Two Presidents, One Mistake

In response to the lack of female presidents at Phillips Andover Academy (4 in the last 40 years), the administration instituted a new system of co-presidency for the past election, with the hope of getting a girl in office. Though many more girls than usual entered the race, all with male partners, the victorious team was two males. "We do not live in a post-gender, post-race, post-class society," headmaster John Palfrey Jr. said in an interview with the New York Times. "Girls have not had equal access to top leadership positions."

Exeter faces an even worse situation in regards to female leadership­—only one girl has been president in the history of Student Council. In an interview with the Exonian last spring, Principal Tom Hassan cited not only the lack of female presidents, but also the lack of female candidates running for the position. "I noted that Student Council elections were taking place that week and that there were no girl candidates for the president’s position," Hassan said.

While both school leaders recognize the problem and have worked to change it, Andover’s approach was misguided and addressed only the surface rather than the root of the problem. The lack of women in leadership is based in the fact that not enough females are even running for the presidency. This problem will not be solved once a woman is elected president by means of artificial rigging.

What message does the "co-presidency" send? That girls are not capable of winning on their own, and need a male partner to be considered "electable." The fact that all the female presidential candidates ran with male partners underlines the message that a single female (not to mention an all-female team) is unelectable, and the system change does nothing but exacerbate that sentiment.

The issue with the approach is that an elected female would be seen as a beneficiary of a "rigged" system, instead of as a truly qualified leader. Any female who may have benefited from Andover’s co-presidency would have faced doubt about whether she was elected because of her merit or because of her gender, regardless of how qualified she may be. The single president system is fair, in the legal sense—males and females have equal opportunity to run for office. The solution, then, lies not in changing the system but in encouraging females to show that they are capable of leadership as individuals.

Yes, the fact that Exeter has only had one female president in its entire history is atrocious. But the method of remedying the gender imbalance does not lie in propping up girls just because they are girls, in order to generate more appealing leadership statistics. Andover wants to declare their society "post-gender," but fails to understand that the election of a female president will not magically solve the gender problem, especially if the common perception is of an overeager administration forcing women into office. Ironically, Andover’s rigging of the election suggests that its administration believes that females are incapable of being elected into leadership roles by their own merits, which is exactly what they are trying to disprove.