Bailey Porter
Editor-in-Chief

Newspapers reported this week that a poll found six in 10 voters are ready for a female president, 81 percent said they would vote for a woman candidate and 53 percent would choose Hilary Rodham Clinton.

While the results are encouraging, I am interested in the poll itself.

It is disturbing enough that the United States has not seriously considered a woman presidential candidate at least since the success of women’s suffrage in 1920; stick a poll on the subject into the mix and we’ve got one of America’s true weaknesses.

There is such a fear of powerful women in the United States that it takes statistics in 2005 to decide that some people are finally warming to the idea of a woman president. I know change is slow in this democracy, but give me a break.

What is everyone afraid of? I promise a female candidate would not be some subspecies in disguise, or worse, a superhuman with mutant capabilities. She would be a person like the rest of the candidates. Good or bad, qualified or not, she would have the same principles as a male democrat or republican—a third party will just have to wait (we’re not into that much change in America).

I have heard the argument, weak as it is, since it is rarely backed up by facts, that it would be detrimental to our credibility in the eyes of the world if we were to elect a woman to the highest seat in the White House. Especially in the Middle East, the argument goes, usually following with a bit about the lack of respect and the horrible treatment of women in that part of the world.

The United States doesn’t require a Burka or forbid women to have a life free from the dictates of men; but underneath our Independence-Day-celebrating-flag waving-Bill-of-Rights-toting-selves, are we really that different?

It’s true that as an American woman I have considerably more freedoms than women do in other parts of the world. There is no denying this.

After all, women make up 47 percent of the workforce and have 12 percent of the upper executive positions. In the 500 largest U.S. companies, women have 6.2 percent of the important titles like chairman, CEO, president or vice chairman. Women working full-time, year-round in 2000 even made 73 percent of what men made on the same schedule.

In August, MIT welcomed its first female president to the institution.

Hey, Susan, Alice and Simone: progress is a comin’.

A woman in the White House would show our strength as a nation—that we practice what we preach.

We pride ourselves in our innovation. We deploy troops to countries that don’t have it right yet. But, isn’t it time to take a look in the mirror?

As a nation, we are constantly asking others to admit fault and start over. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the governments are told women must make up 25 percent of political leadership.

That almost doubles our own. Why do we not accept that the founders of our country got some of it wrong, too?

The focus in presidential elections should be about strength of character, ideas and goals. We all know that there’s more to it than that. But, just for fun, if elections were more about the above then a woman would have a fair chance at becoming a candidate and getting elected. The debate over male or female would not come into play at all.

The women’s movement has made tremendous strides in the past. But that doesn’t seem to relax the uneasy feeling people get about a woman president. Are all the advances for women too little, too late? No, I’ll take them; but I want so much more for my country.

Bailey Porter, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at porterb@ulv.edu.