Women in Politics

While I thought Mrs. Winters was nice a person and had good intentions, I completely disagreed with her and thought it was the weakest of all the lectures. There are many antiquated ideas of what a woman should be and those stereotypes greatly hurt a woman’s chance to be treated equally and respectfully, especially in a political environment. However, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, I thought she actually did a disservice to women politicians rather than help them. Based off her lecture, I think she is completely out of her league jumping into politics but that is more a reflection of her age and inexperience than her sex. She mentioned negative stereotypes of women but then she essentially generalized all women politicians by saying they are all non-partisan, willing to collaborate, and work across lines of authority. I was little thrown-off by this because there were absolutely no facts to back up those statements but she lost my support when she mentioned this is true because SHE is willing to do all those things! She is not a reflection of women politicians, nobody is. Every woman is different and every woman politician is different and to generalize women like that, even if is positive, exacerbates the problem people have with perceiving women, rather than help it. She is obviously a very ambitious woman but a problem I have with ambition in politics is that it can cloud people’s judgment and put an individual ahead of the people. While I have no idea what she is like as a politician, I hope her ambition to be a politician doesn’t supersede her reasons for wanting to be a politician.