Conclusion, or the Hair-and-Clothes Issue

Gender is not merely a social construction or a performance, it is also a challenge. Anatomy is not only a destiny, it is also a social project. Human beings are rational, narrative, self-interpreting, and political animals: but they are all of the above by negotiating incessantly their gender fitness. This is still true.

In our own, late-modern awareness of who we are, what we can expect, what we can do: could we honestly claim that gender does not have any bearing on our choices, even in a cosmopolitan, sophisticated, liberal society, where universal human rights have become a sacrosanct value? Gender makes a massive difference everywhere: to fit or not to fit the norm of manliness or womanliness is an arduous dilemma for the self-fashioning of any person, because the self is always, in some way, gendered.

Women’s emancipation, and our slow recognition as political actors, voters, activists, volunteers, members of parliament, presidential candidates or successful leaders, have failed to eradicate the persistent trains of thought that associate manliness with credible leadership and reliable command. Take the ‘‘hair and clothes’’ issue in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign to be US presidential candidate, or the refrain in French politics about the nurturing vocation of Segolene Royal, joined to her alleged incompetence in the realpolitik of international relations. And her legendary white suits. Why should physical appearance, domestic skills, maternal characteristics have anything to do with drive, self-discipline, competitiveness, vision, ambition, consistency, authority? Because bodies, habits, and rights are still exceedingly intermingled, in the public opinion; they are yet to be unstitched and reorganized in new, less illiberal, constellations.