[- Women in Politics
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By Aileen, Section Filter It Yourself! Posted on Sat Apr 24th, 2004 at 02:15:42 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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Filtered through many years of involvement in organizations promoting more women in leading positions
This Sunday we have elections in Austria for the office of federal president. The two candidates are Heinz Fischer from the Social-Democratic party and Benita Ferrero-Waldner from the conservative Austrian People's Party (OeVP). Ferrero-Waldner is probably most familiar from photos of national representatives, where she is invariably found, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, batting her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at the camera, trying to smile coquettely without smearing her lipstick ... Isn't that a terrible thing for a feminist to write about another woman? Maybe it is the case that any claim can be made in an election campaign, but it infuriates me the way Ferrero-Waldner is trying to play the "we need more women in politics" card. Why would anyone vote for her, just because she is a woman? Do we really need more women in politics? Like this?
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Over 100 years ago, in 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was criticized for publishing The Woman's Bible, because it was feared that this would deepen the rift in the women's suffrage movement: more and more Christian women were joining the movement to promote more traditional "feminine" values in public life, and a controversy had resulted about whether it was more important to have the support of as many women as possible, regardless of their motivation, or to question the long-range goals of women's suffrage from the start. The Woman's Bible, including commentaries from international scholars, was intended to prove that the bible and Christian tradition throughout its history provided the primary foundation for the oppression of women, so it was feared that this publication would only alienate the Christian supporters of women's suffrage. Encountering Ferrero-Waldner's election campaign posters every day as I walk to my office, promoting her "feminine" influence, I think Elizabeth Cady Stanton was right and I wonder whether we have even come one step further today.
Some years ago, in the midst of a scandal about women members of parliament being sexually harrassed by their male colleagues (which ultimately proved more damaging for those harrassed than those doing the harrassing, so that there were no consequences and the situation has probably not improved today), the right-wing politician Joerg Haider claimed in one of his "beer tent speeches" that the only reason why Johanna Dohnal condemned this sexual harrassment was that she was "too ugly" for anyone to bother harrassing. The only consequence to this was that a horde of narrow-minded little men stumbled out of the beer tent with the conviction that any female they encountered must feel flattered by their drunken advances. Yet only a few years later, this same politician claimed that his party had done "more for women" by appointing the first woman vice-chancellor (at least until she started showing signs of an interest in liberating herself from his influence).
The OeVp, in coalition with Haider's right-wing FPOe ("Freedom Party"), also claims to have done "more for women" with the institution of a childcare allowance - which ultimately makes regular employment even harder now for women with children. And now Ferrero-Waldner claims it would be some kind of achievement to have a woman president.
Do we really need more women in politics? Politics promoting "women's interests"? Define "interests"? Define "women"? |
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