Women

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans think Kamala Harris can’t be president because she hasn’t had children | Moira Donegan

      by

      Introducing Donald Trump is a strange occasion to talk about humility. To put it mildly, humility is not a quality that the former president is known for. But Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump press secretary and current governor of Arkansas, decided to muse about humility on stage in Michigan on Tuesday night. She told a story about watching her daughter get ready for a father-daughter dance, and of the moment when her daughter turned to her and said: “It’s OK, Mommy. One day you can be pretty, too.”“My kids keep me humble,” Sanders said of the exchange. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”It was the latest in a series of attacks by Republicans on childless Americans, and among the more direct comments by Trump surrogates suggesting that Harris is morally suspect and unqualified for power because she has not given birth.This is usually JD Vance’s line. The vice-presidential candidate and Ohio senator has been the most prominent face of Republican pro-natalism, responding to the overturning of Roe v Wade by the conservative-controlled supreme court with a series of public statements seeking to degrade childless women and advocating for their diminished citizenship.It is Vance who has derided prominent Democrats as “childless cat ladies”, referred to adults without children as “sociopathic” and suggested that Americans who have not reproduced should have fewer votes. That Sanders, largely seen as an heir to the party’s Christian conservative wing, has taken up this pro-natalist rhetoric indicates that other sections of the Republican party are willing to make misogynist contempt of childless women a center of their campaign strategy.Supporters of Harris are quick to point out that the vice-president does have children: she has stepchildren. Cole and Ella Emhoff, the products of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff’s first marriage, have been a part of Harris’s family since they were teenagers; reportedly, they sometimes call her “Momala”. (Ella Emhoff, in particular, has become a target of rightwing ire for her tattoos, large glasses and a fashion sense I can only describe as “Ridgewood basement chic”: her style of femininity, the right never tires of reminding us, is one of which they do not approve.)In the wake of Sanders’ remarks disparaging Harris for not being a mother, her campaign surrogates were eager to cite her enmeshment in a loving and very modern blended family. Kerstin Emhoff, Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife and the mother of Harris’s stepchildren, took to Twitter to defend Harris. “Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families,” she wrote.These efforts to correct Republican smears about Harris’s childlessness are true enough, and they have noble motives as well as strategic ones. It is worthwhile on its own terms to reaffirm the legitimacy of blended families; and it is smart, in a campaign where median voters may well be swayed by appeals to “family values”, to depict Harris as a devoted member of a loving family.But the rejoinder that Harris is not childless leaves intact the right wing’s suggestion that it would be a problem if she were. And it leaves untouched, too, the unspoken bigotry that animates those remarks: their assertion that women who devote themselves to things other than marriage or motherhood are somehow suspect, deficient or defective.It seems almost silly to have to say this, but being a parent is not a qualification for the presidency. If it were, it’s not clear how well Donald Trump himself would measure up: the onetime reality TV star has five children with three different women, has reportedly made repeated remarks about his sexual attraction to his oldest daughter, Ivanka, and seems only distantly aware of his youngest two progeny, Tiffany and Barron.Even setting aside the caliber of Trump’s own fatherhood, a total of five US presidents have not had biological children at all – including Trump’s own professed hero, Andrew Jackson, and no less a figure than George Washington. What is different – and to the right, offensive – about Harris is not that she has no biological children. It’s that she is a woman.So far, the prospect of becoming the first female president has not played a major role in Harris’s case for her own presidency. Aside from things like the selection of a VP candidate (which, it was assumed, would have to be a man) and Harris’s comfort talking about abortion (which, it is assumed, is necessarily because she’s a woman), the campaign has largely sought to moot the salience of their candidate’s gender.Perhaps this is because after 2016 and the crowded 2020 primary, the prospect of a woman at the top of a presidential ticket no longer seems novel; perhaps it’s because the Harris/Walz staff have taken the lesson from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign that too great a focus on the election as a possible feminist achievement could foment backlash. Whatever the reason, there is little public chatter now, either from the Harris campaign itself or from the pundit class, about how having a female president will change Americans’ view of the office – or of themselves. If there were, maybe someone would be willing to say what is obvious: that comments like Sanders’ are meant to suggest that women should be at home raising babies, instead of seeking positions of power. Instead, everyone is acting very conspicuously as if they think that Harris’s gender does not matter.It does matter. And that vacuum of gendered critique is being filled, on the right, with a great deal of gendered resentment. As the gender gap in American politics continues to widen, Trump, Vance and increasingly the rest of the Republican party that they lead have begun to parrot talking points from the so-called “manosphere”, the collection of web forums and content creators that push misogyny as an ideological agenda.The far-right drift of young men, after all, seems largely to stem from anxiety over their perceived loss of gendered status: their fear and anger that men are no longer uncontested in their social dominance, and that women are no longer uniformly compelled to serve them. What could be more comforting to young men descending into this kind of bigoted woundedness than the confident declaration that women who do not organize their lives around traditional roles are worthless? And what could be more threatening to them than the notion that a woman might ascend to that superlative position of patriarchal power – the presidency?

