Women in Politics
I have been wanting to write this particular post for a while. The reluctance originated from my fear of possibly offending a female acquaintance, who is undoubtedly brilliant and capable, yet highly indecisive. You may wonder why I would make such a big fuzz about someone's indecisiveness. Everyone has flaws. To satisfy your potential curiosity, I admit that my biggest flaw is that I am either extremely insecure or extremely arrogant -- no middle ground. However, in this case, this lady's indecisiveness may play a vital role in how women in politics are perceived in the eyes of the masses. Her name is Xenia Menzies, who ran for SFSS President this year and lost by merely 30 votes.Xenia ran for the SFSS President three times in the past. I absolutely admire her determination. I know that I would not have the courage to do the same if I were her. Before she decided that she was to run for the last time, she seemed to have some struggles. Her uncertainty was normal. Most people would have shared the same agony. She initially thought that it was time to move on. Nothing wrong with that. Later on she decided to run for real.
While Joe, a personal friend of mine, claimed that Xenia was too indecisive to be a President, I, on the other hand, was concerned with something different. Imagine this election went beyond the SFU campus. Imagine this was a real life election in a city, province, nation, you name it. Could you imagine how the media would have portrayed Xenia? Her indecisiveness would have been the one and only characteristic that the media projected onto her. It would have been entirely linked to her sex. Nothing else would have mattered. Her capability, intelligence, active involvement with so many wonderful, rewarding projects would not have mattered. It would have all come down to one thing -- her indecisiveness. They would have said it was because she was a woman. If Joe had been the indecisive one, he would have totally been able to get away with it.
Quit the racial and gender stereotypes. Women deserve to be portrayed and reflected fairly in the mainstream media without bias and ideology.
As much as I am happy for Joe, I believe that Xenia truly would have deserved the position.
Labels: Communications Was My Major
posted by Amanda Sung @ 1:26 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Hi Amanda, you make interesting points, but I'm not sure it would play out the way you suggest on the municipal, provincial, and federal levels. I posted my reasoning on my blog.
Interesting perspective. I never really thought about it that way. In spite of my involvement with Willa, I tend not to really see things through the lens of my gender. This election made that especially difficult given some of the confrontations.
Joe was the one who tried to make the indecisiveness a big issue and I didn't understand why at the time. I think it easily did lose me the 70 votes (it was a 70 gap after the recount) among people who knew both of us but who threw their support behind him at the time when it was unclear if I was going to run. It also caused a lot of confusion among my friends who had just seen the Facebook note I wrote and then didn't pay any more attention to the election, thinking I wasn't going to run, until late in the game.
Definitely an important lesson learned here. Though, I thought I already knew this lesson.. I just genuinely didn't think I was going to run.. and then I got new information and changed my mind... next time I think I'm just going to keep quiet when I think I'm not going to do something but everyone else is speculating that I am... they sometimes know better than I do how they are going to convince me to run.. after all, politics is always about the public you are serving and not one's own ambitions (at least it never was for me) so they tend to sway me... haha. Oh well.
Thanks for writing about it. No fear of offending me. In fact, I'm flattered by the kind things you said about me and that I was worth your words.
Best,
Xenia
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