Here’s a dream. It’s the 2009 G-7 summit and the photo call of the seven world leaders. All eyes are trained on the trio of women at the center of the group: the US president, the French president and the German chancellor. To mark this moment of female achievement, these three world leaders have invited the Chilean and Liberian presidents to the summit as observers. The five women released a joint statement on a huge fund for women’s health and education after a private meeting.
Reality erupts rudely into this daydream when one imagines the headlines and stories which might accompany such a picture: Would President Ségolène Royal have got beyond being routinely referred to as a “glamorous mother of four”? Would President Hillary Clinton still be described as cold and calculating? Would Chancellor Merkel’s leadership style still be characterized as one of “female modesty”? And would reporters be able to resist frequent comment on the clothing and hairstyles of these political leaders? Depressingly, the conventions that dominate political reporting seem to cling even more stubbornly to gender stereotypes than the political institutions themselves.
There is less than two weeks to go until the first round of voting in the French presidential elections. Every way the UK looks — across the Channel, across the Atlantic, across the North Sea — a woman is at the center of politics, and their gender is at the center of political debate. Gender is no longer an issue of competence. The crude question of “can a woman hold top political office?” has transmuted into exacting assessments of the candidates’ personal attributes according to sexist stereotypes. But what makes the campaigns of both Royal, the socialist presidential candidate in France, and Clinton, bidding for the Democratic nomination in the US, so novel is how both these daughters of the feminist movement are deliberately using these stereotypes, pioneering a new way of women doing politics. Breaking away from a Thatcher model (adopted by Angela Merkel) of never explicitly drawing attention to the fact of one’s sex, Royal and Clinton have put the fact that they are women and mothers at the center of their campaigns. It is a fascinating experiment.
“Because I am a woman, things will be different,” declared Royal. “The fact that I’m a woman and a mom is part of what I am,” announced Clinton. At her recent rallies, Royal has had the Marseillaise played and the French tricolor flag flying as she launches herself as a modern day Marianne — the famed symbol of the French Revolution — storming the barricades of an old, staid, male political world. Her use of a very feminine wardrobe of pretty skirts and pale (often white) jackets is a contrast to the usual female political wardrobe of sober trouser suits and pillar-box bright colors. She makes no apologies for her femininity; “Mother Nation,” the admiring newspaper Libération has christened her.
Clinton’s style may be different, but she also emphasizes her femininity as a sharp break with the prevailing political culture. Rejecting the Texan cowboy image of the current US incumbents, she made the first public appearance of her presidential bid at a children’s health-care center, holding hands with a child. Motherhood is now offered by both candidates as a political asset — a form of authority and leadership.
In a politics driven by personality, motherhood offers some shortcuts. It helps humanize the politician, it can be used to project an emotional warmth and empathy in an age when the primary requirement of a political leader is that they “understand” the voter. Voters show in polling that they think motherhood makes women less driven by self-interest and more by the welfare of others. At a time when politicians are held in such low regard and there is pervasive political cynicism, the “mother nation” figure has some real emotional resonance in both electorates. But motherhood is a double-edged political instrument. Motherhood and ambition are still an awkward combination on both sides of the Atlantic, as is clearly evident in the reception of both Clinton and Royal in recent months. Accusations of being “calculating,” “ambitious,” “cold” have dogged them from the start of their campaigns. Such terms when applied to a male candidate would hardly be seen as a drawback — what president hasn’t been ambitious? — but it makes these mother politicians appear less motherly. That then raises questions about their sincerity and/or their opportunism, the one issue on which voters are unforgiving.
The difficult task Clinton and Royal have to pull off is to meet two sets of conflicting and shifting expectations as both good mothers and good politicians. In her recent book, Royal attempted to counter critics of her mothering by declaring that she thinks of her children (the oldest is 22, the youngest 14) all the time and that she would give up politics “without even a thought” if one of her children were sick. It is an odd way of laying out your political stall.
Being the first women to run for president offers a dramatic opportunity for a country to make a fresh start, a sharp break with the past. That is what thrust Michelle Bachelet into power as Chilean president a year ago. She was an icon of a new future for Chile, reconciled after its violent past and emerging from its entrenched social conservatism. Mary Robinson played something of a similar role when she became president of Ireland. Their elections transformed the image of their countries overnight. This is the big pitch of both Clinton and Royal, but there has to be a real hunger for that change — and in neither the US or France is that self-evident.
For all Clinton and Royal’s boldness in using their sex, they are both well aware that it is the issue which could just as easily break their political careers as make them. Polling for the Clinton camp indicates that at least a third of the US electorate do not believe the US is ready for a woman president — regardless of her attributes. Meanwhile Royal has been dogged by persistent sexism. “Who will look after the kids?” was one comment from a party comrade on hearing of her presidential bid. Also, their husbands could prove a real liability. It’s far from clear whether either Royal or Clinton’s partners can be as supportive as a wife is routinely expected to be. Royal’s partner makes no bones about his own thwarted political ambitions.
It’s an issue that fascinates France because it reflects the competitive tensions of so many dual-career couples.
