6 Μαρτίου 2020, 21:16

‘We still have a problem with female authority’: how politics sets a trap for American women

“Gender in this race?” Senator Elizabeth Warren said outside her home on Thursday. “You know that is the trap question for every woman. If you say, ‘Yeah! There was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’ And if you say, ‘No, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’”

She added: “I promise you this. I will have a lot more to say on that subject later on.”

Warren had just exited the race for US president, leaving the Democratic field with only one female candidate: Tulsi Gabbard, the congresswoman from Hawaii who, with only one delegate toward the nomination, is in effect out of contention.

There have been female leaders all over the world, including two British prime ministers, the current German chancellor and the current prime minister of New Zealand. But America’s glass ceiling, far from being cracked or smashed, appears to have been reinforced with double glazing.

It is a distressing turn for the Democratic party, which nominated Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, harnessed women’s political energy to regain the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, and began the 2020 election with the most diverse field of presidential candidates in history.

The New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, California senator Kamala Harris and author Marianne Williamson all came and went before the Super Tuesday primaries. Warren’s poor showing that night, including a third-place finish in her home state of Massachusetts, sealed her fate.

Now Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, two septuagenarian white men, will slug it out for the right to take on Donald Trump – another septuagenarian white man.

Bonnie Morris, a history lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, and author of books including The Feminist Revolution, said she was “flabbergasted” to wake up on Thursday and discover that Warren, for whom she voted in the California primary two days earlier, was out of the race.