I think all this may help explain why women leaders around the world tend to rise higher in parliamentary systems, rather than presidential ones like ours. Prime ministers are chosen by their colleagues—people they’ve worked with day in and day out, who’ve seen firsthand their talents and competence. It’s a system designed to reward women’s skill at building relationships, which requires emotional labor.
Presidential systems aren’t like that. They reward different talents: speaking to large crowds, looking commanding on camera, dominating in debates, galvanizing mass movements, and in America, raising a billion dollars. You’ve got to give it to Trump—he’s hateful, but it’s hard to look away from him. He uses his size to project power: he looms over the podium, gets in interviewers’ faces, glowers, threatens to punch people. I watched a video of one of our debates with the sound off and discovered that, between his theatrical arm waving and face making and his sheer size and aggressiveness, I watched him a lot more than I watched me. I’m guessing a lot of voters did the same thing. I also suspect that if a woman was as aggressive or melodramatic as he is, she’d be laughed or booed off the stage. In the end, even though I was judged to have won all three of our debates, his supporters awarded him points for his hypermasculine, aggressive behavior.
As for me, when it comes to politics, my style can be viewed as female. I’ve always focused on listening over speaking. I like town hall meetings because I get to hear from people and ask follow-up questions to my heart’s content. I prefer one-on-one or small group conversations to big speeches and finding common ground over battling it out.
When I was a Senator, I spent a lot of time getting to know my colleagues, including gruff Republicans who wanted nothing to do with me at first. In 2000, Trent Lott, the Republican Leader, wistfully wondered if lightning would strike and I wouldn’t take the oath of office. By 2016, he was telling people I was a very capable lady who did a good job—and he told my husband that I had done more to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina than anyone outside the Gulf Coast. A number of other conservative Republicans also came to like me when I was their colleague in the Senate, helping them pass bills, refilling their coffee cups in the Senate Dining Room, or sitting beside them in the Senate’s private prayer meeting. One ultraconservative Senator came to see me to apologize for having hated me and saying terrible things about me over the years. He asked, “Mrs. Clinton, will you forgive me?” I know that might sound incredible now, but it’s true. I told him that of course I would.
Dramatic spiritual conversions aside, emotional labor isn’t particularly thrilling as far as the political media or some of the electorate is concerned. I’ve been dinged for being too interested in the details of policy (boring!), too practical (not inspiring!), too willing to compromise (sellout!), too focused on smaller, achievable steps rather than sweeping changes that have little to no chance of ever coming true (establishment candidate!).
But just as a household falls apart without emotional labor, so does politics grind to a halt if no one is actually listening to one another or reading the briefings or making plans that have a chance of working. I guess that might be considered boring. I don’t find it boring, but you might. But here’s the thing: someone has to do it.
In my experience, a lot of the time, it’s women. A lot of the time, it’s dismissed as not that important. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
“This is not okay,” I thought.
It was the second presidential debate, and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage, and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.
It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit Pause and ask everyone watching, “Well? What would you do?”
Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space?
Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly, “Back up, you creep, get away from me, I know you love to intimidate women but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.”
I chose option A. I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off. I did, however, grip the microphone extra hard.
I wonder, though, whether I should have chosen option B. It certainly would have been better TV. Maybe I have overlearned the lesson of staying calm—biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world.
Of course, had I told Trump off, he surely would have capitalized on it gleefully. A lot of people recoil from an angry woman, or even just a direct one. Look at what happened to Elizabeth Warren, silenced in the Senate chamber for reading a letter from Coretta Scott King because it was critical of Jeff Sessions, a male Senator, during his confirmation hearing for Attorney General. (Moments later, Jeff Merkley, a male Senator, was allowed to read the letter. Funny how that worked.) Senator Kamala Harris was derided as “hysterical” for her entirely coolheaded and professional questioning of Jeff Sessions (him again) during a Senate hearing. As one writer put it, she was being “Hillary’d.” Arianna Huffington was recently interrupted in a meeting of the Uber board of directors when she was making a point about—of all things—how important it was to increase the number of women on the board! And the man who talked over her did so to say that increasing women would only mean more talking! You can’t make this up.
In other words, this isn’t something that only happens to me. Not even close.
It also doesn’t just happen to women on the Democratic side of politics. Trump made fun of Carly Fiorina’s face because she competed against him for President. He lashed out against Megyn Kelly and Mika Brzezinski in gross, physical terms because they challenged him. Maybe that’s why Nicolle Wallace, White House Communications Director for George W. Bush, has warned that the Republican Party is in danger of being “permanently associated with misogyny” if leaders don’t stand up to Trump’s treatment of women.
This hearkens back to a powerful ad we ran during the campaign called “Mirrors.” It shows adolescent girls looking tentatively at themselves in the mirror—tucking their hair behind their ears, evaluating their profile, trying to decide if they are okay-looking, like so many girls do when they see themselves. Over their images, we ran a tape of cruel things Trump has said on the record about women over the years: “She’s a slob.” “She ate like a pig.” “I’d look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers.” Was this the voice we wanted in our daughters’ heads? Our granddaughters’? Our nieces’? Or our sons’ or grandsons’ or nephews’ heads for that matter? They deserve better than the toxic masculinity Trump embodies.
Well, he’s in their heads now. His voice resounds far and wide.
Now it’s on all of us to make sure his ugly words don’t damage our girls—and boys—forever.
Two days before the debate, my team and I had finished a grueling morning debate prep session. We had taken a break for lunch. The television was on in the room, with no volume. Then a commentator came on to warn viewers that they were about to hear something vulgar. Boy, was that true.
I don’t have a lot to say about the Access Hollywood tape that hasn’t been said. I will just note that Donald Trump is gleefully describing committing sexual assault. That got somewhat lost in the shock of it all. Too many people focused on his boorishness—such a crude man, so vulgar. True. But even if he were the height of elegance and graciousness, it wouldn’t make it okay that he’s describing sexual assault.