I’ve long been interested in the intersection between women and leadership on the one hand and women and their bodies on the other. How, in other words, does being in the body of a woman affect being a leader – if at all?*
So I was especially interested to see that one of the brightest stars of the Democratic Party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently went public with her decision to freeze her eggs. Moreover, her decision to be so revealing was not seen as a political disadvantage, quite the opposite. In the mainstream press it was widely viewed as an advantage. A precursor to a presidential bid precisely because her personal, confessional, rollout had just the social media savvy that first made her famous.
Ironically, given the history of women and power, it was suggested that Ocasio-Cortez’s openness made her especially suitable for leadership. As the New York Times put it, going public about such previously private matters was itself a “form of empowerment.” It represented the “kind of leadership that women are hungry for.”
Seems to me though that this remains to be seen. Whether Americans more generally – even American women – are ready, not to speak of hungry, for the sorts of disclosures that Ocasio-Cortez put out there is not yet clear.
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*This link will take you to three of my previous posts on this subject: