In some ways, I am sad. I supported Hillary Clinton, and I was prepared to support her all the way. I gave money, and I gave time. Sure, I had some minor reservations - no candidate is perfect, and the candidates that I really, really like usually have no chance of being elected. But I could embrace her and work for her.
In part, I was willing to work for her simply because of the symbolic nature of her campaign. Here it is, 2008, and the United States has never had a woman president. We've had two Secretaries of State, and we only just got a Speaker of the House. Yet other countries had women leaders decades ago: Israel, Great Britain, Germany, even Pakistan.
When my grandmothers were born, women could not even vote - less than 100 years ago. When I was a girl, it was almost unheard of that a woman would run for this office. And as late as 1992, the United States Senate had only two women members - Nancy Kassebaum from Kansas and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. Currently there are 16 women in the Senate, though that constitutes a mere 16 percent, while women make up roughly half the population.
It's high time that women everywhere feel as if they have an equal voice in government. Which is why I was able to whole-heartedly support Clinton in her race for the White House. I wanted my daughters to see a strong woman play the same game as a man - I wanted them to see that she is just as smart as men, knows her policy, and is just as prepared for the job as a man.
I did not, however, want them to witness the blatant sexism with which she was treated - the comments about her hair and clothes, the horribly sexist rhetoric (that I won't repeat here) that greeted her, rhetoric that had little to do with where she stood on issues and everything to do with the fact that she was female. I did not want my daughter to hear her lambasted for staying with her husband and simultaneously criticized for not leaving him; I did not want her castigated for being too involved in her husband's administration and then have it said that merely being in the White House with him "didn't count." She was too hard if she acted like a man and too soft if she showed any emotion. She couldn't - and didn't - win no matter what she did.
She did it all with grace, and I am proud that my daughters were able to witness the first woman to be taken seriously as a candidate. I have felt all along that, as a Democrat, I would win with either candidate - Barack Obama's run is equally historic, and it will be with great pride that I will cast my vote for the very first African-American presidential candidate. But I can't help feeling a little sad that, once again, women have been put in their place. People cannot say that sexism didn't play a part in this race - every time someone laughed at the comments or drew a political cartoon that depicted Clinton with huge thighs, the message came through loud and clear. And it's not something I, or other feminists, will forget.
I will support Obama; no question for me, he is the candidate for whom I will vote. But I want my daughters to know I am settling for second best. This will, once again, not be the year of the woman. I just hope my daughters don't have to wait a lot longer to see what my grandmothers never did.
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