Birthright Challenge: Can a Woman be President?

Published in Centre Daily Times, State College, PA (May 22, 2004)

This past February, my daughter came to me with an urgent question, “Amma, can a girl be President?” I wondered what had precipitated this doubt.

It turned out that one of the boys in her kindergarten class had declared that “girls cannot be presidents.” The girls in the class had disagreed and asked the teacher, who told them that a girl could indeed be president. Now my daughter wanted my verdict.

I told her that a girl could be anything she chose to be, and that included being president. My daughter was happy with my answer, declared she did not want to be president anyway, and moved on to something else.

But I could not move on. I did not want five year old girls or boys to believe that there were limits to the possibilities of girls’ lives.

I thought about my kindergarten years in India. I never had to hear such statements because India had a female Prime Minister during that time, Indira Gandhi. She was the democratically elected Prime Minister of India from 1966-1977 and then again from 1980-1984. During my kindergarten years, there was another female leader in the Asian subcontinent: Srimavo Bandaranaike, the elected Prime Minister of India’s neighbor, Sri Lanka, who held the post from 1960-65, 1970-77 and 1994-2000.

Considering my childhood experiences, I found it ironic that in 2004, in the USA, little children were still not sure about whether “girls could be presidents.”

Since there were no female US presidents that I could summon up, I went to the Internet in my quest for answers. I did a search on Google for female Heads of State and chose to visit www.guide2womenleaders.com developed by Martin Christensen, a Danish journalist. The categories beckoned to me tantalizingly: women leaders currently in office, heads of government, ministers, chairs of parliament, party and local leaders by country, and by time period.

The accompanying photographs were inspiring by their very existence. My daughter and I savored the variety of faces, the colors, the biographies, and we enjoyed pronouncing the names of female leaders from all continents. When I was finally ready to move on, my daughter was not. She visited every subheading, as if the next biography or photograph would give her convincing proof that women indeed could be elected presidents and prime ministers.

Thanks to her excitement, I learned and shared some interesting facts with her. That there have been female rulers since antiquity.

That Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was the first democratically elected female Head of State in the modern world (1960) and Vigdis Finnbogadottir of Iceland was the modern world’s first democratically elected female President (1980).

That, in 1997, when Mary McAleese was elected President of Ireland, five of the six presidential candidates in that race were female.

That, Victoria Chaflin Woodhull, the first female candidate for US president, ran not once, but twice, in 1872 and 1892 and that Belva Ann Bennet McNall Lockwood ran in 1884 and 1881.

That several women have run since then, mostly as outsiders on minor party tickets, and a few as candidates in primary races for the two major party tickets.

A few days after my Internet search for female leaders, I read a letter from a 13-year-old American girl to “Dear Abby.” Her ambitions to be president were laughed at by her male teacher, and one of her male classmates declared that “girls aren’t allowed to be president.”

These situations in our classrooms suggest that the many female presidential candidates since 1874, and the numerous female heads of state from all over the world are not part of our education or our consciousness.

Our schools need to teach our kids that competency has nothing to do with gender or race or ethnicity, that girls can be presidents, that many other countries have elected female leaders, that we did have women leaders of Native American tribes, and that we have several female state governors. And perhaps our kids will then ask us why we have not had a female president yet.

These days, my daughter asks to visit the “female leaders website” almost as often as she asks to visit the PBS Kids website. She recently declared that if she or any other girl becomes president, somebody would write their biographies.

This leads me to imagine an election year where women would run for president, their gender being considered nothing more than an accident of birth. I

imagine a president’s biography, which states her story, notes her successes and failures, and attributes none of them to the fact that she is female. I picture children reading the story, and I imagine a time, when it would be an ordinary day, not an extraordinary one, when several boys and girls decide that they would someday run for president.

Multicultural “Trip” Offers Opportunities for Dialogue with Child

Published in Centre Daily Times, State College, PA (March 6, 2004)

I embarked on an eye-opening journey two Decembers ago, when my daughter’s preschool celebrated cultures from all around the world. It was a wonderful month for the kids as they “traveled” around the world. It was a great opportunity for parents to build positive attitudes towards the diverse cultures in the USA – I loved to imagine that these would one day get us closer to true liberty and justice for all.

My family dutifully signed up for India, and began our preparations. On the big day, my daughter dressed up in Indian clothes, I packed up my presentation material and hands on activity, my snacks, and was just about ready, when my daughter burst out with questions, “Amma, who is an Indian? Are you an Indian? Am I an Indian? Are people who live in India Indian?”

It was a watershed event in our family. My husband and I had been conducting an experiment, where we had talked about different countries, but not used any adjectives to describe the people who lived in them.

We had talked about India, China, Korea and USA (four countries that we have been to with our daughter) and the “people” who live there without using any adjectives. We used “people” to describe all of humanity, and had been waiting to see if our child would classify people, and if so, at what age, and based on what? Would it be based on differences in physical features like skin color/ eye shape/ hair texture or language /customs/ religion/ geography/ something/ nothing else?

Our daughter’s classification started in response to the external stimulus of the “India day” celebration. We talked that day about who an Indian was and who an American was. The dialogue continued till I dropped her off at school, and continued when I picked her up.

By the end of that “Holiday Season,” she declared that she had “understood. All the children in my school are Americans and all the parents are from different countries. Is that right, Amma?”

“Well, you are almost right…,” and we talked about exceptions to that rule, about grandparents, great grandparents, cultural origins, Columbus and Native Americans.

Our dialogue continued. After a trip to an Asian grocery store around the same time, our daughter announced that there were only four Americans in the store, referring to the three of us, and another person of European origin in the store. All the others were of Chinese origin, and I explained to her that they may be Americans too. And the person of European origin may not be an American.

Then she declared “Some people think that only white people are Americans. They are wrong.” Another step taken in a long journey, and I felt glad that she had the opportunity to understand this truth so young, for I have met so many adults that have not figured this one out yet.

Over the past two years, her journey has continued, as she ties to understand people and things. Her questions have increased over time and last year, when we celebrated Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, she asked me “if it was an Indian festival.”

“Yes.” “… because Indian people celebrate It?”

“Yes.” “Is it an American festival?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because many Americans celebrate it. Did you know that Christmas is an Indian festival too?”

“Because lots of Indians celebrate it?”

I then told her how I had 10 days of holidays from school in India, for both Diwali and Christmas.

The dialogue then continued with “Is Hannukah an American Festival?” and “Do Native Americans live in State College?”

Our family has had many discussions over the last two years, and my daughter has a better understanding of the complexity of our origins and our world.

Our dialogue on who an American is, was put to test recently.

A new friend walked up to my daughter in a park and said, “Where are you from?” I wondered what she would say. I heard her reply, “I am from here. I am an American.”

Then the other girl talked to her about a visit to England. And they both ran off to play.

So, a big thank you to all our schools that have the “Holiday Month,” or provide opportunities to discuss cultures from around the world. I am sure they have enriched discussions in many of our homes and taken us on some wonderful journeys, while building ethnic and cultural pride in all our children, and humanizing all of us.