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Gretchen Whitmer calls Trump ‘deranged’ after comments on abortion

      by

      Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, called Donald Trump “just deranged” on Sunday after he said women would no longer be thinking about abortion if he is elected as president in November.“This guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country, and how could he? He’s not lived a normal life,” Whitmer said in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union.Whitmer also reaffirmed her support for Kamala Harris, describing her as a person “who has worked hourly jobs, who knows how important it is that women have healthcare and access to the medical care that they need”.Whitmer was asked to comment about a speech the former president delivered on Saturday, saying women “will be happy, healthy, confident, and free” if he is elected president.“He’s just deranged,” the governor of Michigan said.On Friday, Trump made similar comments about women on his Truth Social platform.“WOMEN ARE POORER THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS HEALTHY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO … AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO!” Trump said.Harris is a staunch supporter of abortion rights. The vice-president delivered two speeches on Friday, first in Georgia and then Wisconsin, highlighting the case of Amber Thurman, who died in Georgia due to a strict abortion ban.Whitmer’s comments on Sunday come a week after participating in an online campaign event with TV host, producer and author Oprah Winfrey, which was livestreamed nationally from Michigan.The Michigan governor was previously named as a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for president before ruling herself out in July. Michigan is a must-win prize for candidates, a state that has voted for the presidential winner in the last four national elections.Joe Biden took Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020. Two years later, Whitmer defeated a Trump-backed candidate and Democrats took full control for the first time in 45 years. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris condemns Trump in Georgia after news of abortion-related deaths

