Shattering the Glass Ceiling



Women have long tried to shatter the glass ceiling. Strangely enough, this metaphor is typically American. Europeans need some explanation to be able to understand its meaning. The glass ceiling is a metaphor referring to an artificial barrier that prevents women and minorities from being promoted to high-level positions within an organization. Of course, women have always had to fight for justice and equality, but the glass ceiling is not about general justice and equality. It’s about the chances of women to reach the highest positions. We in Europe have had and still have several female prime ministers and even presidents. They have all at some point broken the glass ceiling. Around the world, there are and have been outstanding women in such positions even in countries where you would not expect it. During the current pandemic, it seems that countries with women in leadership are coping better with the scourge.

Women are peace-makers and the United Nations laud the influence of women on the world peacemaking process. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer made history as the first female chief negotiator in the world to sign a final peace accord with a rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines in 2014. It was also a landmark moment for women in the Philippines because three of the five signatories on the Government’s side of the peace deal were women. Coronel-Ferrer says that the experience made her determined to work towards ensuring more women are participating and leading international peace processes. On the ground, many women are working to advance peace and security agendas, but they need to be recognized and visible at the highest levels as well. This has become all the more important in recent years as we have seen the return of authoritarianism and pushback against women’s rights and the peace agenda.

Of course, there have been reigning Queens in our Old World, but the current heads of state are just figureheads of constitutional monarchies. Things are changing, though. Many European countries have abandoned the male primogeniture succession, thus making the first-born child of a monarch the first in succession to the throne without regard to his or her gender. The next monarchs of Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden will be queens. Norway will follow in the next generation. 

Considering that the United States is a relatively young nation that was built by immigrants fleeing oppression in the old world and its traditions, you would expect to find equality in its constitution. And indeed, the quotation "all men are created equal" is part of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson penned in 1776 during the beginning of the American Revolution. Yet American women are still finding it difficult to reach the highest positions of government. Hillary Clinton as the first female presidential candidate did not manage to shatter the glass ceiling. Now, in 2020, finally, Kamala Harris as vice-president elect of the United States, will not only break the glass ceiling for women, but also for women of color and of Asian descent. It has taken a long time for this to happen in the New World.

On October 1, 2019, Kamala Harris said in an interview: „I feel a great sense of responsibility. And it is probably why I am so hard on myself and everybody else. Because there are a lot of people reying on us to do well and to do it the right way. And I do not want to disappoint anybody. I also am fully aware that people are watching to determine and judge who else can do what. So I feel an incredible sense of responsibility. And I am self-aware that when I am standing on that stage, there are little girls around America whose fathers and mothers are pointing at that to tell those little girls what they can do.“

Kamala Harris will be the first woman as vice-president of the US, but not the last. Her example will be like a star by which other women and girls can chart their way. She will need all the peacemaking characteristics of a woman to help heal the soul of the American nation and make it united again.



Photo: H. Ottschofski

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Have Messed Up the Earth

Image
Living in a temperate climate, I have been used to having cold winters and warm summers. We never thought we would need air conditioning. But things have changed. We are in the middle of climate change and scientists are saying that we have almost passed the point of no return. The last two summers were extremely dry and hot. This summer we are having a mixture of heat and thunderstorms causing vast amounts of rain, and flooding. Hail is clogging the sewers and destroying crops. Streets are transformed into fast-flowing rivers, houses are flooded and even collapsing. Rivers and lakes overflow their banks. Rescue services are working at capacity and still, we hear of people drowning or not being accounted for. I am shocked at the news reports of calamities from all over. Many have lost everything to the flood. Even in areas that are used to flooding, people say that they have never experienced anything like this. In other parts of the world, the problem is extreme heat. When polar regi...
Read more

What Feminism is about for me (7) What about the Apostle Paul?

Image
So what about Paul? Why do so many people consider Paul a misogynist? As women we tend to cringe when they hear his name, but should we really? Maybe we should study the bulk of Paul’s writings and not just a few verses that have been used for women’s subordination. Could it be that those verses have been interpreted in a way Paul never intended? The life of Paul is recorded in the New Testament and we can see how his encounter with Jesus on the way to Damascus changed him completely. He experienced a complete change of perspective that he would include in his testimony during the rest of his life. The strict follower of Jewish laws became a follower of Jesus. We see him working closely with Priscilla and Aquila not only in their tent-making business but also in proclaiming and teaching the gospel. In Philippi, his first converts were women he met at a women’s prayer meeting, who formed the first house church in Europe. This, to me, proves that Paul was by no way a misogynist. He follo...
Read more

What Feminism is about for me (1)

Image
In  my next few blog posts, I will be taking up the topics of feminism and patriarchy. Who on earth came up with the idea that women should be of less value than men? As far as we can look back into history, we see women treated as less than human beings, without worth. The discrimination of women is astonishing, considering that at Creation, God created humankind in his image, as a double pack of equal worth. Of course, we know that we no longer live in the ideal world created by God and that things went terribly wrong at the outset when the first human couple decided to test their free will. Both Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit: Eve because she longed for more knowledge, and Adam, because he deliberately decided to disobey God’s command. The result was that their ideal world was destroyed. For thousands of years, we as women have suffered most under the resulting oppression and discrimination.  God’s plan, however, was to restore his human children to their ...
Read more