My Dad, the (2016 Election Year) Prophet

Back in the long-ago dark ages of the early 1960’s when I was in high school, my Dad said, “A man can put on a clean white shirt and everyone will say he’s changed. When a woman falls, she falls forever.” It was his way of warning me of the consequences of an unwed pregnancy. In his mind at the time, that was the worst thing that could happen to a young girl. It would forever change her life’s trajectory and permanently damage her reputation (though not the young boy’s). He was pointing-out a longstanding gender-based double-standard of social life. There are many reasons I wish my Dad was alive today. Among them, I’d like to talk about this year’s election. I’d like to remind him of what he said and ask him if now, nearly fifty years later, his observation about the way the world viewed men and women applied to the Presidential Campaign. I’d ask if the woman candidate was being held to a different gender-based double-standard while day after day, the man – no, pardon me, the men – in clean white shirts have the benefit of the “clean slate” regardless of what they said or did in the past. I’m not certain what he’d say, but as his words echo in my memory, they have a certain prophetic ring.
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Election 2016 Source Type: blogs