Why women undermine Hillary Clinton

Today in Women's eNews, former Planned Parenthood head and renowned feminist Gloria Feldt talks about why women have a hard time accepting that Hillary Clinton could actually BE president. Feldt says this hurts the ultimate goal of gender neutrality in politics- and basically asks women to summon their courage and get on with it. It's kind of the like famous Groucho Marx line: I wouldn't join any club that would accept me as a member.

1) 'Not Ready for One of Us' Fear: our society is just not ready for a female president, so why bother?

2) 'I Love Hillary BUT' she carries Bill's baggage she's polarizing. Older women, Hillary's peers, worry that if Clinton loses, they lose--that it will set back their accomplishments for women; they are clearly wary of that risk.

3) Media Fears or, as Feldt writes, the Maureen Dowd effect. In a stunning display of sexist language, The New York Times columnist last December called a tiff between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman a "catfight." About Clinton, Dowd wrote that as first lady she "showed off a long parade of unflattering outfits and unnervingly changing hairdos" and that when Clinton "expressed outrage about Iraq," she "ended up sounding like a mother whose teen-age son has not cleaned up his room."
I call it the mean mommy effect.

4) Fear of Identification with Imperfection Fourth is the Arianna Huffington paradox: women are toughest on other women.

Leading women like Huffington can reserve fiercest vitriol for the candidate of her own gender and her own party.

It's called projective identification in psychology: we project onto others our worst fears about ourselves. National leaders, like celebrities, are prime candidates for this because we imbue so much into them. Their faults are our faults.