RYAN: Not another empty pantsuit

As I was scanning the Internet for column ideas, I happened upon a Washington Post article titled, “Why Elizabeth Warren Should Scare Hillary Clinton.” In the article, Chris Cillizza, the author, argued that Warren has the best chance of beating Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries. First of all, it’s pretty clear somebody didn’t read my first column. I guess we can forgive him. However, 2016 is a long way away and there are plenty of other things to debate. Second, take a look at what those two candidates have in common, besides their love of pants suits.

You guessed it! They’re both conservative governors from New Jersey who don’t take no sass! But seriously. They’re both female Democrats who are raising a lot of cash and have high public approval ratings. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28, Clinton has a national approval rating of about 46 percent. Among Massachusetts voters, Senator Warren has an approval rating of 52 percent, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Sept. 27. Compared with other politicians, Clinton and Warren have nothing to complain about.

Our country is heading in a more diverse direction as we speak, but not very quickly (the rest of this paragraph could be read as “blah blah statistics” for those so inclined). A Congressional Research Service report released Oct. 31 noted that 101 (18.7 percent) Congress members are women, up from 93 in the 112th Congress. Forty-five (8.4 percent) African-Americans serve in this Congress, compared to the 44 from the previous one. While this growth is important, it’s nowhere near proportional. The U.S. Census Bureau states that 50.7 percent of the population is female and 13.6 percent of the population is African-American. While diversity is not just gender and skin tone, it can still account for a lot.

All that is why I’m so excited about Warren and Clinton. It’s pretty monumental that two of the Democratic big wigs are women. They’re not Sarah Palin women, either. They weren’t chosen for their looks or because they were women. They were not add-ons to yet another old white male presidential ticket. They rose to prominence because of their ideas (and partially her husband, in Clinton’s case).

They are both symbols of real feminism. I’m not talking about bra-burning, no-leg-shaving crazies who shout about the injustices they face and don’t do much about it. Clinton and Warren have proven that they are just as qualified as their male counterparts. I am sure they have had to deal with sexism, prejudices and plenty of pantsuit jokes along the way, but they stuck to their jobs and ultimately demonstrated the underlying principles of feminism better than most. Women want to be treated equally, and Clinton and Warren are just two steps in the right direction.

Echoing an earlier column, I have no idea what will happen in 2016, or in the almost three years to the next presidential election. However, I believe that today, in November 2013, all of this shows we are ready for a female president. We are ready to hear another voice coming from the bully pulpit.

Obama was an enormous milestone that we shouldn’t skim over lightly. He still has three years left to govern. I’m not trying to minimize his achievements. However, he is not the end of the road. We cannot look at Obama and say we have achieved a utopia. He is one man. Right now he is the exception to the old, white, rich guy rule. That mindset needs to change before we can even think about perfection.

No woman has yet to shatter that final glass ceiling in American politics. Heck, for a while, I thought it was going to be me (#SaraRyan2030), but America cannot wait that long for a female president. In a country that thrives on change and evolution, this gender stagnation has gone on long enough.

In reality, Clinton and Warren have little to do with the equation unless one of them happens to be standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in January 2017. In my (perhaps deluded and idealistic) mind, what truly matters is this discussion. That article I read made very few references to their gender as “breakthrough” or “one for the history books.” People are talking about two qualified women running for president and battling out in the primaries as if it was a totally normal occurrence. Ironically, by me pointing out how awesome it is, I’m unable to be blasé about it, thus kind of disproving my thesis. But only a little bit!

Clinton and Warren are clear demonstrations of how far we have come, but also how much farther we have left to go. When the country finally chooses a woman to be president, it will be another small, but completely necessary and somehow monumental, step toward equality.

Sara Ryan is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences studying political science and math. She can be reached at sryan15@bu.edu.