      by

      In her first speech dedicated exclusively to abortion rights since becoming the presidential nominee, Kamala Harris spoke on Friday afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia, blaming Donald Trump for the abortion bans that now blanket much of the United States.Harris spoke days after news broke that two Georgia mothers died after being unable to access legal abortions and adequate medical care in the state.“Two women – and those are only the stories we know – here in the state of Georgia, died, died, because of a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said. She repeatedly referred to “Trump abortion bans” in the speech.“Suffering is happening every day in our country,” Harris continued. “To those women, to those families – I say on behalf on what I believe we all say, we see you and you are not alone and we are all here standing with you.”In the weeks since becoming the Democratic nominee for president, Harris has made reproductive rights a central part of her campaign. She has toured the country to highlight the healthcare consequences of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, which paved the way for more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions.On Friday, Harris blamed the former president for Roe’s demise because Trump appointed three of the supreme court justices who overturned the landmark decision. She also also condemned Republicans for repeatedly blocking Senate bills that would have guaranteed a federal right to in vitro fertilization, a popular fertility treatment that had its future cast into doubt after Roe’s overturning.“On the one hand, these extremists want to tell women they don’t have the freedom to end an unwanted pregnancy,” Harris said. “On the other hand, these extremists are telling women and their parents they don’t have the freedom to start a family.”The raucous crowd grumbled loudly at Harris’s words. “Make it make sense!” someone shouted.Although Joe Biden won Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, becoming the first Democrat in decades to take the state, Democrats seemed unlikely to recapture it until Harris replaced Biden as nominee. Now, Georgia is once again a swing state. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina and a major Trump surrogate, has said that Trump must win Georgia if he wants to win the White House. Meanwhile, Harris in August embarked on a two-day bus tour of the state and giving her first major network interview there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe deaths of the Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, were first reported earlier this week by ProPublica and occurred after Georgia enacted a six-week abortion ban. Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee looked at both women’s cases and deemed their deaths “preventable”, according to ProPublica.Although Georgia permits abortions in medical emergencies, doctors across the country have said that abortion exceptions are worded so vaguely as to be unworkable. Instead, doctors have said, they are forced to watch until patients get sick enough to legally intervene.After Thurman took abortion pills to end a pregnancy in 2022, her body failed to expel all of the fetal tissue – a rare but potentially devastating complication. Doctors delayed giving the 28-year-old a routine procedure for 20 hours, and she developed sepsis. Her heart stopped during an emergency surgery.“Under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed,” Harris said on Friday. “Understand what a law like this means. Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.”Harris met with Thurman’s mother and sisters on Thursday night. “Their pain is heartbreaking,” she said.While on the campaign trail, Trump has alternated between bragging about helping to demolish Roe, complaining about how Republicans’ hardline anti-abortion stances have cost the Republican elections, and flip-flopping on his own position on the procedure.Access to abortion has become one of voters’ top issues over the last two years, and Democrats are hoping that outrage over Roe will propel them to victory at the ballot box this November. Ten states, including the key battleground states of Nevada and Arizona, are set to hold abortion-related ballot measures, which could boost turnout among Democrats’ base. More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans want to steal reproductive freedom. Black women will suffer most | Monica Raye Simpson

      by

