Saturday, December 29th, 2007...9:00 pm
Does Feminism Need Nepotism?
The late Benazir Bhutto in New York Magazine:
Q: Why do you think that the U.S. seems to have a harder time with women at the highest level of power than other countries?
A: In a country like Pakistan or India, when a charismatic leader dies, people are not sure that the traditions he symbolized will continue—there’s a lot of illiteracy and there isn’t the same access to information. So they tend to transfer allegiance from a male leader to a female descendant, in the hope that his policies will be continued. But in Westernized societies, it’s a little different, because people have greater education and greater access to information—they don’t have the same need to be sure of the message of the leader.
Exactly. This is how you get your Aung San Suu Kyis, Megawati Sukarnoputris, Indira Gandhis, Gloria Macapagal Arroyos and so on. And it’s clearly not as irrelevant in the American context as Bhutto seems to think.
This isn’t an endorsement of any of the above; you don’t have to be pro-Sukaronoputri to grok that electing a woman to the most visible high status position in a patriarchal society is a kind of social progress distinct from any particular policy she might support. But assuming that a woman executive is a good in itself, is that good totally blotted out by the stain of nepotism? If this is the manner in which women initially traverse political gender boundaries, should we resist it?
5 Comments
December 30th, 2007 at 12:37 am
[…] by Matt Zeitlin on December 29, 2007 Kerry Howley links to this Bhutto interview with New York in which Bhutto kinda-sorta makes the argument that I made a […]
December 30th, 2007 at 10:07 am
You can also add Sonia Gandhi (not Ghandhi) to the list - everyone in India knows who the real PM is. Ans Indira will be remembered more for the atrocities committed under the ‘emergency’ she proclaimed after a court nullified her election. Btw, where’s the vegetable bazaar at the top from - Bombay? Madras?
Thanks for the piece on migration
December 30th, 2007 at 10:31 am
It’s Singapore’s Little India. Haven’t made it to the actual India yet….
January 5th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
If this is the manner in which women initially traverse political gender boundaries, should we resist it?
I just read your article on NYT. Interesting argument you made there. Though I do not want to see Hillary’s rise to power in light of feminist cause. She’ll exploit the idea as a campaign slogan, but she really belongs to the tradition of nepotism alongside Bhutto and George W., regardless of her gender. That bugs me. As a single woman trying to establish myself in professional world, the kind of path that Hillary takes is not very inspiring. I see people like her around me all the time–those power couple professors, business people, lawyers, etc. using each other’s name value just to “get there.” My own impression of those people is that they are not really interested in the so-called women’s cause. I’d like to resist that path myself, but if anyone else takes it, I won’t spit on her. I just can’t look up to her as a role model. Just being honest.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
[…] feminism/nepotism post caught the interest of a kind soul at the New York Times, so I’m happy to report that […]
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