The Global Hillary

Women's Political Leadership in Cultural Contexts

Dinesh Sharma

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138829749
• eBook ISBN: 9781317570585
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Is there a linkage between "smart power" and Hillary Clinton's leadership style? Can she advance American leadership and women's development worldwide? The Global Hillary addresses these questions and many others.

Bringing together two key aspects of Clinton's ongoing career—her advocacy for international women's rights and the mission to foster democratic development around the world—The Global Hillary critically analyzes Clinton's role as a transformative leader of global influence. Essays in this collection provide insight into Clinton's leadership style, particularly her use of American "smart power" in foreign policy, while examining her impact on the continuing worldwide struggle for women's rights. Using international perspectives on the historical and cultural contexts of Clinton's leadership, this book also looks toward the future of women's political leadership in the 21st century with special attention to the prospect of electing a woman to the United States presidency.

1

THE GLOBAL HILLARY

Smart Power and the Making of a Woman President

Dinesh Sharma

The United States is the oldest constitutional democracy in the world, but it has not succeeding in electing a woman as the head of state. As one of the few advanced democracies with a developed economy that granted women the right to vote approximately a century ago, why has the US not succeeded in placing a woman in the executive office?¹

This is only one of the questions we grapple with in this book.

While the recent survey and polling data suggests that Americans are ready to elect a qualified woman president, the idea of the first American woman president remains only a potentiality, not yet fully realized, even though the trend may be strong enough that it may happen in 2016.² Women voters have always taken on the idea of the first woman president much more seriously, but now American men may be accepting the idea gradually.³ However, it remains to be seen whether in a crowded field of male candidates, Americans will gravitate toward a qualified woman candidate to lead the country on the basis of equality, qualifications, and experience.

What are the sociocultural and political factors for this historical lag? In the era of globalization, where women’s rights and incomes are increasingly on the rise, isn’t it a cultural and economic imperative that one of the foremost democratic nations lead the way in women’s political leadership? The women’s movement around the world has generated mixed results as tracked by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG),⁴ while there has been a retrenchment along traditional lines. Will American leadership remain strong in the 21st century or will it face a global backlash?

Globalization has accelerated to far-flung places in the world, where women’s right to education, health and political participation has gained more credence, oftentimes pushed by the United States Development Agency and the State Department.⁵ Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady and the former Secretary of State, has championed these causes through her long and complicated career. As a young lawyer at Yale, she gave voice to the concerns of children and women. As the First Lady, she gave a landmark speech on women’s rights in China and led the fight for equal rights for women. At the State Department, she has melded development with democracy as central concerns of US foreign policy.

With Hillary Clinton’s political rise to the presidency, we may have seen the emergence of women’s rights as central to political discourse in the US and around the world. Women’s rights have indeed become human rights, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton’s landmark speech in Beijing more than two decades ago.⁶ What was the impact of that speech? We will examine this question in the book.

Thus, this book deals with the nexus of women, development and democracy—as a post-Enlightenment, postmodern, and global feminist project of the West—by focusing on the political leadership of one of the best-known women politicians the United States has produced in recent times. While in this book we will compare Hillary with other leading women politicians around the world and draw parallels with important historical figures in the women’s rights movement, we are principally interested in examining the role Hillary Clinton—as First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State—has played as a transformational figure in bridging women’s development with democratic institutions in the developing and developed societies. This is clearly one of her lasting legacies, independent of any political fortunes she may have won or lost in American politics.

The triumvirate purpose of this book is to examine 1) America’s “smart power” through the life and work of Hillary Clinton; 2) offer a perspective on globalization by examining the American agenda for women’s development as a democratic project around the world; and 3) offer a way forward for women’s political leadership in the 21st century. In essence, this book is about America’s smart power or cultural capital, wielded through development aid, assistance, and peace-building measures, as seen through the beneficial effects of foreign policy on behalf of women and children.

We achieve the aim of this book by offering contextual or ethnographic perspectives on women’s development⁷ and on the global image of Hillary Clinton from five different continents. In other words, this book offers a perspective on America’s global leadership on behalf of half of the world’s population by examining the causes and projects Hillary Clinton has championed throughout her career.