      As the 2024 elections continue to heat up, there are increasing concerns about the rise of fascism around the world and in the United States. Regardless of the word or label used, Black people, living with the legacy of slavery and multiple forms of reproductive oppression including rape and forced pregnancies, sterilizations and the killing of our children and loved ones by vigilantes and police, have a lot of experience with authoritarian regimes that oppress and dehumanize.There is a strategic agenda from the far right – laid out in clear language in Project 2025 to keep power in the hands of a chosen few and prevent the United States from becoming a truly representative, multiracial democracy that embraces and supports all people including those with the capacity for pregnancy.According to US census projections, people of color are on par to be the majority by the middle of the century. With this imminent reality, the focus on controlling our fertility and denying us bodily autonomy is the age-old strategy of authoritarian, democracy-denying regimes. And to have a conservative-leaning supreme court that has proved that it will roll back some of the most critical protections further supports their agenda.One of those critical protections was the right to abortion recognized and protected in Roe v Wade. The Dobbs decision overturned Roe – and not only denied women the right to abortion, but also laid the groundwork for dismantling all reproductive rights and aspects of pregnancy-related healthcare.For decades, we have seen a focus on reversing Roe v Wade with numerous states implementing barriers to access through proposing Trap (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws, expanding funding to crisis pregnancy centers and promoting declarations of personhood for the unborn from the moment of fertilization, all while gerrymandering states to stack our state legislatures with conservative leaders. We are also fighting abortion bans and increased criminalization for those seeking abortions and for pregnant women who are targeted for creating imagined risks of harm to personified eggs, embryos and fetuses.And it is not just about ending a pregnancy. Before the Dobbs decision, the US already had an appalling and shameful rate of maternal mortality that is from four to 12 times higher for Black women. As OB-GYNs flee states that have banned abortions and women are forced to wait out ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and stillbirths and continue pregnancies with non-viable or already dead fetuses – because doctors have been terrorized into inaction – that rate will no doubt go up. As if that wasn’t enough, research consistently finds that US Black maternal mortality is fueled by racism that goes unaddressed and reinforced by our opposition.While devastating, we can at least note that the Dobbs decision shook the nation and brought the longstanding fight for abortion to the mainstream. While so many wondered how we got here, Black women and people of color had warned about the danger of single-issue litigation and organizing strategies within the historically predominantly white-led reproductive health and rights movements for decades.Thirty years ago, Black women came up with the term reproductive justice and started a human-rights-based movement that not only fought for the right to prevent or end pregnancies but to expand the fight to have the children that we want, to parent them in safe and sustainable communities. This new intersectional movement centered the leadership and lived experiences and bodily autonomy of those historically pushed to the margins.Fascism thrives when the masses are conditioned to think, organize and create policies that are not intersectional thus creating fertile ground for authoritarianism. I believe the kryptonite to fascism is the work being done by those who laid the foundation for the reproductive justice movement – Black women.Black women have found every way possible to resist while also remaining innovative. We consistently vote for our values to save our democracy. From the Black women who were the backbone of the civil rights and Black liberation movements to the Black women who redefined feminism at the Combahee River, to the Black women who created new movements like reproductive justice, Black Lives Matter and Me Too – it is clear we have decades of receipts that show our commitment to dismantling white supremacist, patriarchal authoritarian regimes.With this election we are faced with a serious question: “What world do we want for ourselves and the generations to come?” Do we want to live in a world where we do not have the human right to make our own decisions around our bodies, our families and our futures? Or do we want to live in a world where our lives are dictated by insidious policies?Our future is in the hands of those who are ready to fight for our freedom. This is the time to not only vote but also organize. This is the time to sit at the table and build with people we don’t know and deepen our relationships with our current allies. This is the time to study and learn from the historical victories over fascism. Because fascism always loses when it comes against the collective power of those determined to achieve our human rights.

