Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead [Hardcover]

Madeleine Kunin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2008

Pearls, Politics, and Power is a call to action for new political engagement and leadership from the women of America. Informed by conversations with elected women leaders from all levels, former three-term Vermont Governor and Ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine M. Kunin asks: What difference do women make? What is the worst part of politics, and what is the best part? What inspired these women to run, and how did they prepare themselves for public life? How did they raise money, protect their families' privacy, deal with criticism and attack ads, and work with the good old boys?

Kunin's core message is that America needs an infusion of new leadership to better address the major problems of our time. To see how women can achieve that goal, she combines her personal experience in politics; the lessons of past women's movements; the stories of young women today who have new ideas about their role in society; and interviews with a wide range of women in positions of power, looking for clues to their leadership, as well as the effects of gender stereotyping. She interviews Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, analyzes her campaign, and addresses the question: "Is the country ready?" Other interviewees include U.S. Representatives Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez, Deborah Pryce, and Tammy Baldwin, and U.S. Senators Susan Collins, Amy Klobuchar, and Carol Moseley Braun, and Governors Kathleen Sibelius and Janet Napolitano.

The next generation of women will be inspired to lead by seeing women like Nancy Pelosi wielding the gavel, and seeing themselves reflected in the portraits in statehouses, courthouses, corporate and university boardrooms, and the White House. Pearls, Politics, and Power will help ensure that this inspiration is not soured or deflected, but channeled into successful candidacies by America's leaders of tomorrow.

What will it take for women to assume their rightful places in the political corridors of power?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Having risen from the Vermont State House to the Lieutenant Governorship to become the first woman elected governor of Vermont (1985-1991), Kunin (Living a Political Life) is part of the new wave of women in the top ranks of government, and she's recruiting: "Women will not have all the answers, but they are sure to inject new talent, ideas, and optimism into a political system desperately in need of all three." Detailing her own experiences in the corridors of power-including her time as Ambassador to Switzerland under President Clinton-Kunin also calls on a long list of women in politics to discuss the problems they've overcome, the issues that have driven them and the reasons that gender does make a difference. As a guide, Kunin proves practical and candid, offering chapters on becoming a politician, "being the leader" and "working with the jerks," but she also disseminates with chapters on women presidents around the world and female leaders in a number of settings (business, military, education). If one gets the feeling of being set up, there's reason: the ninth chapter, "A Woman President of the United States?" indulges Kunin's enthusiastic support of Hillary Clinton for president. Otherwise, Kunin's book will help any woman looking to take a leadership role, with a list of issues and resources to explore.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In an election year that holds promise for the first female president, Kunin, former governor of Vermont and U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, offers a clarion call to women, noting that they “have been bystanders to history for too long.” She describes women not as a political monolith but certainly as citizens and voters who make a priority of children, family, education, health care, and the environment, among other issues. She argues that whatever their political ideology, women tend to be more collaborative and inclusive than men. Women typically contribute to the community by volunteering, and Kunin urges expansion to politics through elected or appointed office. Kunin recalls her own evolution from bystander to multiple office holder and includes interviews with other women in politics, from local offices to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for their perspective on how and why they got involved in politics. Interspersed throughout are short biographies of major historical figures, including Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan. Readers will enjoy the perspective in this banner year for women in politics. --Vanessa Bush

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing (April 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603580107
• ISBN-13: 978-1603580106
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,320,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Madeleine M. Kunin was the first woman governor of Vermont, and served as the Deputy Secretary of Education and Ambassador to Switzerland under President Bill Clinton. She is the author of Living a Political Life and is currently a Marsh Scholar Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont and lectures on history and women's studies. She also serves as president of the board of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), a nongovernmental organization that she founded in 1991. She lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pearls Politics & Power, April 18, 2009

By 

A. Gardner "ANDIE" (TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead (Paperback)

Easy,thought provoking, motivating read. Redefining what we ourselves perceive as leadership material is where we have to start. She is very inciteful and threaded her points together in a very step by step, reevaluate your boundaries and goals, in a down to earth kind of way. Further she showed us many that have before us. Leave the negative stereoptyping behind and work towards those goals. Many are! Breaking that barrier and reaching outside the gender sterotype box was the message thruout. Reemphasizing the understanding that we, as women, may differ from men but our maternal core values clearly bring something positive to the table. This mix is sorely needed in this day and age as also was clear in the book. Bring your inner strength with your moral compass pointing North and go for it! How great it is to be a woman in this age of growth with so much opportunity at your fingertips and so many wonderful women authors and politicians like Mrs. Kunin to help bring out our best! Stop focusing on the dress and the hair and GO FOR IT LADIES!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Madeleine Kunin's PEARLS of Wisdom..., October 29, 2008

