Originally posted by Q99
I also want to mention that what candidate is selected sends a meta-message.If you tell people, "You can be anything, even president!" but there are no actual presidents of your group, and when someone tries, people go, "Oh, people
If you tell people, "You can be anything, even president!" and people actually are president of your group, it sends the message that they can actually be president, which encourages more people to try, which expands the talent pool from which presidents are drawn from. It may not pay off for decades, but it's likely to pay off.
There's thus a good long-term reason to use the meta-message a candidate sends as a tie breaker. Even if it's not something they themselves are consciously doing, electing a president is in part about the message we as a country wish to send about who we are.
And, if someone is more aware of issues that aren't much of a concern at the moment, that isn't much help. There's a couple women's issues that are active at the moment, pay gap and all that, so there is a reason to want someone knowledge about those specifically, more so than issues that are not currently being debated.
Like, if a candidate is good at running a healthy economy and you're in a recovery, that's less useful than someone who knows recoveries.
If a candidate is a doctor who knows health care, that's more useful if health care reform is a major issue at the moment. But if everyone's happy with health care, who cares?
Someone who knows the hispanic immigrant situation has a much more relevant specialty than someone who knows the Irish-American situation in equal depth, because how to treat Irish Americans is not a particularly on topic issue at the moment. Go back a hundred years ago and the situation is different.
Gender and minority issues are a topic being grappled with right now. There is thus specific reason to have someone with greater familiarity on them.
Thus on balance, I'd pick Marco Rubio, who's hispanic, or Jeb Bush, who is white but has a history of dealing with hispanics showing he has reasonable familiarity, over one of the Republican candidates who show no particular knowledge in the area. Or Trump, who shows, like, anti-knowledge of the area.
And similarly, Hillary has greater experience and knowledge of gender issues facing women than most of her opponents, so that's a point in her favor.
I'll play devil's advocate for a bit (because that's what I do):
What if the young girl best identifies with a man who has her skin color?
What if a young girl best identifies with a man who has her hair color?
What if a young girl best identifies with a man that shares her values?
There are other scenarios that fit what you're talking about. Children identify with multiple traits from people they look up to: not just gender.
For instance, I identified with Walter Payton and Randall Cunningham as a kid. Both of them are black men who were very talented, enormously kind, very generous, and giving men.
I thought Samus Aran from Super Metroid (the game) was the coolest "hero" type when I was a kid, as well (she beat out other "heroes" such as Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Frank Castle, etc.).
So when we conclude that little girls cannot identify with male politicians, it becomes sexist against both sexes. Here's how:
1. This implies that females are incapable of looking past gender.
2. Males are not role models that females can or should look up to.
I do agree that a female president could help some little girls better identify with politics, however. So, on the above comments, I was seriously playing devil's advocate.