U.S. voters should elect female leader
Newly elected South Korean President Park Geun-hye smiled for the cameras, waved to a cheering crowd and confidently asserted her ability to deal with North Korea, one of the most unpredictable dictatorships in the world.
As South Korea welcomed its first female president to office this week, the talking heads will surely be asking one of the most asked questions regarding the future of American politics: Should the United States be the next to welcome a woman to the White House as commander-in-chief?
The answer is inevitably yes. A woman in the Oval Office would not only add to the already impressive landmarks in equality that have come over the last few years, but would bolster and enhance the United States’ image abroad.
Furthermore, America’s preference for a female president in 2016 is strong; Fox News released a poll showing Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice leading the charge for the White House. Clinton, whom 55 percent of American’s think would do the best job, also garnered the largest response among strictly male voters — 47 percent. Support within the Democratic Party is even more overwhelming: The poll shows she would be a good president in the eyes of 83 percent of registered Democrats.
For the United States, these are encouraging signs. Legislative trends also bode well: A 2009 law extended the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits about equal pay for women in the workplace, a 2013 decision permitted women to serve in combat positions for the first time and just yesterday, Congress voted to keep the Violence Against Women Act.
The United States is poised to continue these historic developments with the election of a female to the presidency in 2016. When President Barack Obama’s second term comes to an end, he will leave behind a legacy of equality. And there would be no greater end to his presidency than the swearing in of the first female president in United States history.
Recent political battles that have taken a distinctly gendered air and have painted some members of Congress as waging a “war on women” also demonstrate the necessity of supporting the election of a woman to the United States’ top office. Though the most recent congressional elections resulted in a record 101 women in both houses, there was also plenty of misogynistic language and behavior, including insulting comments about rape from right-wing politicians, such as Todd Akin, and the censoring of Michigan Rep. Lisa Brown for say “vagina” on the state house floor.
The record number of women in Congress should clearly overshadow the latter incidents, but the mass media unfortunately determined that a record number of women in Congress doesn’t make as flashy a headline as another comment about rape and God.
Electing a woman to the presidency would make a bigger headline than either of those and would assuredly prevent the mischaracterization of the current crowd in Washington as waging a “war on women.” The election of Park in South Korea puts the number of female world leaders at 17. The United States should be one of them.
Nathaniel Haas is a freshman majoring in economics and political science.