Barack Obama, Feminist in Chief?

By Katha Pollitt, The Nation. Posted December 8, 2008.

"Can't we just be happy for five minutes?" my daughter asks when I tell her about the criticisms Barack Obama is getting from some feminists I know. "It's not that I don't care about sexism. I do! But we have four whole years to complain." Inauguration day is over a month away, but on e-mail lists I belong to, Obama's already chauvinist in chief. He made sexist theorizer Larry Summers director of the National Economic Council. He's turned Michelle Obama, a top-notch lawyer, into a stay-home helpmeet and fashion plate. Barbara Walters's interview with the Obamas comes in for special opprobrium: Barack interrupted Michelle, patronized her ("When Mama's happy, everybody's happy") and on the all-important question of what kind of puppy they would get the children, said it wasn't going to be a (uh-oh) "girly dog" like Walters's beloved Havanese. Not the best choice of words, although I'm with him on little yappy dogs. When I watched the interview on YouTube, I thought the Obamas were great together: affectionate, teasing but respectful, funny, smart, delightful. Barack came across as probably the most involved father to sit in the Senate, let alone the White House, in 200 years. Yes, he interrupted Michelle, but she also interrupted him -- and Walters interrupted them both.

For some women who care about women's equality, the jury is still out on Obama. They voted for him, but they don't trust him to do the right thing for women. Left feminists aren't impressed that he's nominating Hillary Clinton for secretary of state. Mainstream feminists like Salon's Rebecca Traister are disquieted by the "momification" of Michelle. No one has forgotten that Barack called a reporter "sweetie" months ago at a press conference.

Somehow the feminist positions Obama has taken -- on reproductive rights, pay equity, domestic violence, Title IX -- don't seal the deal. And neither does his support for healthcare and unions and early childhood education and raising the minimum wage -- things that, while not gender-specific, will enormously improve the lives of women, perhaps even more than they improve the lives of men.

I don't share the suspicions, the sense of disappointment-in-advance. But I think I understand what's going on. Women's progress has been sluggish for decades -- we're still not even 18 percent of Congress, there's only one woman on the Supreme Court, parking lot attendants still make more than childcare workers, marriage is not usually a partnership of equals. Educated working women, who we tend to hear from the most, especially if they are journalists, struggle to fulfill -- with not enough help from husbands and almost none from society -- the demands of man-size jobs while satisfying standards of motherhood that have become so exacting the Virgin Mary herself would call for a martini. During the Bush years the sense of possibility contracted dramatically, to blaze up with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Never mind that Hillary didn't actually do much for women as either first lady or senator, except in the area of reproductive rights, and that she and Barack had few relevant policy differences. She was a symbol of redress -- finally! -- for all those pent-up justifiable grievances and frustrations.

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Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.

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