As the contest for a Democratic presidential nominee
enters its final stages, the feminist dilemma has become palpable and
painful. My in-box has been filled with passionate and provocative pieces
from Katha Pollitt, Frances Kissling, Caroline Kennedy and Feminists for
Peace and Barack Obama, all explaining why they are not supporting Hillary
Clinton. Equally strong commentary in support of Clinton, and dismissing
Obama, has arrived from Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, Ellie Smeal and
Ellen Malcolm. All decry the misogyny evident in media coverage of the
candidates and grapple – with varying degrees of success – with race and
gender conflict. Clinton fans mention in passing that Hillary has been an
international voice for women’s rights.
As a feminist whose daily work focuses on the challenges
facing women outside the United States – particularly those living in
poverty, in war zones and under extreme patriarchal control – I think
these conversations have a surreal quality. They are surreal because they
are so perfectly American in their insularity. What is alarmingly absent
from our conversations and arguments, even as they allude to race and
gender, is any sense of how our decisions affect the well-being of people
across the planet – not least the status of women, 51 per cent of us, who
are being treated with appalling brutality around the globe.
There is something profoundly wrong when a conversation
about qualifications to be president of the most powerful nation in the
world ignores the reality facing most of that world’s inhabitants.
While American pundits debate whether Clinton is being
targeted unfairly, for example, thousands of women and children in Gaza
are being collectively punished as Israel, a neighbouring state and former
occupying power, withholds food, fuel and electricity. Yet who is talking
about that? In the face of such a travesty of human rights and
international law, not one of the presidential candidates, regardless of
race or gender, has the gumption to speak out and say this is wrong. Not
one has said that he or she will not tolerate such behaviour by any ally
of the United States.
We live in a world where women are facing an epidemic of
rape in conflicts from Nepal to Chiapas to the Democratic Republic of
Congo, yet neither Clinton nor Obama has seen fit to mention it. Recent
reports of the widespread murder of educated women in Iraq by religious
extremists are adding new horror to an already horrifying situation but
are going almost unreported.
Women and children today form the bulk of the world’s
refugees and make up the majority of the world’s poor. Despite doing more
than two-thirds of the world’s labour, women own only one per cent of the
world’s assets. Yet not one presidential candidate has chosen to highlight
the profound threat that gender inequality is posing to the development,
economic stability and future peace of our world.
At times like these, the practical politics of US
elections are staggeringly oppressive. We are told by the experts that
Americans do not care about, or vote on the basis of, what happens in the
rest of the world. We hear claims that presidential candidates cannot
raise these issues during the race: we just have to trust that they will
do better once they are in office.
That is not good enough. I want to hear from the woman
running for president why being a woman and a mother matters to her and
how it will inform her leadership. I want her to stand up for the millions
of women who are not heard here or around the world. I want her to chart
her course as the wisest, most humane president this country has ever
seen, not to show us how much more macho she can be as our next
commander-in-chief.
Women in the developing world are not reassured when they
see Madeleine Albright standing next to Hillary Clinton. They have not
forgotten that this former secretary of state, when questioned about the
death of more than 5,00,000 children as a result of sanctions against
Iraq, responded that the price had been worth it. Most would prefer a
president tough enough to say that Iraqi children matter to
her as much as American children and that she would use the awesome power
of the presidency to ensure the safety and well-being of all the world’s
children. Hillary Clinton would not be alone if she chose to own her power
as a skilled and qualified politician and as a woman.
There is a rising number of fiercely feminine and feminist
leaders around the globe – people like Michelle Bachelet of Chile, who is
unafraid to be an agnostic single mother in a deeply Catholic country, and
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, whose first act as president was passing
legislation against sexual violence. Hillary has a unique chance to stand
alongside them. For her to dance so gingerly around the question of gender
in international affairs is to miss an extraordinary opportunity to use
gender as a platform for healing the deep wounds left by the previous
presidency.
But my high expectations are not limited to Hillary. I
have equally high goals for the man who says he will unite us. Obama has
his own powerful but underutilised tool: race. What prevents him, for
example, from drawing analogies between the plight facing women – many of
whom live in subjugation simply by virtue of their gender – and the
experience of slavery? And why stop there? By owning the question of race
on an international stage, Obama would have an amazing opportunity to
reach out to people worldwide – who are in more need of hope than most
Americans could imagine. Regardless of whether there are votes in it, this
is of profound relevance to all of us in this country.
Yet Obama is also missing this chance. What is happening
when a truly multiracial candidate whose first name means "blessing" in
Hebrew and Arabic and whose middle name is Hussein, feels he must spend
his moral capital proving his Christian credentials? What I want is for
Obama to stand with my husband, a man born and raised in Pakistan, who now
is asked to step aside for a random search each time we board an airplane.
He needs to tell us that he knows only too well that if he were not a US
senator but an ordinary man with a foreign name going on vacation with his
family, this could happen to him. I’d like to hear from him that when he
looks at the United States or the world, what he sees are not Muslims,
Christians, Hindus, Jews or atheists but simply human beings desperate to
be treated with dignity and respect.
Like Clinton, Obama too can find inspiration and
solidarity with a new generation of global leaders emerging from the
shackles of their minority status. For the first time in Latin American
history, for example, indigenous or mixed ancestry leaders are holding
power as the head of state in Bolivia and Venezuela. Obama has an
unparalleled opportunity to speak to them from an empathetic perspective.
And as September 11 showed us, our foreign policy is only a short step
from our domestic concerns.
The next president needs the ability to demonstrate the
inner courage and conviction that comes from owning his or her
"otherness". As a woman and a mother, Hillary Clinton could bring insights
and perspectives no other president in US history could have brought to
the negotiating table of war and peace. As the stepson of an Indonesian
Muslim and the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, Barack Obama
manifests what it means to be a global citizen. What is at stake in this
election is not merely the historic first that would be accomplished if
either a black man or a woman became the next US president. What is at
stake is the fragile future of our shared world.
(Kavita Nandini Ramdas is president and CEO of the Global
Fund for Women, the world’s largest foundation solely committed to
advancing women’s rights.)
Courtesy: The Nation; www.thenation.com