This book was conceived as the complementary volume to the earlier edited book The Global Obama, which examined the rise of the first Black and multicultural head of state of any Western democracy.⁸ Here, we undertake a similar project by examining the movement for women’s rights through the political rise of Hillary Clinton, who by all accounts has had a stellar career even before running for the highest office in the country. As she is running for the office of the US President again, this book will be a timely addition to the growing literature on her political biography.

While there are many books on her years in the White House as the First Lady and few on her career as a Senator and Secretary of State, there are no books to date that examine her life’s mission for women’s rights within the context of globalization, on the one hand, and America’s leadership in fostering development and democracy around the world, on the other.

Thus, this book will specifically demonstrate how Hillary Clinton has shaped the debate around women’s participation in the political economy as a central concern of her purview around the world. The various chapters in this book reveal the underbelly of US power, as a counterbalance to US military force, where American security forces and diplomats play a critical role as peacekeepers and policemen of the world.

Adventures in Global Feminism

Today, the term feminism evokes the original social movement at the turn of the 20th century. Along with the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century and the movement for marriage equality more recently, the struggles for minority rights have turned a corner. As many of the social movements of previous century have fulfilled most, if not all, of their original mission and purpose, are we entering a new territory or a different phase of post-feminist activism?⁹

Given the US elected and reelected the first Black president—Barack H. Obama—someone who truly is a social progressive, is the US political system now primed to elect the first woman president?¹⁰ Some historians have argued that the recent electoral history reflects the earlier generations when minorities and women fought for the right to vote.¹¹ Will history repeat or possibly rhyme itself?

From abolition to the suffrage movement, from the Equal Rights Amendment to post-feminism, we have followed this trajectory before in an earlier era. Does the US now stand a better chance of electing a woman president in the age of Obama, who has pushed several progressive causes forward from protection of the environment to women’s reproductive health? Are we in fact seeing the worldwide convergence of several social progressive causes that might help elevate a woman politician to the highest office in the land?

These are difficult questions to answer, but from the perspective of emerging global feminism and as social scientists, journalists, psychologists, and historians, we will be able to address these issues effectively. Relying on a combination of ethnographic and journalistic reporting styles, we will provide worldwide coverage and in-depth analysis on Hillary Clinton as a global leader, diplomat, and presidential candidate.

Smart Power and the Melding Development, Democracy, and Diplomacy

Women are to nature as men are to culture. This used to be an old truism in the history of anthropology, sociology, and the social sciences.¹² Many anthropologists went to study exotic cultures to examine the domestication of women as part of the social and cultural organization. This truism no longer holds, as many traditional cultures have embraced modernization and development, and there is an upsurge in the rights of women and girls. Women’s roles are no longer simply aligned with what is sanctioned by natural constraints or social structures and patriarchy.¹³ Hillary Clinton, along with an army of development aid workers, has been a proponent of this change around the world, otherwise known as a key part of America’s smart power strategy.

The book will focus on smart power, examining two human developmental themes that run through Hillary’s work: 1) Policies for girl’s education, health, and well-being; and 2) women’s rights and participation in the political economy. Hillary Clinton announced recently that as part of the Clinton Global Initiative, she has undertaken a review of the progress towards women’s rights since the Beijing speech starting almost twenty years ago.¹⁴ We believe this would be an ideal opportunity for us to review the progress in this book. How successful has been the strategy to meld soft power with smart power? We will explore this topic in the book (see Chapter 5 by Professor Assie-Lumumba).

Foreign Policy for the 21st Century

There is nothing foreign about foreign policy, as many of the domestic issues—such as education, innovation, and security—impinge on the US image abroad.¹⁵ As a “rock star diplomat,” Hillary Clinton significantly improved the US image abroad, but her foreign policy legacy is still being debated (see Chapter 8 on Afghanistan and Chapter 9 on the Middle East).¹⁶

On the foreign policy front, we will assess her diplomatic and global impact in the various continents and countries she has covered. From China, India, and Myanmar to Cape Town, her celebrity status is evident in Asia and Africa to Latin America. Yet, her long-term impact on the policy changes remains unclear.

