2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What if Bernie were Bernice? [View all]Empowerer
(3,900 posts)and could have focused on a career as a Senator or Congressman or Governor at a time when such options were rarely available for women. Had she had those other options, she would have had many more opportunities to build a political career.
As it was, she made the most of the limited scope her gender allowed her to work within. The fact that no other First Lady in history, with the possible exception of Eleanor Roosevelt (and that's a real stretch given the times in which she lived), could have even come close to building an independent political career as a result of her position as a President's spouse is alone evidence that being First Lady does not offer women some sort of preferential political advantage based on their gender.
If we've learned nothing else in this world, it should at least be very apparent that the deck is still stacked against women and minorities. One has to be a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton - extraordinary, wunderkind, over-achievers - in order to just be allowed in the room that's crowded with the likes of John Kasich, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee and other mediocre white men who not only feel fully entitled to be President of the United States, but whose right to be there is rarely questioned by others. And they STILL have to deal with people like you who claim they got there through some special privilege that the white men couldn't access.