      Monica Raye Simpson is the executive director of SisterSong, the southern-based national Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Monica is a proud Black queer feminist & cultural strategist who is committed to organizing for LGBTQ+ liberation, civil and human rights, and sexual and reproductive justice by any means necessary. She was also named a New Civil Rights Leader by Essence Magazine and as one of TIME 100’s most influential people of 2023. More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump is backing free IVF? You can practically smell the desperation | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      Would you like to do your bit to curb population decline in the west? Fancy a home full of babies with very high IQs and extremely blond hair? Well, let me introduce you to the Donald J Trump Insemination Institute. On a sprawling ranch in New Mexico, women can be impregnated, free of charge, with Trump’s sperm, ensuring that future generations, on Earth and Mars, are blessed with a steady supply of very stable geniuses.Sorry if I turned your stomach there, but I’m afraid I’m only half-joking. It was actually Jeffrey Epstein – who used to party with Trump – who was besotted with the idea of a ranch where 20 women at a time would be impregnated, in order to seed the human race with his DNA. Elon Musk, who is obsessed with babies and Trump, may harbour similar fantasies. Earlier this year the New York Times reported that Musk has “volunteered his sperm” to help seed a colony on Mars. (Musk has denied these claims.)While Trump hasn’t announced plans for a baby ranch of his own yet, he is suddenly a big fan of artificial insemination. Last week the former president announced that he would support free in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments if elected again. “We wanna produce babies in this country, right?” Trump said during a town hall campaign event in Wisconsin. He didn’t provide many details about how this would work other than saying that either the government or insurance companies would pay for everything.Another fuzzy detail? How government-sponsored IVF would coexist with the Republican party’s 2024 platform, which supports states’ rights to pass foetal personhood laws. It is impossible to support widespread access to IVF while also supporting the idea of foetal personhood, which holds that an embryo is a person and destroying one is homicide. I am fairly sure that Trump has no idea how IVF actually works, so here is a little explainer: you typically fertilise multiple eggs because you have no idea how many of them will develop into viable embryos. You could fertilise 20 eggs and end up with no viable embryos or end up with 20. The only way to control how many embryos you create is to harvest a single egg at a time, which is hugely expensive, inefficient and emotionally exhausting. In short: Trump seems to be running on a platform where IVF would be free but also effectively illegal.While it may be half-baked, Trump’s free IVF policy makes it clear that he is desperate to woo female voters. Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every US presidential election since 1980 and now – for obvious reasons – they are leaning heavily towards Kamala Harris. I’m not sure a last-minute IVF policy is going to cancel out the fact that abortion rights are a key issue in this election and Trump has boasted about being the guy who overturned Roe v Wade. Nor will it cancel out the fact that Trump is a legally defined sexual predator who can’t stop himself from saying every misogynistic thought that creeps into his little head. During a recent rally in Pennsylvania, for example, Trump praised his male supporters for “allowing” their wives to attend his campaign rallies without them.While Trump is clearly trying to appeal to women with his IVF policy, you also have to wonder whether his buddy Musk – one of the most influential voices in the US’s growing pro-natalist movement – has a hand in this. If the billionaire did get a position in a Trump administration (a possibility that has been repeatedly floated) one imagines Musk would encourage the US to emulate Hungary’s pro-natalist policies, which stem from a racist desire to encourage births and repopulate the country with the “right” (AKA white) kind of children. “We want Hungarian children,” Viktor Orbán said in 2019. “Migration for us is surrender.”Free IVF may sound like a progressive policy on the surface but, for many on the right, it is linked to a belief that women are nothing more than baby-making machines designed to pass on the legacy of men. A future Donald J Trump Insemination Institute may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 200 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      America’s New Female Right review – this lazy BBC documentary fails to tackle dangerously extreme views

