For decades, nations have been led by women, from Canada and the United Kingdom to Germany and France, but in its nearly 250 years, the United States has never elected a female president.
While female U.S. political trailblazers, like Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, have attempted to reach the highest office in the land, the possibility of a “Madam President” remains elusive in America.
For Women’s History Month, theGrio explores the political terrain to understand why a woman has yet to find a path to the Oval Office.
Why has America never elected a woman president?
Georgetown University political science professor Nadia E. Brown told theGrio that one of the major differences between the U.S. and other countries that have elected a woman as head of state is that some countries have gender quotas. These quotas are intended to boost representation in political systems where women are historically underrepresented.
Brown said these quotas “allow women to be elected to national positions,” adding, “the population just doesn’t think about women as being incapable to lead in the way that the United States does.”
She continued, “Some of these things are structural that the United States could put into place, and then others are cultural. Because we don’t have those structures in place, we fall back on cultural norms [and] gender socialization that really remove women from top leadership positions.”
Brown argues that the lack of structural systems that propel women into public office has created an American society where “we don’t imagine that [women] can do the job.”
The other barrier, she said, is “good old-fashioned sexism, where some people still believe that women have a specific place in public life or they don’t have any place in public life.”
Aimee Allison, founder and president of She the People, a political advocacy…
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