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Madeline Albright: On Being a Women and Diplomat
“On Being a Women and Diplomat” is a 2012 Ted talk for TedWomen with Pat Mitchell of the Paley Centre for Media featuring former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, where she advocates for a greater focus on women’s issues in foreign policy-making. Chronicling her experience as the United States first female Secretary of State and as a female diplomat at a time when so few existed, she discusses some of the criticisms leveled against her and the challenges that she faced as a woman operating in a sphere traditionally reserved for men.

Albright unequivocally states that, as far as criticisms go, what has left the greatest mark during her time in office have been the condemnations from women who attempt to instill guilt in working mothers with the argument that our roles as mothers and as professionals cannot possibly coincide. This is a highly skewed viewed that is challenging on many levels, not only because it instills guilt in the women who juggle these often conflicting roles on a daily basis with great success, but also because it reproduces the idea that women’s role in society should be reduced to the private sphere, which in turn can discourage other women from attempting to “break the glass celling” that stands as an invisible barrier between them and positions of power, which remains so prevent in our world.

From Mrs. Albrights perspective, such actions represent the complete opposite of what we need be doing as women, which she argues should be to help and support each other in developing our political voices and cooperate to push forwards issues relating to women at the negotiating table. In fact, after leaving her post in 2001, much of Albrights work has been focused around training women for positions in public office, both domestically and globally. Highlighting the positive effects of having more women in foreign policy posts in terms of negotiating the allocation of resources in budgetary decisions, and how the empathetic nature of women can, in her expertise, be highly beneficial in conflict resolutions, Albright maintains that the political and economic empowerment of women are the key to well-functioning, balanced societies.

A second issue highlighted in this interview is the impact of sexism and lookism on female politicians. The media’s sense of entitlement when criticizing female politicians for matters completely unrelated to their policies and for which they never criticize male politicians is problematic in itself, and the fact it feels the needs to do so in the first place demonstrated how deeply rooted sexism is in American society. Comparing Mrs. Albright’s experiences with those of the women that followed in her post, (Condolence Rice and Hilary Rodham Clinton), it is interesting to note how the media has continued to criticize these women on the basis of how they look and what they are wearing, even when a female Secretary of State can no longer be considered an abnormality.

References

Albright, Madeline. “On Being a Women and Diplomat”. Interview by Pat Mitchell. TedWomen. TedTalk, February 18, 2011.