I Wonder What It’s Like to Be Her
Yesterday morning, I voted in the California Democratic primary. I voted for Hillary. And if you still want to read rather than throw rotten tomatoes at me, please do. This is less about politics than it is about what it means to be female in roles that are historically male. I know more about that situation than I do about politics. So, Republicans, please put aside your tirades about what you can’t stand about Hillary and Democrats in general (you all have your own problems to deal with right now). And Bernie Sanders supporters? I am in total agreement with Robert Reich on this, and that’s all I’m gonna say about it.
I’ve had moments of being on the fence between Bernie and Hillary, but what pushed me over the edge was, I’ll admit it, gender bias. Watching the primaries roll on for months and months, it became clearer and clearer to me that the deck is stacked against Hillary because she’s a woman. I don’t think Bernie Sanders did it intentionally. (I think a few of his supporters did.) I expect nothing less than month after month of subtle, and sledge-hammer, attacks by Trump on Clinton based on gender.
But, over and over, little things added up. And I know a little about what it means to be an early woman. In 2003, I graduated from seminary in a class of about 45 MDiv students. If memory serves, 5 of us were female. Those are slightly better stats than the 15% of women in Hillary Clinton’s graduating class from Yale Law School, but not by that much. In 2003, I was the 23rd woman ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in North America (which had started ordaining women in 1994). I really don’t consider myself a trailblazer, because there were other women ahead of me in those numbers who went through much more than I did. But, still, I dealt with things like being the first woman ever to preach in a pulpit; only getting a student internship one summer when the seminary could quietly offer the church a financial incentive; scrambling to find opportunities to fulfill my required Sundays of student preaching (often because the few churches that would take a female student in their pulpits were asking if they could please have a man since they were getting all the women). I was actually barred from preaching in the pulpit of my home congregation while I was a student (until the old ladies of the church banded together and called out the male leaders of the church on that one). I had a very hard time finding a position that was a fit for my gifts. So, in a very teeny tiny way, I get what it’s like to be start breaking maybe not the glass ceiling, but at least starting to lob a few things up there to start it cracking.
I left that denomination in 2007, because I’d found a call in the Presbyterian Church (USA) (which just celebrated 60 years of ordaining women.) But even in denominations with a longer legacy of ordaining women, there is still an incredible amount of sexism. (This book is on my reading list for this summer.)
Hazel will grow up, I sincerely hope, with her first memories of a President of the United States being a woman. She was toddling around my ankles while filled in that square next to Hillary Clinton’s name on my ballot.
I get nervous about dynasties in American politics, but honestly, maybe that’s what it takes right now for us to overcome the implicit bias of our culture against women (I wrote this about the dynastic aspects of this about a year ago.) I get nervous about the fact that we seem to have a political ruling class in America, but, again, I think the first woman to pull this off will likely have to be a part of that establishment. Political and policy implications aside, it’s a big day for the United States when we have a woman who is about to be a major party’s nominee for President.
And it means more to me than I thought it would.