The American women’s journey to the oval office started long before Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008, or so Ellen Fitzpatrick explained in her lecture on Thursday, Sept. 22, in the Fortunoff Theater in Monroe Lecture Center. She used historical context to Clinton’s current campaign and spoke about other women’s presidential campaigns. “Her ambition alone is alienating to some and her most pestiferous critics likened her to the devil. Rather than send her to the White House, there are those that would like to see her locked up in prison by Election Day,” Fitzpatrick said. “Is this Hillary Clinton? No. This is Victoria Woodhull.”
Fitzpatrick’s speech began by discussing three women who ran for president before Clinton, the first of whom was Woodhull. Fitzpatrick’s point was that whether it’s a woman running for president in 1872 or 2016, she is viewed in an extremely similar way. Woodhull’s opponents compared her to the devil, just as Republican candidate Ben Carson did to Clinton.
Fitzpatrick is a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, specializing in modern American political and intellectual history. She is also the author and editor of eight books, the most recent focusing on women vying for the American presidency.
“I think that it is especially important to understand and consider the history behind women’s struggle for equality during this election because we have to be able to … take for face value how far women have come,” said sophomore education major Sharleigh Carter.
While Woodhull ran for a third party and received very few votes, more successful women followed in the future. Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to be elected to both Houses of Congress and ran for president in 1964.
The third woman Fitzpatrick discussed was Shirley Chisolm, who was the first African-American to run for president with a major political party. She announced her candidacy in 1972, and garnered more delegates than any female to run for president up until that point.
Her record was only broken by Clinton in 2008, but even then, Clinton didn’t win the Democratic Party’s nomination. This is the first year that a female candidate has won the nomination for a major political party in the United States.
“In winning the Democratic Party’s nomination, Clinton overcame barriers that sank every single one of those over 200 predecessors, the women who ran for president at some point in time. Now, that’s not a reason to vote for Hillary Clinton on Election Day,” Fitzpatrick said. “No one should vote for a presidential candidate solely on the basis of sex, but neither should anyone harbor any illusions that gender doesn’t matter in presidential politics, and that a woman will be elected to the American presidency just as soon as there is a better female candidate.”
Fitzpatrick explained that in voting for Clinton solely because of her sex, the work that any woman candidate did to overcome stereotypes and sexism through intellect and strength is overshadowed.
“That view ignores the critical factors that forestall previous female aspirants to the presidency; it underestimates Clinton’s formidable political strengths – whether you like her or not – and it obscures what is unfolding in this current race,” Fitzpatrick said.
Fitzpatrick made it clear that she doesn’t believe anyone should vote for Clinton just because she’s a woman, but that people need to recognize that gender has played a role in this election. As soon as a woman is in the race, the dynamic changes.
“I have to confess, as the campaign went on, I was shocked by the misogyny being expressed, and I knew that it was real and I wasn’t just making this up when many of my male friends approached me and said … ‘You know what Susan? I now know what misogyny looks like.’ And I haven’t heard that once – I’ve heard it a lot,” said Susan Yohn, a history professor who introduced Fitzpatrick at the lecture.
Fitzpatrick ended the discussion by looking to the future, examining how this election will determine the next woman’s journey to the White House. “It’s hard for me to imagine that any woman will, ever again, seek the office of presidency with a portfolio that remotely resembles the one that Hillary Clinton carries into this campaign. But I also suspect that … no woman will have to, one this nation – whether this year or in some future election – puts in office its first woman president.”