When Gender Is Not Enough

As a denizen of the developing world, I too watch clips and coverage of the US elections with an avid interest in the outcome. After all, whomever the American people elect into office will determine the shape of US foreign policy on a myriad of matters -- not the least of which is reproductive health assistance and aid to developing countries. But while the presidential candidates usually get the lion's share of the media coverage, compared with their running mates, it does not seem to be the case in this race. 

While Barack Obama and John McCain are still getting coverage worthy of a presidential hopeful, it is getting very hard not to notice the VP candidates now that the Republicans set Sarah Palin loose upon us.  

In the Philippines (as well as other countries in recent history), having a woman President (or a candidate) is nothing new. Our first President after authoritarian rule was Corazon Aquino, the widow of a popular opposition Senator who was assassinated during the reign of Ferdinand Marcos. Cory Aquino was a popular President and while many point out her eight-year term was not perfect (especially her economic policies), her rise to power was certainly memorable for many Filipinos. She led the country at an historic moment when a dictatorship which ruled for twenty years was toppled by a spontaneous and popular mass uprising -- a bloodless coup. A younger generation of Filipinos is not even aware of it anymore, but twenty-one years ago, under military rule, dissent was a very dangerous thing. Arguably, it is still dangerous today -- but so much has changed and in many ways, despite many threats, we still have democratic room for dissent.  

Meanwhile, another President who happens to be a woman is our current President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Like Cory Aquino, she rose to power when President Joseph Estrada was ousted but the similarity ends there. Unlike Cory who challenged the dictator in an election (which Marcos tried to rig), Macapagal was a constitutional "successor in waiting" - then the Vice President. 

On both occasions, the women's movements knew that having a woman as the President served an important if not symbolic milestone for Filipino women's political participation. On the other hand, feminists were also keenly aware of these women's ties to the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy. Both of them professed to be devout Catholics, though, to her credit, Corazon Aquino never imposed her religious beliefs on the Filipino people.  

When the Catholic lobby's attempt to insert a total ban on contraceptives and abortion in the 1987 Constitution failed, the church lobbied for the President (who was still exercising law making powers) to issue an Executive Order instituting such a ban. While Cory may have shared the bishop's Catholic views on contraception, abortion and even marriage and procreation, she apparently also respected the Philippine Constitution, which guaranteed religious freedom and non-establishment. And while Aquino's administration preferred a focus on maternal health, the national average spending on health was the highest it had ever been after Marcos.  

Then came Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, daughter of a former President and classmate of Bill Clinton's at Georgetown University. Armed with a Master's degree and a PhD. in economics, she became an academic, a cabinet member, elected Senator and later, Vice President. By her own admission, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo used to take birth control pills but without batting an eyelash, Arroyo has also refused to fund access to modern family planning methods for the rest of us. During her eight years in office, she single handedly reversed past administration's reproductive health policies by supporting natural family planning to the exclusion of all other methods and granting public money to a faith-based organization to conduct the program. She has threatened to veto pending legislation on reproductive health numerous times, even as the bill is gaining wide support in Congress. 

The point I am trying to make is this: While it is about gender, not all of it depends on the gender of the leader (or candidate) in question nor is it solely about gender in isolation. When Corazon Aquino the widow was emerging as the opposition's likely standard-bearer, President Marcos, a lawyer and bar-top-notcher, ridiculed the opposition saying, "Women only belong in the kitchen and in the bedroom."   

We actually heard less of this when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was running for the Vice Presidency, mainly because we already had Cory Aquino as President. Ironically, the most popular Presidential candidate at that time was a high-school dropout and an actor known for playing "tough guy" and "macho" roles, a former Mayor turned Senator, Joseph Estrada. 

Gender matters because alongside other social markers of status and identity (like race, class and ethnicity) it is all too often also the marker of inequality and all of them overlap. This is why even when a woman's gender is usually a disadvantage; in say for instance, a male dominated profession, a poor woman of color will still be worse off.  

True, Sarah Palin is just as likely as the next woman candidate to perhaps be the object of sexist remarks and biases. This needs to be addressed. On the other hand, as a candidate (and a leader), she (like our own current President) has to be held accountable for the quality of their policies and positions and this includes the issue of gender equality. How empowering have their policies been to women (specifically, poor women)? It is not even an issue of whether Sarah Palin is pro-life or pro-choice but how, as a leader she proposes to lead a country where a myriad of views on abortion (and religion) exist. How can a leader lead without respecting her constituents? (Sarah Seltzer's post provides us with the actual views of women leaders on the issue.) 

In an interview with Katie Couric, Palin assures the public that while she is pro-life, she does not support penalizing abortion. In the same interview, however, she comes dangerously close to a position of denying access to abortion, when she maintained that she would seek to convince a girl to maintain her pregnancy by counseling her, without any mention of respecting the girl's possibly different views. (Couric's hypothetical example was not even one of the more difficult grey area questions but a child raped by her father.) But perhaps what is most disturbing about Sarah Palin is that her approach to the elections seems to be one based on pushing every button there is to push, to engender the deepest divisions among the American people. Particularly appalling is how racial and religious prejudices figure in her "terrorist baiting" against Barack Obama. The irony of course is, as pointed out by pundits, Palin gets away with it because all she has to do (with her spin doctors) is pull out the "gender card."  

Gender ought not to be used in this election (or any other election) as a trump card. Gender is relevant not to silence the debate, but to push both candidates and voters to re-examine their views towards other people. Gender matters in elections in the same way we want to overcome racial, ethnic and religious biases and to become better human beings. 

Meanwhile, I have to say that watching Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric is almost as entertaining as watching Tina Fey's sketches (imitating Palin) on Saturday Night Live (SNL) and just as funny. It only stops being fun when you realize that only SNL is funny on purpose.