Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2020, 03:14 AM - Edit history (1)
male candidates and is also younger than most of the other candidates running.
That said, I have little patience for the "she's too old" argument used against women in politics. it represents a hidden penalty that women are forced to bear that isn't imposed on men.
Until very recently, women didn't have nearly the options to go into politics at an early age. For example, in the early 70s, women couldn't do what men like Biden did: they couldn't come out of law school, consider the vast array of opportunities available to them, get a job somewhere as a prosecutor or law associate and then get themselves elected to the U.S. Senate at 29. This was especially true if they wanted marriage and family - something men could do at the same time as they launched their careers without missing a beat while women had to forego careers in order to raise their children (who were often fathered by the men who were able to focus on their careers because their wives took care of everything at home).
So while the men were climbing the career ladder, women spent their 20s, 30s and often their 40s doing other things. Many women spent those years raising their families - and if they did have careers, they had to juggle their jobs and family obligations because, you know, it's not impossible to "have it all," but it's damned hard.
Finally, when times started to change, women had raised their families, and opportunities slowly opened up for them to go into politics in larger numbers, they stepped into the political arena, often finding themselves decades older than their male freshmen counterparts. And then they spent the next decade or two building up their credentials - something their male colleagues were able to start doing in their 20s.
Val Demings was one of those women. When she graduated college in the early 80s, she couldn't just start a political career. Instead, she joined the police department - one of the first women in her city to do so - and then spent the next 24 years rising up the ranks to become the police chief (something not available to black women when she first started her career). After 10 years gaining experience as chief, she ran for Congress, something that would have been difficult for her to do prior to that. And she did this while also raising a family.
But when Demings and other women finally got enough experience under their belts to be taken seriously as political leaders, they now have to put up with people telling them "Get out of the way, Geezer Lady. You're too old!!! Make way for some fresh faces!" Meanwhile geriatric men who've been around decades longer than the women are lionized as elder statesmen whose years and experience have given the wisdom to lead us to the Promised Land.
So, no. I don't have any patience for that. Women of a certain age have just as much right as - if not more than - men of the same age to be taken seriously as political leaders and, like the men, to aspire for higher office well into their 60s and 70s.
If Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden can run for president in their late 70s, Val Demings can be a VP nominee in her early 60s.
And if anyone is worried about an old/older candidate ticket, maybe we should put HER at the top of the ticket and find a much younger man to be her running mate.
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