Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t shatter what she likes to call the nation’s “highest glass ceiling.” Not quite.
But with her dogged and nearly successful run at a presidential nomination, she put a crack in that ceiling.
“History will look back on this as a defining moment for women,” said Regina Cowles, owner of Regina Cucina sauces, who describes herself as a card-carrying feminist — but not a Clinton supporter.
While the curtain is about to come down on her run, Clinton has accomplished at least one thing: She has moved the gender debate beyond the tired “Is-America-ready-for-a-woman- president?” refrain.
“Hillary Clinton paved the way for the next woman,” said Cindy Parmenter, a former journalist and spokeswoman for Roy Romer during his terms as Colorado governor.
“She ran a very competitive campaign, and a pretty successful one. And that, I think, changes the psyche of citizens and voters, who now see a woman as one who can compete.”
Trailblazing pressure
It could easily have been otherwise. Reaching for unprecedented political heights, Clinton faced unprecedented pressure. Had she fallen on her face, or her campaign been a dismal failure, it could have set back the hopes of every double-X-chromosomed political aspirant for untold election cycles to come.
Instead, supporters and nonsupporters alike say she did just the opposite.
“I just think she blazed yet another trail,” said Lucille Echohawk, a community activist and Clinton supporter.
Echohawk recalled a letter to the editor from a man who didn’t support Clinton. “He said she had certainly moved things forward for his daughter. I was very touched by that. It’s absolutely true. ”
Along the way, she did much to rouse the nation’s slumbering feminist movement, reminding a generation of women what they had fought and hoped for decades ago.
“In the ’70s, it was like a dream, and now it’s a reality. Someone actually has done it and come that close,” Echohawk said.
“There are a group of older women who’ve waited a very long time for this,” said Cindy Parmenter.
When Parmenter, who is now retired, first walked into the Denver Post newsroom as a young reporter in 1968, it was expected that she would cover fashion and ladies’ luncheons.
“Every one of us had to fight that,” she said. What was true then may be true now for Clinton, Parmenter said. “Once you proved yourself, it didn’t make any difference.”
While Barack Obama was grilled, briefly, for refusing to stick a flag pin on his lapel, Clinton’s laugh was dissected and scrutinized for its shrillness and sincerity. Her cleavage was evaluated for its political import. Her cheerful-but-serious pantsuits were near-nightly fodder for David Letterman.
Clinton persevered.
“She looked pretty tough. I was pretty impressed with how good under pressure she was,” said Adriana Govea, a 36-year-old student at the University of Denver’s Women’s College. “And I thought, ‘I’d like to be like that.’ ”
To Dottie Lamm, who first met Clinton when they were each their state’s first lady, gender did make a difference in the campaign.
“I think sexism has been rampant,” Lamm said.
When a heckler yelled at Clinton: “Iron my shirts,” Lamm said, “that went by the wayside. Suppose someone said to Obama, ‘Shine my shoes.’ Racism was neither expressed nor permitted, although we don’t know what’s coming in the future.”
Lamm believes that sexism hurt Clinton but didn’t necessarily deliver a death blow to her campaign.
“I think she could have overcome sexism if her campaign had a better understanding of what is needed at this time in America. I don’t think her campaign understood that.”
Support of a different kind
Certainly her campaign understood that if her gender worked against her with some voters, it gave her an advantage with others.
Poll after poll found massive support for Clinton among women, and even those who didn’t support her still cheered the idea of a woman in the Oval Office.
That is the counterweight to the tribulations that come with being a pioneer, according to Dr. Patricia Gabow, Denver Health’s chief executive.
As a young medical student, Gabow learned a thing or two herself about trailblazing.
“Certainly when I was in medical school, and there were very few women, to some of my professors my being there was a source of discomfort. For others it wasn’t an issue, and for some, they wanted to help me because I was a woman. I’d say that’s probably the reaction Hillary has had.”
As Clinton crisscrossed the country, downing boilermakers, tearing up, promising health care for Americans and big trouble for Iranians if they don’t shape up — and never once ironing anyone’s shirts — she, indeed, prompted every imaginable reaction.
And not just among women.
As he shepherded members of a church youth group in a downtown park Tuesday, Dante Tinner, 24, reflected on how Clinton’s campaign changed his idea of what is possible.
“I never thought I’d see a woman run for president. It made me think anyone can do anything.”
Staff writer Elizabeth Aguilera contributed to this report.