      by

      I am going to go out on a limb and say that most Guardian readers who watch a BBC documentary called America’s New Female Right are unlikely to be in accord with the views espoused therein. We are not going to empathise with statements such as: “Women getting the right to vote has led to every form of degeneracy,” “Feminism was absolutely created to destabilise the family [and] western civilisation,” and: “Feminism is a thousand times more toxic than the ‘toxic masculinity’ we hear so much about.” We are unlikely to agree that “Satan’s agenda” is to destroy the nuclear family structure in order to control society.All these statements are uttered – with certainty and apparent sincerity – by women championing rightwing causes, often in a way that seems to run counter to what we would consider their best interests.The presenter, Layla Wright, has three main interviewees. There is the online influencer Morgonn McMichael, 24, who says she wants only to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. She believes that encouraging women to move into the corporate world is to encourage them to go against “our inherent nature”.There is middle-aged Christie Hutcherson, who leads Women Fighting for America – an online and slightly smaller real-life troop of volunteers who patrol parts of the US-Mexico border and livestream what they find. Wright accompanies her as she finds a rough camp created by people crossing. “What a great little setup they’ve got here,” she notes for her audience, gesturing towards propane tanks and mosquito repellent. She and her companions ignore the scattered children’s toys in favour of the “camo gear” they unearth (mainly sensible rucksacks) and talk of “high‑value targets being smuggled in”. “Do I think there are any innocent individuals in this camp? That would be a no.”Third is Hannah Faulkner, 17, who came to her particular brand of fame three years ago when she organised a Teens Against Genital Mutilation rally in her native Nashville, Tennessee, supporting a ban on medical intervention for young transgender people. She is one of several siblings homeschooled by devoutly Christian parents – her father is a former pastor – and is increasingly embraced as a darling of the right.There is so much to unpack with each of them (especially Faulkner). It’s a fascinating subject that deserves attention and rigorous interrogation of all the factors at play, especially with subjects as bright, articulate and confident as these (again, especially Faulkner). What we get instead is a cheap, shoddy programme apparently thrown together in 10 minutes, presumably on the grounds that everything and everyone is so obviously awful and evil and bad-bad-bad that it is enough just to film them, show Wright’s pained face occasionally and have her lob in a few wet questions to show that she is still listening and still on the side of right (which is, of course, left, not right).Sinister music is played in certain scenes, in case we are in danger of forgetting which side “we” are on – all of us, without doubt, without question, without occasionally wondering if the “other side” might have half a point buried in there that might be worth pulling out and examining in the light.It’s so lazy. “Point and weep” documentaries are only half a step removed from the “point and laugh” kind that commissioners have supposedly left behind as we move into a more sensitive, sophisticated era.If you are going to interview people such as McMichael, Hutcherson and Faulkner, you need a presenter who is capable and unafraid of going toe to toe with them. These are people with sincerely held beliefs. You need someone with the intellectual and temperamental firepower to challenge them – someone who is not afraid to, in British terms at least, be “rude” to their subjects and see if they can really defend assertions that are otherwise allowed to stand as truth. At one point, Wright tries to stand up to Hutcherson – who comes across as a bully, with “illegal immigrants” the perfect, self-serving target – but it’s the unfairest of fights.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYes, some things said here are extraordinary – but only to the ears of those who are already on side. Without going further, the BBC is doing just what the influencers and ideologues it is condemning do – preaching to the choir and failing to move along the conversation. More

