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Hannah Seligson Why Hillary is Good for Your Career
Hannah Seligson Why Hillary is Good for Your Career| Why Hillary is Good for Your Career |
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 Want that corner office, that vp title, or a promotion? Then start with your ballot.Last week, I wrote a post over at Brazencareerist.com, a great site that’s all about Gen Ys and the workplace, about why Hillary Clinton is good for your career. The post generated a good deal of chatter, as you can see here, so I wanted to bring the conversation over to you folks at DailyCents. So here it goes. But first, I need to make a disclaimer. I’ve been very hesitant to write anything about the nexus of gender and this election because I thought everything had already been said, debated, parsed, and then said again, debated again, and re-parsed. After Gloria’s Steinem’s op-ed in The New York Times, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Someone had made all the salient and compelling points about gender and Hillary’s candidacy. It was official. There was nothing left to say. Phew, I thought, now I can go back to writing about things that really matter, like extrapolating career advice from Lipstick Jungle, a topic I recently wrote about. However, Steinem’s op-ed was not the last word on gender and the election. As you’ve probably noticed, the discussion has ensued. So I’m going to take this opportunity to jump in. I’m not going to get into the race vs. gender issue or chide you about why as a woman you have an obligation to vote for Hillary. I’m going to tell you why I think voting for Hillary will help my career. But first, let me give you some context that sparked that thought. In February of 2007, Drew Gilpin Faust became Harvard University’s first female president. The Christian Science put her presidency in the context of running a Fortune 100, noting that of the 20 female CEOs of Fortune 100s, only one runs a firm with assets greater than Harvard’s. In that same article, Margaret Miller, professor of higher education at the University of Virginia, weighed in on what Faust’s appointment meant for women on a larger scale. "This is a crack in the glass ceiling, in the sense that to have as prestigious an institution as Harvard expand their notion of suitability for the presidency, sets an example for the rest of academia that's hard to ignore."If a female president at Harvard could crack the glass ceiling in academia, what could a female president of the world’s largest super-power do for women in offices across America? The trickle-down effect, set in motion by legions of women thinking, “If she can do it, I can do it,” could be astounding. Or maybe it’s less cerebral and more visual. As in, sometimes you have to see other women in positions of power to believe that you, too, can wield power.In December, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Hillary’s attempt to gain support among executive women. Beth Brooke, a vice chairman at Ernst and Young and a Hillary supporter, meted out her support with this explanation. "The fact that she's a woman will open doors in so many sectors." Brooke is right. Look, I’m thrilled that Obama has galvanized so much support among young women of my generation. And like Steinem, I’ll enthusiastically support him if he’s the nominee. With that said, I want my female peers to think long and hard about what having a female president could mean for them career-wise. As twentysomething women, we haven’t yet hit our head on the glass ceiling. Sure we make 80 percent of what our male peers do one year out of college, except for small pockets of us in certain urban areas. But, thankfully, we haven’t experienced a full on confrontation with inequality in the workplace. As we get promoted, though, we will. I won’t bore you with the statistics about the dearth of women at the top of most fields, except to just say that there are a plethora of them. What I will harp on, at least momentarily, is how we are missing the point when we talk about Hillary’s tears, or lack thereof, whether she’ll have PMS, and where she was the day that Bill had an affair with Monica. Why aren’t we talking what a female president will mean for working women, especially since 99 percent of women will work for pay at some point in their lives? I know Hillary isn’t a magic bullet for career women. Nor am I making the naïve argument that if she becomes president, you’ll become president of your company. But she’s there – and seeing spawns belief and belief is what cracks glass. Comments (4)
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written by Bill, April 05, 2008
Supporting Hillary as a device to help women break the glass ceiling is loosing sight of the primary issue. Do you want a President that will bring socialism in greater degrees to this country, or someone that you can trust will make ethical decisions? Do you really want someone who says, I'm going to tax you more for your own good?
I submit to you that supporting a character that is control oriented will ultimately limit your freedom and empty your hip pocket. Hillary is focused soley on one thing - gaining control. She has demonstrated a willingness to do and say anything to accomplish that end. If you want to support a woman for this position, find someone you can trust. I recognize the oxymoron characteristic of this comment in as much as we're talking of politics, and national ones at that. I for one do not want more big government dipping ever deeper in my pocket! That's exactly what Hillary and kind want. When you break through the 'glass ceiling' and arrive with no money in your purse and big government limiting many of your freedoms, rationalizing that Hillary was a necessary evil won't be much solace.
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written by Nettie Robles, April 28, 2008
Hillary didn't have the guts to tell her husband where to go when he had an affair with a White House intern. She won't have what it takes to tackle the really difficult issues. She only thinks short-term. She's going to bring the troops home if she gets elected and that will feed the terrorist crusade. She just doesn't get it. We need to finish this thing. Hillary is not the candidate who will be a success in the White House.
Obviously, Bill's not a woman!! LoL! written by Kactus-Kat, June 20, 2008
Ughhhhhhhh! This is why there ARE women like HILLARY CLINTON. (Because there are comments as insensitive and ignorant as Bill's comment!)
If you don't think that the presidential candidate, HILLARY CLINTON wasn't a major BOOST for women EVERYWHERE - even those (mostly MEN!) who didn't care for her, you've got to be blind, deaf, and dumb. What she, and her campaign did for future generations of women is so special, and so importantly progressive, that only WOMEN'S HISTORY books have ever written about it before this. Yes, there's sexism in the workplace in EVERY little business in the world. It can be a glance, it can be a whispered comment about someone's shoes, or perfume, or hairstyle.....right on up to the sexual harassment and vicious attacks that can be BOTH physical, emotional, verbal, AND completely, overwhelmingly HURTFUL!  I'm TRULY fed-up, sick as sin, totally beside myself after the last 17 months of having to defend HILLARY CLINTON & her platform in blogs, in news articles, and even in my personal life. SHE HAS CHANGED (FOR THE BETTER!) things for future generations of women! The simple fact, that a wonderful, hard-working, industrious, intelligent, AGGRESSIVE woman, took on the WORLD in her run for the Democratic Presidential race was HUGE! It *will* open doors, it *will* make the next person's challenge a teensie bit easier, and we hope that ...even in the November election, we gain MORE & MORE women leaders sitting behind those BIG political desks in Congress. And it's not just in the political arena we want to see the next generation of women leaders emerge! Yes, you can be the president of Harvard! And don't ever doubt that the name-calling, the doctored-jpg's, the definite hateful mud-slinging by the media - AND by relatives was endured by Hillary in vain. If the female Gen-Y'er's were too busy texting "Vote for Change" on their iFone's to notice HERSTORY was being made - and all for THEIR benefit, then heaven help the next generation of women not to be a little more grateful of their anSIStors! Let's hope when they pick up their post college paychecks, they bother to wonder why theirs is still 20% shorter than their male Gen-Y'ers!! 
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And that's a good thing. I really want to see the way a woman looks at the world..I know it will be an improvement in a very practical and sensible way.