EUROPE/ Studies show women suffer guilt, abuse and disapproval everyday. Jacinda Ardern has no gas left in the tank to continue as the prime minister of New Zealand. Her resignation speech was the sort of rare and dignified moment that we have come to expect from her. As a woman who presented the world with the kind of leadership that uniquely leaned on her emotional intelligence. She leaves a legacy she can be proud of.
It has been a matter to think that what burned the fuel that she relied on to govern.
Firstly, it is doubtful that she felt the constant guilt that pretty much every woman in the world feels the moment they evacuate their womb of a child. Even the Mary Poppins-style perfect, Instagram-polished mothers of the world fret that something they do will harm their child in some way.
Results of a general survey done on this matter
We have asked certain men who have always been their primary carers if they ever felt guilty for missing a school play or staying late at work. They all looked baffled. For us, there is constant torture and self-loathing about how our choices might affect them. No matter how we try to push away societal grooming, it is always there. For Ardern there will have been column inches aplenty to keep the torture prickling her skin.
This is not to say that most working women don’t just push through this. It just burns up fuel, fuel that others don’t need to spend. It is tiring and saps our bandwidth.
The pressure pushed on to working women is tiring enough; without it being amped up by being a public woman; and the worst of all offenses, to some, a political woman. The thing that burns my fuel to the point of a flashing emergency light and a blaring alarm is the abuse and threat of violence that has become par for the course of political women. Jacinda Ardern will have suffered this mercilessly. Today, colleagues and admirers discussed the extent to which that constant threat of abuse contributed to her burnout.
Those threats came from many sources, too: people who hate progressive women and believe they are damning masculinity; anti-vaxxers outraged by her tough Covid stance; those with a general loathing of all politicians.
Other Studies
Combine the two fuel burners and what you end up with is the terrible guilt, fear, and shame that decisions you have made in your career, or your political stances (no matter how much you believe in them), put your children, loved ones, and employees in danger.
No doubt this is something all men and women in political life experience. However, studies show that the level of violence – often sexualized violence – and the threat that female politicians face is incomparable.
What can we do about it? Like Jacinda, the answer is being honest about the fact that politics is an emotional, not a bureaucratic game. Furthermore, constantly pushing for a more empathetic political environment; which will be brought about by having more female leaders; and politicians; not fewer.
It is not so idealistic to think politics is going to change its stripes in. But we must build the structures into our politics and our media that damn and criminalize the perpetrators of this abuse, and those who make massive profits from spreading it. We must create support structures so female politicians; and activists can lean on it; without being seen negatively.
Final word
Alas, the situation should change. Obviously, it is women who will have to do the labor to achieve it, just like we always do. This work takes more fuel – fuel others don’t have to use up in the pursuit of political life. No wonder Jacinda’s knackered.
Source: Guardian