of progress in this country, but we are still incredibly biased. Sadder still, most of us have blinders on when it comes to noticing our biases.
Across the country, there has been backlash against Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. Too often, these negative comments focus not on her policies or reputation, but on the simple fact that she is a woman.
One female CEO, named Cheryl Rios, stated that a woman shouldn’t ever be president. She stated that women have “different hormones” and can’t be trusted to act rationally and should not start wars, lest they start unnecessary ones.
Funny, especially when you consider that when the last president started an unnecessary war, we didn’t blame it on his testosterone.
Let’s just gloss over the fact that men and women do have essentially the same hormones, just in different amounts. We can’t expect everyone’s opinion to be factually accurate.
We shouldn’t be reducing our political candidates to their basic biochemistry.
Out of the 44 presidents that we’ve had in this country, 43 have been white, mostly Christian men.
In that same span of time, as George Carlin famously said, we’ve averaged a major war every 20 years.
The Whiskey Rebellion, the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair. These are blunders that occurred when men were in office. Are we really saying that whatever happens under a female president is somehow going to be worse?
We don’t have any anecdotal evidence about how a woman is going to be in office. Any predictions about a woman’s performance as president of the U.S. is purely unfounded speculation.
The fact is that most of the arguments against women holding positions of power are largely archaic and derived from religious roots. As far as governing, these arguments should be irrelevant in a nation whose founders cautioned against marrying the church and the state.
But even if religion is an important part of the political culture (it’s been said that atheists are unelectable in our nation), we should look at things in perspective.
Many people criticize predominantly Islamic nations as being prejudiced against women. While in some cases this may be true, we tend to ignore the fact that Muslim nations like Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Bangladesh either have or have had female prime ministers.
Egypt’s ministry of justice allows female rulers and judges. Other Muslim majority nations like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Jordan have all had women in positions of power.
Although traditional Muslim doctrine dictates that a woman’s place is as a mother and wife, these nations have incorporated more progressive and Western ideals in their opinion on women leaders. Why can’t we do the same?
We should be concerned that we are somehow stuck farther in the past than these arguably more conservative countries.
America has made history time and time again. Unfortunately, at this point, if we were to elect a female president, we’d be a few decades behind the curve.
Asking whether or not America is ready for a female president is laughable. America is ready for a good president, whether or not she is a woman should be the smallest factor considered.
On the other end of the spectrum, we shouldn’t elect Hillary Clinton simply because she happens to be female.
When looking at presidential candidates like Clinton, we should be scrutinizing her beliefs, policies and track record. What we shouldn’t do is judge her potential presidency because of her gender.
