Moving past Clinton

According to just about all of the election prediction models out there (except the one in Bill Mitchell’s mind) Hillary Clinton has a strong chance of winning the presidential election next Tuesday. After 240 years without a female president, we may finally have one. So the question looms: what does this mean for feminism? Has its ultimate goal been accomplished? Is it finally over?

Feminism is not “done.” But, admittedly, Clinton’s election would be a large step toward its goals. A (female) Clinton presidency represents some version of a shattered glass ceiling. This election has already marked milestones: we have treated a female candidate with due respect and seriousness; a woman has now talked about abortion on a national debate stage; girls can grow up with a rational belief that they could be president.

At the same time though, Clinton’s brand of feminism leaves some things to be desired within the larger landscape of contemporary feminism. Part of this critique actually refers to female Clinton supporters’ treatment of female Trump supporters. Female Trump supporters are glossed as stay at home moms either falling in line with their husbands or loathing their own femininity. Both judgments ignore a woman’s agency and fall into the reductive trap of setting an idea of what a “good woman” is—perhaps a more positive stereotype, but a stereotype nonetheless. Feminism cannot leave these women behind.

The main problem with Clinton’s personal brand of feminism is her flattening of different types of women. She wields a lot of power as a straight, wealthy, white woman who has held elite positions for 30 years that other women do not have access to. By speaking to women as one homogeneous entity, she leaves out considerations of race, class and sexual identity that she can ignore but might hold others back. Not all women share the same struggles, so a feminism that treats their struggles uniformly is necessarily lacking. Clinton specifically tends to speak to the concerns of career-driven, liberal (perhaps white) women, such as when she talks about the need for equal representation of females in CEO positions, high-ranking tech jobs, professorships and other relatively elite professions. Climbing the corporate ladder is only a concern for women already at a certain level of privilege. A large number of women in America have different concerns that Clinton fails to address. This is part of the feminist worry about Clinton. Culturally, we have a stereotype of what an American politician is like: older, white and wealthy. Has Clinton only come this far because she fits well enough to the stereotype that her being that her femininity is not a significant deviation?

With these hesitations in mind, we turn to the future of feminism. If Hillary wins, that is not the end of anything. We not only need more female politicians, but we need a more diverse array of female politicians in terms of race, class background, sexual identity and ideology in order to accurately represent America’s own diversity. Additionally, we need female politicians to work to support other women. The leverage and platform of office is only beneficial for feminism if it is used to confer rights to women. Finally, we hope to eventually reach a place where we need not talk about a candidate’s gender as part of the consideration of his/her worth as a politician. Femininity should not be seen as a barrier to anything. Hopefully, November 8 ensures that it never will.