Recount: A Magazine of Contemporary Politics

Bush and Kerry Talk Women’s Rights: I’m Sorry, What Year is This Again?

By Erin Obourn | Oct 27, 2004 Print

With a stellar network primetime line-up this fall including such hits as “Desperate Housewives” and “Wife Swap,” the current vision of women’s roles in this country clearly could use a re-examination, and what better place to start than at the top.

President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry need to examine their fundamental attitudes towards women, and realize it’s time for an update. Both candidates talk about women’s rights like it’s 2004, but when it comes to women, it sounds like it’s 1950. And it’s time for their rhetoric to start matching, well, their rhetoric.

I know that feminism stopped being sexy with the last bra burning, but I’m willing to risk sounding like a feminist in order to draw attention to the blatant disconnect between the way the candidates advocate women’s rights and the way they patronize women when they speak candidly about their wives and daughters.

Kerry clearly advocates equal pay between the sexes. “If we raise the minimum wage, which I will do over several years, to $7 an hour, 9.2 million women who are trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year,” Kerry said in the third debate in Tempe. “We also need to hold on to equal pay. Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That’s not right in America.” While Kerry’s rehearsed answer is stereotypical of campaign performances meant to seduce particular demographics, he does deserve credit for addressing an issue critical to women’s rights that President Bush avoided altogether.

For his part, Bush, in the first presidential debate in Miami, practically knighted himself the liberator of Afghanistan’s women. President Bush stressed the importance of spreading liberty for women, using Afghanistan as an example. “Ten million citizens have registered to vote. It’s a phenomenal statistic. They’re given a chance to be free, and they will show up at the polls. Forty-one percent of those 10 million are women,” Bush said.

Although stridently anti-choice, Bush also claims to have women’s concerns at the forefront of his campaign. He’s constantly trying to build an emotional connection with mothers during this election, humanizing himself and portraying himself as the candidate who can keep America safe from terrorists.

But despite all that, the candidates showed their true colors when it came to their fundamental attitudes toward women when asked to speak off the cuff about the women – wives, daughters, mothers – in their personal lives. “We’re all married to strong women. Each of us have two daughters that make us very proud,” asked Bob Schieffer of CBS News during the third debate, “I’d like to ask each of you what is the most important thing you’ve learned from these strong women?”

Schieffer did not say “strong families” or mention “children that make us proud,” but posed the question in gender-specific terms, as though the women in their lives exist solely for their benefit. It is disappointing that Scheiffer would phrase a question in such patronizing language, but even more disappointing that neither presidential candidate seemed to have a problem with it, answering the question in the most demeaning way possible.

According to Bush, the women are there to teach him to, “stand up straight and not scowl.” Or as Kerry put it, “They kick me around. They keep me honest. They don’t let me get away with anything.” Both candidates were more than happy to brag about the women in their lives, and how wonderfully they embody the characteristics of the ideal doting wife, or good daughter. Where was the mention of these women’s professional achievements, their political accomplishments, their education, their independence? You got me.

It was like something straight out of a 1950s Edgar Guest poem, “A Kick Under the Table:”

After a man has been married awhile,
And his wife has grown used to his manner
And style…
If he picks the wrong fork for the salad, he
Knows,
That fact by the feel of his wife’s slippered toes.
If he’s started a bit of untellable news,
On the calf of his leg there is planted a bruise.
Oh, I wonder sometimes what would happen to
Me
If the wife were not seated just where she
Could be
On guard every minute to watch every trick,
And keep me in line all the time with her kick.

In answering Scheiffer’s question, both Bush and Kerry were saying, “We’ve got some really strong women behind us.” That’s great that women are strong, but are we really still referring to women as being “behind” their husbands or fathers? The comments of the two men vying for the most powerful position in America have me wondering, even with equal rights by law, if women are still viewed in the same condescending manner by men that they were 60 years ago, how far have we really come?

In response to a question about affirmative action in the third debate, Kerry noted, “The fact is that in too many parts of our country we still have discrimination … It also is with respect to women, it’s with respect to other efforts to try to reach out and be inclusive in our country. I think that we have a long way to go, regrettably.” It’s time for Sen. Kerry to take his own advice, and start using more respectful language and a less patronizing tone while, ironically, talking about making women more equal in this country.

As Kerry noted in the second debate in St. Louis, “It’s gut check time.” Indeed, Sen. Kerry, do you have what it takes to talk about women as equals, rather than in terms of what they have done to make you proud?

And it’s time for President Bush to realize that his plan to gain popularity among women voters will never succeed if the next words out of his mouth are that he’s proud of the women in his life, not because of any personal accomplishments they’ve achieved, which received absolutely no mention in his response to Scheiffer’s question, but because they told him to tuck his shirt in and fed him a delicious home-cooked apple pie, like any good American woman does.

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