Kamala Harris and the women leading the Americas
A cultural history of the US gender gap. And a novel about how it affects politics
Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story. In our second year, a big thank you to our community of more than 10,000 subscribers in 114 countries.
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In our second year, a big thank you to our community of more than 10,000 subscribers in 114 countries.
– Rashmee
The Big Story:
Three women are making political waves in the Americas, both north and south, but right now, only one is assured success in the effort to serve as her country’s top leader.
In the US, there is perceptible “Kamala-mentum”1 in the presidential race as presumptive Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris picks a running mate to announce next week. But a lot could change by election day November 5, as Harris seeks to become the first female president of the world’s most militarily and economically powerful nation.
In Venezuela, opposition leader María Corina Machado’s proxy candidate for president was denied a win by strongman Nicolás Maduro in the July 28 election. The situation remains volatile in the oil-rich country, which is hit by hyperinflation, power outages, chronic food and medicine shortages and a mass population exodus.
Claudia Sheinbaum will take office on October 1 as Mexico's first female president after June’s historic landslide election victory. Even had Sheinbaum lost, her country would still have broken the political glass ceiling because the other main candidate was also female.
This Week, Those Books:
A cultural history of American women’s struggle to break stereotypes – but not too much.
A female Silicon Valley success story tries for a political first.
The Backstory:
Five of South America’s 12 sovereign states have had elected female heads of state or government. The US is the only major country in North America never to have elected a woman head of state.
Eva Perón,2 first lady of Argentina, was the most powerful, if unelected leader in South America during her lifetime. Alternately seen as saint or sinner, she was said to embody attributes commonly associated with women, including temptress, devoted wife and mother figure (despite having no children).
Sheinbaum will be the first female president in Mexico’s 200-year history.
Hillary Clinton, the first female major party nominee for US president, did not make it to the Oval Office in 2016. She won the popular vote but not the electoral college.
Venezuela’s female opposition leader won last year’s primary elections, was controversially barred from running for the presidency and backed a male proxy instead.
This Week’s Books:
America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
By: Gail Collins
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Year: 2003
My rating: Highly readable
A fascinating cultural history of women in America by New York Times columnist Gail Collins. The author is upfront on the lack of available information regarding women we should know about. She writes: “Native American women who had no written language left behind almost nothing of their voices”. Therefore, this book is heavy on the roughly 400 years since female colonists arrived in the New World.
The main theme is the contradictions that have shaped women’s roles in the US. “The center of our story is the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it,” Collins writes. She notes that “the history of American women is about the fight for freedom, but it’s less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women’s role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders”. In the mid-19th century, for instance, a doctor delivered a lecture that described women's heads as "almost too small for intellect and just big enough for love".
With anecdotes and specificity, Collins provides much-needed context on issues that continue to bedevil American women. Should they be in control of their own body and destiny? Should they be managing the home or the office (or even, the whole country)?
Choice quotes:
“Women could live out their entire lives without ever feeling back support. The churches, where they spent hours listening to sermons, offered only benches. At home they sat on stools. There was at most only one real chair in the average seventeenth-century American home, and it was reserved for the head of the household; hence, the word chairman”.
“Childbearing dominated the lives of early female settlers. The average woman in New England married before her twentieth birthday and gave birth to about seven children…Since they were almost always either pregnant or nursing an infant, colonial women spent their lives in a continual balancing act, in which the dangers of overexertion had to be weighed against the simple necessity of getting through the day”.
Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win
By: Jo Piazza
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2018
My rating: Entertaining
Charlotte Walsh sets off to become the first female US senator from her native Pennsylvania and runs smack into the patriarchy. The attitudes that govern women’s political trajectory are quite different, it turns out, to the standards applied to men. “Don’t be angry. No one likes an angry woman,” her campaign manager tells her. He also informs Walsh that as a woman, she bears “the burden of having to appear to be charismatic, smart, well-groomed, nice, but not too nice. If you’re married, you need to look happily married. If you have kids, you should be the mother of the year”.
Walsh, a rich and successful Silicon Valley bigwig in the style of Facebook’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, faces a dirty campaign. The incumbent, a philanderering senator, is sexist and offensive. Walsh’s footwear becomes a news story. Meanwhile, cheating husband Max is resentful about his new status as stay-at-home parent to their three daughters.
Falling into the category of “beach read”, this novel is suitable for August, month of vacations and downtime.
Choice quote:
“Goddammit. It’s 2017. There are plenty of women in Congress. A woman ran for president. It shouldn’t matter that I don’t have a penis”.
“You can be a strong female candidate, but not a feminist candidate. There’s a difference. The subtle path is the surer one. It’s all in the nuance. And the hair…At least seventy-three percent of male voters prefer women with long hair. Too many liberal lady politicians get that mom helmet. They look like a crop of nuns, or dykes, and men don’t like it even if they won’t admit it in an exit poll”.
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Initial enthusiasm for Harris is seen in multiple “brat” TikTok videos, hundreds of millions said to be raised by her campaign in its first week and the mobilisation of Swifties, White Dudes for Harris, Win With Black Men and other such groups.
The hit musical Evita was based on Eva Perón’s life.
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