On Thursday, former HP CEO and Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina told the DC-based libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute her views on the “state of women in America.”
She spoke candidly about the sexism she has faced in her own career — including being called a “bimbo” multiple times, being forced to attend a corporate meeting held at a strip club, and being asked patronizing questions on the campaign trail. But Fiorina also insisted that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world for women.
“Women here have achieved more than anywhere else in the world,” she told reporters on a conference call before the speech. She later told the audience, “My story — from secretary to CEO to candidate for President — is only possible in this country.”
The line won enthusiastic applause, but ignores the substantial list of countries where women have already risen from middle class backgrounds to running the country. Fiorina need only to look to Latin America to find, right now, former guerrilla fighter Dilma Rousseff as President of Brazil, former attorney Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as President of Argentina, and former political prisoner Michelle Bachelet as President of Chile. Decades ago, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi were elected to lead England, Pakistan and India, respectively. In more recent history, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf led Liberia, Han Myeong-sook led South Korea, and Mary Robinson led Ireland.
Looking beyond just the presidency, 97 other countries in the world have a higher percentage of women their national legislatures than the U.S. — which sits just behind Kenya and Indonesia, and only slightly ahead of the United Arab Emirates. At the pace the U.S. is going, researchers at the organization FairVote estimate the nation won’t achieve gender equality in elected office for another 500 years.
Still, Fiorina insisted in her speech, “Women have more opportunities [here] than anywhere else on earth.”
Again, the data does not support this claim.
Other countries, mainly in Northern Europe and just over the border in Canada, have much more equal representation in corporate boardrooms, largely because of diversity quotas written into law. In overall workforce participation, the U.S.’ international ranking has been on a downward slide since 1999, mostly because they have not adopted the family leave and work/life balance policies favored by most of the world. In fact, out of 185 countries, the U.S. is one of just three that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave.
Last year, France passed a sweeping gender equality law that not only set pay equality and provided both maternity and paternity leave, it fulls covers the cost of first-trimester abortions.
Fiorina, though she defined feminism on the press call as believing “every woman has the opportunity to choose their own life,” is an outspoken opponent of abortion rights. She told reporters Thursday that if elected president she would support a ban on all abortions after 20 weeks, a bill pushed by Republicans in Congress many times, most recently this week.
While Fiorina did acknowledge the worsening gender pay gap in her speech, she told reporters she does not support current proposals, like the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would make it easier for women to discover and challenge pay discrimination.
“A woman is protected today by law from gender discrimination in her paycheck,” Fiorina said. “She should use the law to its fullest extent. I think leading by example is far more important than imposing it on others, so I would reform the civil service so it becomes a meritocracy.”
She also declined to support calls for better family leave policies, saying, “We need to be very careful not to overreach. When well-meaning legislation to help juggle work and family goes too far, it hurts women.”
Instead, Fiorina faulted unions, Dodd Frank Wall Street reform, and economic policies from “the Left” for the current state of gender equality, vowing as President to go after all three. Yet the wage gap for unionized women is 40 percent smaller than that of non-unionized women. And while the wage gap has been shrinking among unionized workers, while the overall gap hasn’t budged in a decade.
Fiorina’s speech ended with a plea for the GOP to “reclaim” feminism, saying progressives have turned it “a left-leaning political ideology where women are pitted against men and used as a political weapon to win elections.”
Yet she reminded the crowd: “If we as a party want to win, we have to win with women.”
The RNC agrees, and after women helped propel President Obama to victory in two elections, they wrote about the need to “improve our brand with women throughout the country.”
Neither the RNC nor Fiorina has called for backing policies that women overwhelmingly support, from raising the minimum wage to making all private employers cover birth control in their health insurance to legislating equal pay for equal work.