    • 238 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The right’s obsession with childless women isn’t just about ideology: it’s essential to the capitalist machine | Nesrine Malik

      by

      A woman without biological children is running for high political office, and so naturally that quality will at some point be used against her. Kamala Harris has, in the short period since she emerged as the Democratic candidate for US president, been scrutinised over her lack of children. The conservative lawyer Will Chamberlain posted on X that Harris “shouldn’t be president” – apparently, she doesn’t have “skin in the game”. The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, called Harris and other Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives”.It’s a particularly virulent tendency in the US, with a rightwing movement that is fixated on women’s reproduction. But who can forget (and if you have, I am happy to remind you of a low point that still sticks in my craw) Andrea Leadsom, during the 2016 Conservative party leadership election, saying that Theresa May might have nieces and nephews, but “I have children who are going to have children … who will be a part of what happens next”. “Genuinely,” she added, as if the message were not clear enough, “I feel that being a mum means you have a real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.”It’s an argument about political capability that dresses up a visceral revulsion at the idea that a woman who does not have a child should be vested with any sort of credibility or status. In other comments, Vance said that “so many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me”. He appears so fixated on this that it is almost comical: a man whose obsession with childless women verges on a complex.But his “disorientation and disturbance” is a political tendency that persists and endures. It constantly asks the question of women who don’t have children, in subtle and explicit ways, especially the higher they rise in the professional sphere: “What’s up with that? What’s the deal?” The public sphere becomes a space for answering that question. Women perform a sort of group plea to be left the hell alone, in their painstaking examinations of how they arrived at the decision not to have kids, or why they in fact celebrate not having kids, or deliberations on ambivalence about having kids.Behind all this lies some classic old-school inability to conceive of women outside mothering. But one reason this traditionalism persists in ostensibly modern and progressive places is that women withdrawing from mothering in capitalist societies – with their poorly resourced public amenities and parental support – forces questions about our inequitable, unacknowledged economic arrangements. A woman who does not bear children is a woman who will never stay home and provide unremunerated care. She is less likely to be held in the domestic zone and extend her caregiving to elderly relatives or the children of others. She cannot be a resource that undergirds a male partner’s career, frailties, time limitations and social demands.A mother is an option, a floating worker, the joker in the pack. Not mothering creates a hole for that “free” service, which societies increasingly arranged around nuclear families and poorly subsidised rights depend on. The lack of parental leave, childcare and elderly care would become profoundly visible – “disorienting and disturbing” – if that service were removed.“Motherhood,” writes the author Helen Charman in her new book Mother State, “is a political state. Nurture, care, the creation of human life – all immediate associations with mothering – have more to do with power, status and the distribution of resources … than we like to admit. For raising children is the foundational work of society, and, from gestation onward, it is unequally shared.”Motherhood, in other words, becomes an economic input, a public good, something that is talked about as if the women themselves were not in the room. Data on declining birthrates draws comment from Elon Musk (“extremely concerning!!”) . Not having children is reduced to entirely personal motivations – selfishness, beguilement with the false promise of freedom, lack of values and foresight, irresponsibility – rather than external conditions: of the need for affordable childcare, support networks, flexible working arrangements and the risk of financial oblivion that motherhood frequently brings, therefore creating bondage to partners. To put it mildly, these are material considerations to be taken into account upon entering a state from which there is no return. Assuming motherhood happens without such context, Charman tells me, is a “useful fantasy”.It is a binary public discourse, obscuring the often thin veil between biological and social actualisation. Women who don’t have children do not exist in a state of blissful detachment from their bodies and their relationship with maternity: a number have had pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions and periods. A number have entered liminal stages of motherhood that don’t conform to the single definition from which they are excluded. A number extend mothering to various children in their lives. Some, like Harris herself, have stepchildren (who don’t count, just as May’s nieces and nephews didn’t). A number have become mothers, just not in a way that initiates them into a blissful club. They experience regret, depression and navigate unsettlement that does not conform to the image of uncomplicated validation of your purpose in life.But the privilege of those truths cannot be bestowed on creatures whose rejection of the maternal bond has become a rejection of a wider unspoken, colossally unfair contract. Women with children are handed social acceptance for their vital investment in “the future”, in exchange for unrewarded, unsupported labour that props up and stabilises the economic and social status quo. All while still suffering sneeriness about the value of their work in comparison with the serious graft of the men who win the bread.On top of that, women have to navigate all that motherhood – or not – entails, all the deeply personal, bewildering, isolating and unacknowledged realities of both, while being subject to relentless suffocating, infantilising and violating public theories and notions that trespass on their private spaces. With that comes a sense of self-doubt and shame in making the wrong decision, or not being as content with those decisions as they are expected to be. It is a constant, prodding vivisection. That, more than anything clinical observers feel, is the truly disorienting and disturbing experience.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      For decades, it’s been a man’s world on Capitol Hill – that’s finally changing

