My grandfather, a successful construction and real estate entrepreneur, lost everything in the Great Depression. He died of pneumonia after declaring bankruptcy.
On his deathbed, he told my grandmother to take the life insurance money, his trucks and other equipment, and start a coal business.
My grandmother didn’t have business experience or even know how to balance a checkbook. But she did have a network of friends in the Business and Professional Women (BPW) organization, which remains the nation’s largest “old-girls” business network.
They spread the word that my grandmother, Christine Clegg, had six mouths to feed and encouraged everyone to heat their house with Clegg Coal. Remarkably, when it seemed that the day a woman could launch a successful industrial company might come eventually, but certainly not in the Depression, Clegg Coal became a successful start-up, operating for decades before being acquired.
My grandmother was an artist, head of the North Carolina Council of the Arts, and a great civic leader for other organizations. But BPW was always her favorite—for the sisterhood it fostered and for its support of Clegg Coal.
My grandmother was the quintessential empowered woman for her time. I wanted to be just like her. So when I asked her for career advice, I was shocked by her reply: “Get married.”
I did get married, but I obviously didn’t adopt her view that a woman belonged in the workforce only if a man wasn’t around to provide for her. Most families today can’t afford to make that choice anyway, needing two incomes to make ends meet.
Women have made great advancements since I sought my grandmother’s advice, and my daughters face greater opportunities than I could have imagined at their age. Nothing exemplifies this more than the rise of two extraordinarily talented, caring, and hard-working women: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
On January 8, 2008, I traveled with my daughter Virginia to New Hampshire, hoping to see history being made in the Democratic primary. For the first time, a woman had a real shot at the Democratic nomination, although a loss in Iowa had made Hillary an underdog.
The campaign asked me to suspend for a few days my efforts to win commitments for Hillary from superdelegates (who could tip the scales at the Democratic convention in an undecided race) and head for New Hampshire to meet with women’s groups—a good sign of outreach to a natural constituency that had abandoned her in Iowa. Later, we headed to Nashua, where news broadcasts continually replayed a dramatic moment. Hillary’s eyes had welled up when a woman asked her how she handled the rigors of the campaign. Hillary had spoken of how the race was personal for her, not political. For a split second, she had let her guard down, and showed the country what I’ve seen in working with her on many issues, particularly funding health care for sick 9/11 workers, where she was particularly passionate: Hillary cares every bit as much about people as winning an election.
Later, we saw two hecklers holding “Iron My Shirt” posters disrupt a rally in Salem, angering women in the audience and reminding everyone how much gender was looming over the race.
The rally was subdued. Polls were showing her trailing Senator Barack Obama. After the rally, I had a private moment with Hillary. After she graciously signed a campaign poster for my daughter, I told her, “You’re going to win.” She put a brave face on but seemed downcast. “Eventually,” she told me, implying that she thought she would lose New Hampshire, but ultimately win the nomination.
So much for the polls. The only one with the right prediction seemed to be me. Exit polls showed that women had tipped the election in Hillary’s favor. As for my grandmother decades before her, women came through when Hillary needed them most. For the first time, a woman had won a major party’s state presidential primary. History had been made after all.
This book was published before the Democratic nominee had been selected. But in pursuing the presidency, Hillary faces a daunting task. People seem to love her or hate her. Surveys have shown her to be the nation’s most admired woman, but many who oppose her do so with alarming vehemence. Don Imus calls her “Satan.” To be sure, gender will be just one factor that decides this election. But I believe that, consciously or unconsciously, millions of men, and even some women, are threatened by a strong, outspoken woman vying for the ultimate position of power—and that’s a major obstacle.
If Hillary becomes president, she will face an even more daunting challenge in pursuing equality for women, a passion of hers. The fact remains that for every Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah Winfrey, or Meg Whitman, who have broken through the glass or marble ceiling, millions of women are held back by gender bias that permeates virtually every realm of American society and global affairs.
Documenting that stark reality, as I’ve tried to do, is much easier than abolishing it. Raising these issues alone can be a political liability. Crain’s New York Business, a respected business publication, once wrote a favorable article about me but qualified their praise by saying that I risked “marginalizing” myself by focusing on women’s issues.
I don’t believe that’s an isolated view. Only an intensive, sustained chorus of activism by women and like-minded men can make these issues top priorities for any president. I hope you will lend your voice to chorus . . .
Buy the book, Rumors Of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated and help make history.
