“She’s a good girl,” Betsy Ebeling, Hillary Clinton’s best friend since childhood, recently told me of Mrs. Clinton, whom she met in the sixth grade. “She works hard, she is loyal, she listens.”
I had met Ms. Ebeling in Chicago, along with a dozen more of Mrs. Clinton’s friends, whom I joined to watch the final presidential debate. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of the remark. Mrs. Clinton was certainly not a “girl” — and what makes a “good” girl anyway?
And yet, watching her concession speech on Wednesday morning, I suddenly understood.
Mrs. Clinton did what good girls — women — have to: She played by the rules.
She put her head down and worked hard, devoted her life to service, waited her turn, and never got angry (or at least never showed it). She made mistakes along the way, certainly — but she had the résumé, the qualifications, the stamina, and she didn’t lash out when those things were questioned. Mrs. Clinton took the high road, again and again: deflecting interruption after interruption, maintaining her momentum in the face of a man hovering over her, not responding when he called her “nasty” in front of millions of viewers.
And she continued to play by the rules as she took the stage for her concession speech on Wednesday. Calm and composed after a devastating defeat — and one in which she won the popular vote — Mrs. Clinton took the high road yet again, telling her supporters that they owed Mr. Trump “an open mind and the chance to lead,” and offering to help. She reminded her supporters that this wasn’t about her, it was about America. And she apologized — apologized! — for losing. Holding back tears, Mrs. Clinton told young women, “Nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.”
“To the little girls out there,” she continued, “never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.”
Every opportunity except becoming president.
As the saying goes, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” The idea, of course, is that until that highest ceiling is cracked, until there is a female president, we will never change the reality that for most Americans, leadership is synonymous with maleness. I spent the first half of this election season defending myself for wanting to see a woman in office — in part because she was a woman. Yes, I believed she was the most qualified candidate. No, I didn’t like all of her policies. But did it matter to me that she was female? Yes, it did.
Clearly not all women agreed that it was important to elect a woman. In fact, 53 percent of white women like me voted against Mrs. Clinton, opting instead for a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault, and has been endorsed by the K.K.K. And yet, for those of us who did support her, part of the grief around Mrs. Clinton’s loss is symbolism.
To many of us, Mrs. Clinton was representative of every woman who’s been talked over or overlooked for a job, had her qualifications questioned, or been called a “bitch.” She was those times I was told I needed to be “nice,” and she stood for those women who were told they didn’t “look” like engineers (or in her case, presidential).
She was representative of those things in a country where the average person finds it easier to pair words like “president” and “executive” with male names and words like “assistant” and “aide” with female names. She represented female power in spite of the reality that a woman’s likability is inverse to her leadership status — that is, we like her less the more she rises — while the opposite is true for men.
She was running for president knowing all too well that a woman has to be twice as qualified to be perceived as once as good; and that her mistakes will be scrutinized more harshly and remembered longer than those of her male peers.
In 2008, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were neck and neck in the race for the Democratic nomination, researchers at the University of Texas conducted a study. They discovered that one in four elementary school students they surveyed believed it was illegal for a woman, an African-American or a Latino to be president.
It’s safe to say that President Obama shattered that misperception in 2008, as thousands of young minority children finally saw somebody who looked like them staring back at them from the Oval Office.
The fact is, seeing women in power matters.
According to a survey by the Geena Davis Institute, even viewing a female president on screen — that is, in television dramas and comedies — made people 68 percent more likely to vote for a female president. In real life, Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy prompted a quarter of girls ages 14 to 17 to say they were more likely to seek positions of leadership, according to a national online Pollfish poll conducted by The New York Times. As President Obama put it, “Her candidacy and nomination was historic and sends a message to our daughters all across the country that they can achieve at the highest levels of politics.”
I spent much of Tuesday morning scrolling through my Facebook feed, noting stories of friends who had brought their children — and in particular, their daughters — to the polls to cast their votes for the first female president. Twelve hours later, my feed was like a memorial page, parents trying to find the words to explain what had happened. Her loss is not as simple as gender, but as one little girl put it through tears, “Why doesn’t anybody like a girl president?”
Of course, on Wednesday after her defeat, Mrs. Clinton got up, put on her pantsuit, and kept on plugging. She didn’t sulk, or throw a fit, complain, or blame anybody else. She was gracious, humble, and professional. And no doubt she’ll keep fighting. Because that’s what women do.
