CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WHY HER GENDER GETS LITTLE MENTION
IN HARRIS CAMPAIGN”
Kamala Harris has been a trailblazer in
politics for most of the last two decades, giving more and more young women a
sense of unlimited possibility.
But on the night she accepted the
Democratic presidential nomination, only one national convention speaker
stressed the fact she is but the second woman so nominated and just the third
female to make a national ticket.
That speaker was Hillary Clinton, the
first woman nominated for president and the winner of the popular vote in 2016
by almost 3 million, a margin that once all but guaranteed Electoral College
victory but has not for the last two decades, which featured two of only three
American presidents elected with a minority of votes.
Clinton, who stressed her then-unique
status as a female at the top of a presidential ticket, spoke of “cracking this
last glass ceiling,” and fervently hoped Harris would bust it wide open.
But Clinton has a different perspective
from Harris, perhaps because she is almost 17 years older. It’s much like
younger women today who cannot remember when married or engaged women were
denied jobs legally because they might become pregnant. That discrimination was
fully authorized until court decisions of the 1980s used an earlier Civil
Rights Act to ban it.
Now women occupy positions of authority
in a host of fields, including law, medicine and clergy. More than 56 percent
of current law school students are women. And in 2023, 54.6 percent of medical
school students were females, having become the majority in 2020. Both men and
women by now are accustomed to representation and treatment by skilled females.
Millions of American churchgoers also
are used to hearing women deliver sermons from myriad pulpits. Every Anglican
denomination ordains women priests, along with most Lutheran and Presbyterian
churches, while both Reform and Conservative Jewish denominations ordain women
rabbis.
But there remains considerable
resistance to female clergy, where fields like law and medicine have no
problems with women, who occupied less than 5 percent of student slots in those
fields just 100 years ago.
The Roman Catholic church remains the
largest resistor to women in pastoral roles, but Mormons, Southern Baptists,
Southern Methodists, some Pentecostal churches, Muslims and Orthodox Jews also
allow no female clergy.
But the indications are more women will
be in more positions of authority in the future. Example: Caltech, one of
America’s premiere colleges, now has its first majority female freshman
class.
Taken together,
all this has made it ever easier for both men and women to accept females in
positions of authority.
That’s probably one reason Harris’
gender drew so little note during the four weeks she took to solidify herself
as the Democratic nominee before the party convention. It’s also likely why her
gender was not a major focus of either conventional speeches or her own almost
hourlong acceptance speech.
Yes, Harris has had to walk something of
a tightrope: She’s had to project strength without aggressiveness, boldness
without being strident, physical attractiveness without vanity, and caring
without submissiveness.
But she’s long handled those
complications without much problem. As district attorney of San Francisco,
attorney general of California and vice president, Harris burst through
previous glass ceilings without offending many very masculine men.
It was the same this summer as she
vetted and interviewed possible vice presidential running mates. The likes of
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Arizona Sen.
Mark Kelly and eventual nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, had no
qualms about accepting her as their boss.
Some of these men epitomize masculinity,
but none quailed at the notion of serving a female occupying arguably the
world’s most powerful political position.
Walz displayed nothing but comfort after
his selection, seemingly having no trouble ceding the limelight and most public
attention to Harris during bus tours and at the convention itself.
So anyone expecting her to act timid or
fearful of Trump in their first debate (and others that may follow) probably
doesn’t know Harris very well.
She may turn out to be the ideal
candidate for this time, and if that’s so, it will be because of the success of
myriad other women who broke through to their own successes and authoritative
stature.
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