Why Not a Woman?

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Some experts think the psychological barriers to a woman in the White House are still very strong. "The role of the President is the psychic reassurance of the American people," says Susan Reverby, director of Wellesley College's women's studies program. "A woman President can't psychologically reassure you that she is in control. Mommy isn't a father figure." According to a survey of 115,000 women conducted by Wellesley's Center for Research on Women, in collaboration with Woman's Day magazine, 89% believe the country is not yet ready for a woman President. But 72% said they would vote for a woman candidate.

It may be wrong to think that Mommy cannot be as strong as Father. Or that Mommy cannot be as militantly protective. The world has seen the examples of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi—all very tough characters. It has also seen that male leaders (Chamberlain, and in a different scale of things, Carter) can be unreassuringly passive in the face of danger.

The way that Americans view men and women as leaders has undoubtedly been altered by the experience of the Viet Nam War and by the pervasiveness of nuclear weapons. In Touched with Fire, an eloquent meditation on the future of the Viet Nam generation, John Wheeler sifts through some pertinent issues of the masculine principle and the feminine. "Femininity expresses the idea that there are things worth living for," writes Wheeler. "Masculinity expresses the idea that there are things worth dying for."

In a way, femininity as a political principle was legitimized by the failure of America in Viet Nam. The war was interpreted as male triumphalism gone disastrously wrong. War, the traditional testing ground and expression of male virtue, became not glory, but horror. Some Americans were filled with a revulsion at the kind of people who brought the nation to this pass—men—and began to think that maybe women have gentler instincts and might be able to lead humankind away from the precipice. It dawned on some people that women may be nicer people than men. Or, in any case, that as politicians they are less corrupt. That may be mere inexperience on the female's part, of course, or a mere fantasy altogether. But something of that psychology does ghost around the corners of the mind when women are considered as politicians.

More than the aftermath psychology of Viet Nam, it has been Ronald Reagan who has stirred a change. In a sense, Reagan is the most efficient agent that the National Organization for Women has working for it. In a negative way, he has helped to clarify a women's agenda in America, and to persuade women that they do have different priorities from men. After the 1982 elections, the Republicans began to analyze the gender-gap in earnest. Ronald Hinckley, a poll specialist with the Office of Planning and Evaluation, prepared a 12-page memorandum that concluded: "The gender gap vote favored candidates perceived to be more peace-oriented in foreign affairs and caring on social programs and the economy."