In the five months since Kamala Harris became the democratic nominee for President, it has become abundantly clear that a large swath of America is still struggling with internalized (and in some cases externalized) misogyny. This national bias is not unique to any particular gender, geographic location, class, or even political party. As a part-time optimist and full-time woman, I began to ask “why?”
Independent of political affiliation or belief, I wondered why some voters find it to be a disqualifying factor that one candidate is a woman. Surely at least a portion of them are aware that two-thirds of UN member states have had a woman leading their government. If they didn’t see Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lead New Zealand through the COVID-19 pandemic, they must remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The list goes on. But are these holdout patriarchists so convinced of American individualism that they have convinced themselves our country is too unique for a woman in leadership? Perhaps we should look back a bit further.
The United States Constitution lays out the democratic federalist principles that are a cornerstone of our system of government. Drafted by a gaggle of white men in a room, our Constitution is said to have drawn inspiration from the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. This “Great Law of Peace” contains many democratic principles American individualists might recognize, including the separation of powers, the balance of powers, and respect for independent decision making of the member nations (state’s rights, anyone?). In recognition of its functional blueprint, the United States Senate issued a resolution in 1987 stating that the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was modeled after the Iroquois Confederacy.
The separation of power between the Chiefs and Clan Mothers of the confederacy gives us a glimpse into the kind of power women hold in this centuries old form of government, which is still operational today. The chief and the clan mother share leadership responsibilities. The clan mother chooses and advises the chief, placing and holding him in office. To be a chief, the man cannot be a warrior, nor can he have ever stolen anything or abused a woman. The Iroquois Confederacy later inspired another group of patriots, the suffragists. The clan mothers gave both the married and single women of America the vision of something better for themselves.
"Feminists too often believe that no one has ever experienced the kind of
society that empowered women and made that empowerment the basis
of its rules of civilization. The price the feminist community must pay
because it is not aware of the recent presence of gynarchical societies on
this continent is unnecessary confusion, division, and much lost time."
-PAULA GUNN ALLEN
To dissect our country’s collective response to Vice President Harris’s nomination, we need to reflect on the falsehoods that created our collective beliefs. Our words become our thoughts and beliefs, and our thoughts and beliefs become our reality, even if the words themselves did not originate with us. The global perception is also, to some degree, the internal perception. Even if we don’t agree that being a stepmother doesn’t make you a mother, or laughing too much makes you seem stupid or unserious, that belief lives somewhere within us because someone else said it. Save for a handful of monks on a mountaintop in Nepal, nobody possesses complete power over their subconscious set of beliefs. What we say, what we hear, and what we see becomes what we believe.
Therefore, when the history of our nation is one of men in power, and women on the sidelines or doing the unpaid labor of raising the nation’s children, a part of our minds tells us it’s not possible to have a woman as President. To that deep seeded unexamined belief system, a President Kamala Harris is not possible. It does not align with our experiences and so it must not be.
To create a new belief out of nothing is an immense task. The belief we are trying to create is one where a woman can be President of the United States of America, so it is helpful to shed light on the past, not on history. The difference between the past and history is that women who were part of the past do not always become part of history.
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Katherine Carroll recently pivoted from private practice and works as an Assistant County Attorney in Jefferson County in the Human Services division. A New York native, she moved to Colorado after completing a clerkship with the Hon. Paula T. Dow in New Jersey Superior Court. Katherine received her J.D. from Touro University Law School in Central Islip, New York in 2022 and her Bachelors from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2017. Prior to law school, she worked as a radio and television journalist in Albany, New York and New York City. While completing her J.D., Katherine worked with Mental Hygiene Legal Service representing individuals in civil commitment hearings and the Sexual Harassment Working Group researching and proposing policy to protect survivors of workplace sexual harassment. Katherine also wrote and served as a notes editor for the Touro Law Review. Katherine is a member of the Colorado Bar Association, Colorado Women's Bar Association, the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the American Bar Association. In her spare time, Katherine enjoys reading historical fiction novels, watching RuPaul's Drag Race, and going on hikes with her boyfriend and their dog, Moose.
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