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Why hasn't the U.S. elected a woman president yet?

Gage Skidmore
/
Flickr - http://bit.ly/1rFrzRK
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

The United States could be on the brink of electing its first woman president. It’s a glass ceiling that has waited a long time to be broken. But why has it taken us so long to reach this point?

As Americans, we like to think of ourselves as exceptional, but in the case of women's political leadership, we're exceptionally backward.

Nancy L. Cohen asks this very question in her new book Breakthrough: The Making of America's First Woman President.

“As Americans, we like to think of ourselves as exceptional, but in the case of women’s political leadership, we’re exceptionally backward,” says Cohen. “More than 50 nations have elected women to lead them … Taiwan, Germany, Chile. I mean, we’re behind Kosovo and Bangladesh.”

Listen to our interview with Nancy L. Cohen on Stateside at 3 p.m. as she talks about the founding fathers and how they laid the groundwork for keeping women out of politics, why women don’t lose elections based on sexism, and her thoughts on female voters and Donald Trump.
 

GUEST Nancy L. Cohen, author of Breakthrough: The Making of America's First Woman President

Josh Hakala, a lifelong Michigander (East Lansing & Edwardsburg), comes to Michigan Radio after nearly two decades of working in a variety of fields within broadcasting and digital media.
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