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Senior Courtney Weaver, a member of the student government, reacted to a topic during the roundtable discussion entitled "Campaign '08: Women as Candidates, Women as Voters". |
Sacred Heart University hosted Patricia Russo, the director of the Yale Campaign School for Women. The election roundtable was held in the Faculty Lounge on Thursday, October 9, co-sponsored by the SHU Women’s Studies Program and the Department of Government and Politics.
Ms. Russo gave a brief overview of her work to a group of students and faculty members. Now in its 15th year, the campaign school is attracting an ever-more diverse group of students for its annual summer program: women from a number of countries now attend and even a few men have participated. The school is designed to prepare women to be successful candidates for political office. Topics covered range from fundraising to appearance. She noted the ongoing “double standard” for male and female candidates and said that 16 years after the celebrated “Year of Women in Politics,” in 1992, many of the same problems persist.
True to its name, the roundtable engaged many of those in attendance – some offering their opinions on a wide range of issues and others asking pointed questions. Ms. Russo indicated that men and woman arrive at the decision to pursue elected office by different paths. Women, she said, often enter public service later in life, once their children are in school, for example. They typically choose this path in response to specific challenges in their own lives, and they remain focused on the issues. Men, she asserted, seem attracted to the government as a career path and see it as a way to become successful and influential while also performing public service.
Students and members of the faculty participated in a lively discussion comparing the candidacies of Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin. It seemed to many that these two women are also being held to different standards. The New York senator was judged in the media to be cold and unbending, and her no-nonsense pants suit image worked against her. She was seen as too serious for her own good. The Alaska governor is still a relative unknown, but people are beginning to get a sense of her values. Now she is being challenged and even caricatured as too frivolous for her own good.
There is no uniformity of expectations and no one definition of female success in public life, according to Ms. Russo. As an example, she pointed to the belief that Senator Clinton lost the race because she listened too attentively to her male advisors who encouraged her to imitate traditional candidates. Governor Palin is still seen as less threatening, and her evident pleasure in being a “hockey mom,” or one of us, has made her more popular, perhaps, that her qualifications might merit.
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