At my tennis clinic, the instructor told a relatively new player to just haul off, hit the ball as hard as you can. Then she explained that men and boys had no problem doing that; she never had to tell them to let go and hit it as hard as they can. Women and girls were more tentative, so she would tell us not to worry about getting it right, but to just wallop it. It worked. The young woman hit some amazing shots after that advice.
I recently went to the Charleston launch party for Emerge America, a wonderful group created to encourage and assist women to step up and run for office. I was told that whereas men will get involved confident that they can do a better job than others, extremely competent women all too often hold back because they don't feel competent enough to run for office.
I admire women who have great confidence. I grew up in a blue collar family with an immigrant father. As the oldest, even as a girl, my parents had high hopes for me. They thought, as smart as I was, I should become a teacher. They didn't tell me about it, but I heard that they were proud of me for going to college, but it was rough going. And yet, I did make it through, and ended up getting all the way through to a Ph.D. My father's reaction when I told him I was going back to school for a doctorate could best be described as confused derision. "You already went to school. Why do you have to go back?"
In a nutshell, my relationship with my father began with him telling me, as a child, how smart I was. And then, when I began to have opinions that were different from his, I became someone who "thought I was so smart." So, no confidence building there.
Hillary Rodham Clinton had a father who could not imagine her not being able to do anything a man could do, and do it better. Same for Elizabeth Warren. Women who grew up with fathers who saw them as equal to men, and able to compete and excel tend to do that. Here in my later years, when I catch myself criticizing myself or worrying over some social anxiety or other nonsense, I mutter, "Thanks, Dad," and then get on with it.
But those insecurities that most women incorporate from childhood are reinforced in society: lower pay, sexual stereotypes and harassment, lower expectations despite greater responsibility, and so many more subtle social forces. The attack on reproductive rights is one of the more critical fronts intended to keep women from having the same control over their lives as have men.
The good news is, the backlash is here.
I am thrilled at the generation of younger women who are moving women forward today. They have been, over the years, more visible in the arts, in the media, in finance and in politics. But the Women's March on January 21 was the explosion that caused us to look around and see that we were the ones that would change the sad course that history had been taking. We were the ones that weren't getting tangled up in questionable arguments and slippery slopes. United, we stood for everyone.
So, as the 2018 midterms approach, thousands of women across the country are stepping up. And groups like Emerge America and WREN -- Women's Rights and Empowerment Network -- are there to help. Because we know what the country needs, but may not have the tools to get through the man-made maze of red tape to get there.
You won't be surprised to hear that women attempting to run for office experience a bias that excludes, ignores or minimizes their candidacy. In a South Carolina special election primary a few short months ago, an older white businessman ran against a young black woman. People from in and out of state eagerly signed up to help in his campaign, some fairly big names with the national party, bombarding Facebook and email in-boxes. The State ran an article headlined: "In SC Congress Race, Goldman Sachs Executive Faces Student." The "student" was a woman who had spent six years in the military, working as a paralegal in an Army JAG legal affairs office. Hard to imagine a headline written for a man that did not include "military veteran."
And yet, with little to no help from state or national party, she ended the primary with 22 percent of the vote.
I am also discerning a subtle and dangerous pattern as people enter 2018 races. A woman enters a race. Then, seeing no great risk, a man jumps in. And then more well-known men jump in to support him. And then the woman gets ignored or minimized.
Gods, I hope I am wrong. But I am writing today to alert all you women and the men who are strong and confident enough to support us, because we will need to be aware of the biases and fight harder to be heard as we run for office. When we see something like that ridiculous headline in The State, or a primary being held as though the male candidate's win was a given, we need to not just speak up, but yell. We need to support the great and talented women that have stepped up with all we've got.
We need to "haul off."
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