By 

R. C. Williams "Vermont Commons Web Editor" (Mad River Valley, Vermont) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead (Paperback)

Pearls, Politics and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead
By Madeleine Kunin/Book Review by Rob Williams
Chelsea Green; 2008; 233 pages

"Remember the ladies."
- Abigail Adams

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Vermonter Madeleine Kunin has led an extraordinary life.

Born in Zurich to a Jewish family, she moved to the United States as a girl, studied journalism in school, and developed an interest in literature, women's rights, and politics. She chose to enter Vermont politics in the 1970s, and in 1984, ran and won the office of Vermont governor, serving for 3 terms before declining to run for another term in 1990. Shortly after leaving the governor's office, Kunin found herself appointed Deputy Secretary of Education by the Clinton administration, a post she held from 1993-1997, when she became ambassador to her native Switzerland. All this, and she found time to raise four children, to boot.

And now, with the publication of <em>Pearls, Politics, and Power</em>, Kunin reflects on all of these experiences in a thoughtful book-length meditation about "how women can win and lead" in the public sphere.

The book is really two books in one. For much of the monograph, Kunin uses her own experiences in public life as a springboard to explore the struggles women face as political leaders, as well as considering women who have "made it" in the political world, from Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh of Egypt, to Hillary Clinton, whose failed 2008 presidential bid offers lessons for anyone interested in a serious consideration of the relationship between women and politics. She then concludes with a final chapter entitled "Where Do We Go From Here?", which functions as a sort of "step by step" guide for supporting women as they consider involving themselves in formal politics.

Throughout the book, Kunin shares the stories of a wide variety of women who recount their own path to political office, and this is one of the best reasons for reading her account. Even in the 21st century, in the male-dominated world of formal politics, women must work that much harder to demonstrate their credibility and qualifications for the job. "The issue of competence is one that men seem to get an advantage on. For a man, either because he comes from an executive background, or just because he appears to be competent, there's an assumption that men now how to run things and that women are compassionate and understand your feelings, but may not have executive ability," CBS news political editor Dotty Lynch recounts to Kunin, who agrees with Lynch's conclusions, based on her own gubernatorial run in the early 1980s. "We found that once you got a woman governor, it was a lot easier for the next one." Indeed, and Kunin's book provides a valuable service as inspirational text for any woman considering public life.

As a male observer, I found Kunin's last chapter most helpful. How do we prepare more young women for public life? She offers several suggestions. First, teach community service and support programs to do the same (interestingly, the Teach for America program, which Kunin references as a good model, was started by Wendy Kopp, a college classmate, growing out of her educational work done as part of completing her undergraduate thesis). Second, reinvigorate feminism as an exercise in collectively imagining what is possible, politically speaking, for women, and make public office a civic virtue. Third, educate girls to exercise power, encourage community participation, and ask women to run for office. Fourth, think structurally, and fight for campaign finance reform and other institutional changes that open up more opportunities for women to lead. One final suggestion, and it a good one - establish a mentoring bank to create possibilities for female leaders to encourage up-and-comers - a wonderful idea.

"Education, the culture, and laws have to change," Kunin concludes, "to open the doors wider to the halls of power and to reprioritize the decisions that are made within those halls to achieve the government that more accurately reflects the will of the people." Easier said than done, of course, but Kunin's own example provides a compelling case for what is possible when women are more able to participate in public life, and her book offers us some blueprints for a way forward.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Woman and truly a Lady, May 29, 2008

By 

Linda Poppe (Melbourne, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead (Paperback)

Gov. Kunin proves in this book that a woman in politics does not have to "storm the heavens" or crash through barriers - - but can (and she has) work up to as high a position politically as she may wish without ever giving up the endearing qualities that result in her being titled a true Lady, in every sense of the etiquette word.