Sep 13, 2024 08:59 PM IST
Global woman icon? Hardly. Flawed? Definitely. And yet Kamala Harris might just be the voice the world needs right now.
Not once did she refer to her gender or the historic possibility of becoming the first woman president of the United States. While referring to the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, not a word was said about the erasure of women’s rights in that country. Acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself elicited an oblique reference to “far too many innocent Palestinians” being killed, but the full horror was hardly on display.
Global woman icon? Hardly. Flawed? Definitely. And yet Kamala Harris might just be the voice the world needs right now.
“The optics of a Harris win would certainly be very interesting,” said Akshi Chawla, curator of WomenLead, which tracks the progress of women in politics globally. Already, Mexico has elected its first woman head of State, Claudia Sheinbaum, who, at 61, is just a couple of years older than Harris. “The possibility of another North American country being led by a woman is certainly powerful,” added Chawla.
In 2023, women’s political representation grew by just 0.4 percentage points with 26.9% female members of parliament as compared to 2022, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
It was also a year that saw three prominent women leaders — New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s Sanna Marin and Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon — quitting, citing burnout and exhaustion. A win for Harris will mean a win for women’s representation in a world dominated by muscular male political leaders.
Eight years ago, another presidential debate saw Trump prowling on the stage, standing uncomfortably close to Hillary Clinton. She lost and the cost of Trump’s presidency became clear when his hand-picked judges rolled back abortion rights, taking American women back half a century. Never has gender mattered as much or been as polarising as in the post-Trump years.
Globally, gender equality has stagnated or declined in 40% of countries between 2019 and 2022, according to Equal Measures 2030, a coalition of non-profits.
Events of the past month have unfolded like a horror film in slo-mo: Women marching in Kolkata, industrial-level sexual exploitation unmasked in Kerala, a husband accused of inviting over 80 men in France to rape his wife who he drugged unconscious, the banning of women’s voices along with their faces and bodies in Afghanistan, not to forget the ongoing battles in pretty much every nation in the world from Iran to Brazil.
Harris’s dismissal of Trump is a masterclass. That she did it with such finesse, an arched eyebrow here, a smirk there and outright laughter elsewhere made it all the more delicious. If Trump had once dismissed her as “nuts” because of the way she laughs, then she chose to laugh openly, and repeatedly, at him, for instance when he spoke about immigrants “eating the dogs”.
Trump did not stalk Harris the way he did Clinton. But his disrespect was apparent when he constantly referred to “her” or “she”, not by the constitutional office she holds, or even just her name.
Harris’s victory is by no means assured. But women all over the world will be watching and hoping.
Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal
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