      by

      The halls of the US Congress were, for many years, a man’s world. The first woman elected to Congress, the Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana, joined the House in 1917, three years before the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote and decades before the civil rights movement enabled ballot access for women of color.Now, more than a century later, 150 women serve in Congress, marking an all-time high. And as more women have joined the House and Senate, the ranks of senior staffers on the Hill have shifted alongside them. More women, specifically young women, are leading congressional offices as chiefs of staff, giving them invaluable access to lawmakers and opportunities to influence the policies that shape Americans’ lives.Data shows that white male staffers are still more likely to hold senior roles on Capitol Hill, but the young women who lead congressional offices want to help change that. And among Democratic chiefs of staff, this year represents an inflection point: many of them were first inspired to get involved in politics after Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, and the country now has another opportunity to not only defeat Donald Trump but elect Kamala Harris as the first female president.“It’s really important for women in positions of power to be speaking out and sharing their experiences,” said Marie Baldassarre, 29, chief of staff to the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna. “The more of those examples that young women can have, then the less we doubt ourselves – because we’ve seen other people do it.”A call to action after 2016Multiple Democratic chiefs of staff said they had not envisioned a career in politics before Trump’s victory in 2016. They certainly did not expect to rise to the level of a chief of staff, who holds the most senior role in a congressional office and can directly consult with a House member on legislative and political decisions.After her family emigrated to the US from Iran when she was seven, Armita Pedramrazi, chief of staff to the Democratic representative Mary Gay Scanlon, thought she might go into pro-bono immigration law. Then a mentor suggested she apply for a job with the then congresswoman Susan Davis.“I applied completely on a whim, thinking there was absolutely no way that someone without political connections or without some sort of leverage could work for a congressional office,” said Pedramrazi, 32. “It felt like this incredibly far away, impossible thing.”She got the job and eventually moved to Washington DC in 2016, expecting to do immigration policy work with Hillary Clinton’s administration. That did not come to pass, but she stayed on in her legislative role with Davis before arriving in Scanlon’s office and working her way up to chief of staff.For Amy Kuhn, chief of staff to Democratic congresswoman Sara Jacobs, Clinton campaign’s in 2016 marked her first foray into political work. And although Clinton lost, the experience allowed Kuhn to meet her current boss and underscored the importance of the work.“I’m a gay woman who grew up in the very red state of Montana, so a lot of my life has been very political by its nature,” said Kuhn, 35. “[The Clinton campaign] was such a good experience, but the outcome was so personal and painful, and we were all reckoning with what it meant for Donald Trump to become president.”If Trump’s presidency spurred them into action, several chiefs of staff said the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 served as a reminder of why they chose this professional path.“My mom dedicated her career to fighting for reproductive rights, and that was something I really viewed as a threat when I first got involved in politics,” Baldassarre said. “Now that Roe has been overturned, it just motivates me that the fight isn’t over.”Since launching her campaign, Harris has placed a renewed emphasis on the importance of protecting abortion access. She has embraced the rallying cry of “we’re not going back” to bolster her argument that this election represents an existential fight over Americans’ fundamental freedoms.For young women working in Democratic politics, the excitement around Harris’s candidacy demonstrates the importance of deploying effective messengers who understand the gravity of issues like abortion access.View image in fullscreen“She’s a trustworthy narrator. She can talk about the issue from personal experience, as so many women can,” said Abby May, 28, chief of staff to the Democratic congressman Wiley Nickel. “Being able to speak to the millions of women out there who are worried about having their rights ripped away, and knowing that she’s someone who understands exactly what’s at stake, is hugely impactful.”The same logic applies to the young women who lead congressional offices, Pedramrazi argued.“Being a young woman in this moment, there are ways that we can talk about the issues facing the electorate and our constituents that are much more personal,” she said.“To me, that’s the benefit of any type of diversity. You have people who are bringing a different kind of fire to the issues that affect them personally. And I think that is as true being a young woman chief of staff as it is for anyone.”More work remainsEven as more young women step into senior roles in congressional offices, they remain somewhat of an anomaly. According to 2019 data compiled by the left-leaning thinktank New America, 22% of female Hill staffers serve in senior roles compared to 33% of male Hill staffers. Women were also less likely than men to serve in roles focused on political leadership, which tend to be more senior and better paid. Among female staffers on the Hill, 11% of them worked in political leadership in 2019, compared to 17% of male staffers.People of color face their own challenges on the Hill. According to a 2022 report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, people of color account for only 18% of top House staff, even as they make up 40% of the national population. In the personal offices of white Democratic members, people of color represent 14.8% of top staff, compared to 5.2% in the personal offices of white Republican members.And although those under 35 made up a majority of Hill staffers, political leadership roles tend to be held by those more advanced in their careers. In 2019, the average tenure for all staffers was roughly three years, according to New America’s data, but the average tenure for those in political management roles was more than 14 years.The impact of remaining in the minority is felt by many of the staffers. May said that, even as her boss has expressed unwavering confidence in her capabilities, she has still had the experience of being mistaken for his daughter or intern.“I think the main challenges are with external folks who come in expecting one type of face when they’re meeting with the chief of staff and get mine,” May said. “Being taken seriously at all levels when we are doing such important work is still a reality that I think all women chiefs of staff – and women around the country – deal with.”Baldasarre echoed that sentiment, while praising Khanna and other mentors for giving her opportunities for advancement. “I think the biggest challenge that I’ve faced has actually been much more subtle, which is that women, people of color, younger people, we just aren’t given the same benefit of the doubt when we walk into a new room,” she said.Despite those challenges, there are signs of slow change. The New America data found the percentage of women in senior staffer roles increased by 5%, from 17% to 22%, between 2017 and 2019, although the percentage of men in senior staffer roles rose by 11 points in that same time period. The report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that the percentage of people of color in top House staffer positions rose from 13.7% to 18% between 2018 and 2022.“I’m grateful that the institution of Congress is sort of changing along with us,” Kuhn said. “We go into weekly meetings with all the Democratic chiefs, and it is a remarkably diverse room.”The young women chiefs of staff are bringing about change in their own offices as well, encouraging colleagues to take mental health days and providing younger employees the opportunity to voice their opinions.Pedramrazi wants to build an experience for her younger coworkers that feels distinctly different from her own early memories on the Hill, when she often felt condescended to by external groups. She got the impression that her contributions or concerns were dismissed out of hand because she wasn’t taken seriously by external advisers.“No one really was standing to attention when a brown, 24-year-old young woman was speaking,” Pedramrazi said. “And I think part of the amazing experience of being a chief of staff now is … creating a really safe environment for our staffers – regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race – to feel really heard in the office.”May hopes that by building more equitable offices, more young women will be motivated to get involved in politics. In a year where the enthusiasm of young voters could decide the outcome of a presidential election, that mission feels more urgent than ever.“Representation of young women only encourages more young women to get involved and get their own seats at the table,” May said. More