Did she improve the peace process in the Middle East? How successful was she in advancing the Asian pivot after announcing it as a grand strategy? Did she help steer the right course in North Africa during the Arab Spring? These are some of the toughest questions we can tackle in the international relations arena at this turning point in history.¹⁷

Main Themes

There are no existing books that have examined Hillary Clinton’s global presence as a leader within a cultural and historical context, on the one hand, and foreign policy implications for women’s development and the sustainability of American power, on the other. This is a unique book that examines Hillary Clinton as a global politician and statesman, who has advanced women’s development, democracy, and political leadership into the 21st century. We cover Hillary Clinton’s candidacy from a variety of angles that are politically and culturally relevant to America and the world.

Hillary and American Exceptionalism

Many Americans believe they are part of an exceptional nation, which is undeniably true, but they may not be aware that America suffers from an exceptional lag of women politicians in the public life. What are the reasons for this lag of exceptional women in politics?

The United States is an exceptional nation in many ways: “Its political culture, history, and electoral system create a unique mixture of principles, attitudes, practices, and institutions that are qualitatively different from those found in other democratic countries,” argue Gregory Striech and Robynn Kuhlmann in Chapter 2. Americans rightly believe they live in the land of opportunity, where mobility, equality, and freedom are the drivers of everyday democracy. “However, this same mixture of principles, attitudes, practices, and institutions also make the US exceptional not because it leads but because it lags,” especially, when we look at the paucity of women politicians, according to Streich and Kuhlmann.

In many other cultures—from advanced democracies in Europe to developing nations in Asia and Africa—women have been elected in higher percentages to their national governments and as heads of state as prime minister or president. This trend is evident in newly emerging economies, such as, Indonesia, as well as mature economies, such as the UK (also see Chapter 7 by Don Morrison on France and Germany).¹⁸

Thus, from a political science perspective Streich and Kuhlmann conclude, “Paradoxically, upward political mobility for women has been blocked due to the very same cultural attitudes that set it apart as unique. In short, for women candidates in the US, upward political mobility and opportunity are blocked by cultural phenomena such as gender stereotyping and religious traditionalism as well as institutional practices that fail to recruit, nominate, and elect women to state and national legislative bodies. And because women are not recruited or nominated by party leaders, this reinforces the cultural assumption that women do not have what it takes to hold the highest elected office of the land.”

Hillary Clinton can resoundingly put American exceptionalism on the right course again, argue Morrison, Streich, Kuhlmann, and Denmark in this book. Clinton’s experience, brand recognition, and fundraising capabilities will be put through the test. She will contend with the deeply entrenched cultural attitudes and practices that place women candidates at an inferior position. Clinton, who has served as Secretary of State and a US Senator, must contend with the stereotypes that she is “not tough enough” or “not decisive” or “not trustworthy” because of her gender and privileged position as the former First Lad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Prologue: The Hillary Doctrine is Smart Power
• 1. The Global Hillary: Smart Power and the Making of a Woman President
• 2. See Hillary Run: Hillary Clinton, American Exceptionalism and Exceptions to the Rule
• 3. Hillary Clinton: Feminist and Activist
• 4. Hillary and Eleanor: The Rise of Smart Power and National Security Feminism
• 5. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the 1995 Beijing International Conference on Women: Gender and the Nexus of Global and Domestic Power Dynamics
• 6. Seeing Red: Republicans and Democrats in Alaska View Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin
• 7. Hillary’s Soft Power in France and Germany
• 8. Can Hillary Clinton Get Afghanistan Right?
• 9. Hillary Clinton: Soft Power, Hard Rhetoric and US Foreign Policy
• 10. Hillary Clinton and Israel: American Jewish and Israeli Perceptions
• 11. A Translation of Her Own: Hillary, Japan and the Pivot to Asia
• Biographical Notes
• Index