This story was printed from TODAYonline 
Weekend • September 6, 2008
news@newstoday.com.sg
CAN a Sarah Palin succeed in Singapore and become a potential candidate for deputy prime minister? No way.
She is a mother of five children who will be required to stay home and look after them or she will need the help of at least two maids. And then also she has a teenage daughter who is pregnant — now what does that say about her as a mother? Mothers are held responsible for the behaviour of errant children and even the pregnancy of maids!
No. Singapore political parties won’t have a bar of the likes of Mrs Palin. They would want her to be a perfect mother, a submissive wife (she didn’t look nor speak like a submissive woman) and work 16-hour days.
And there is no opportunity for the father to help look after a new-born baby since public policy has denied men paternity leave.
So, there is very little chance, certainly not in my lifetime, that Singapore will witness the rise of superwomen like Sarah Palin. But really, I am not sure if I want a superwoman and a conservative like Mrs Palin to make public policy decisions that affect my life.
I have to confess, though, that I have been riveted in the last two weeks by the American presidential conventions. The convention is a great democratic process in action. But it is also a political carnival, vastly entertaining and full of surprises. The biggest surprise is the nomination of Mrs Palin.
She has burst onto the national and international scene, guns blazing and ready for whatever that is thrown at her and there is plenty. She is a talented, attractive woman who married her childhood sweetheart, a mother of five, a popular politician, an articulate, intelligent speaker who gave an impressive, polished political performance at the Republican Convention this week.
She was called “Sarah Barracuda” because of her fierce competitiveness as a basket player leading her school team to victory. She was voted “Miss Congeniality” by the other contestants when she won the “Miss Wasilla” beauty contest. She is a sharp shooter, and she can shoot from the hip as well. She’s a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons. The combination of these qualities makes her attractive to both men and women.
She symbolises family values dear to the aspirations of conservatives everywhere. Singapore policymakers would love her. Can they get Singapore women to have as many children and be active in the workforce?
Women, can relate to her — a woman who has succeeded as a wife, mother and a public figure and who had to face the challenges of bringing up a child with Down’s Syndrome and face the problem of teenage pregnancy. Which family hasn’t had its problems?
As governor of her state of Alaska, she opposed sex education in schools and promoted abstinence and now has to cope with a pregnant teenage daughter and confront media scrutiny about the contradictions between her public policy and private experiences.
But she remains unshaken and confident. Her family is behind her in a happy and united manner. “We stand as one, no matter what may be thrown at us,” she told the millions who were listening to her. She compared herself to a pit bull: “What is the difference between a hockey mum and a pit bull” she asked the crowd cheekily. The answer, pointing to her lips, “lipstick”.
This is the modern superwoman. The picture is too perfect, too demanding of women. Superwomen, likeMrs Palin, are too few and far between that even as we admire and applaud her feistiness, we are confronted by the greatest irony in the life of modern woman everywhere — that, in spite of all the progress women have made, she is still confronted with the contradictions of being a woman.
Mrs Palin is a role model for governments which would like to promote the image of women as savvy, modern working woman who is also the traditional wife and mother and whose life is embedded in the family.
However successful she is, she still goes home to her responsibility as daughter, mother and wife. Do we hear of men who are equally successful in both home and work? Did we hear from Mrs Palin about this?
She is a role model, all right for pre-feminist days, when women did not have the right of control over their bodies, with her anti-abortion stance; at a time when kids are more exposed to all sorts of sexually suggestive images and information; when teenage pregnancy and STD are becoming a serious problems, she promotes abstinence and opposes sex education (therein lies a contradiction).
Feminist icon and writer Gloria Steinem pointed out that “women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice-president”.
But women are still not powerful enough to change the value system that currently expects women to be superwomen and excludes men and women from achieving work-life balance.
The writer is president of the Association of Womenfor Action and Research (Aware).