“I’M TAKING THE job,” I told my agent, who had just negotiated a new five-year contract for me to stay at WBZ-TV.
“What?” Bob Woolf practically yelled into the phone. “You’re doing what? I’ve just negotiated more money for you than you thought you’d ever see in your life! You’re one of the most popular television personalities in Boston, and you’re going to Washington, DC, a much smaller market, for less money? This is not smart, and if you take this offer, I can’t represent you.”
My own agent fired me!
The next day, I notified the general manager at WBZ-TV that I was taking a job in Washington, DC, hosting Panorama, a live, ninety-minute, midday talk program, and anchoring the noon news. The GM was as incredulous as my agent had been.
“It’s all downhill for you,” he predicted. “You’re going backward from the great opportunities I’ve given you.”
Given me? I’d earned every penny. Why was I leaving? I responded to my unhappily surprised boss, “I just have a feeling that this is too good an opportunity to pass up.” That was my unsatisfying answer. I wasn’t dissatisfied or unhappy in Boston, but I was feeling a bit too comfortable, perhaps. I needed a new challenge and was, admittedly, curious about the world of politics and power. I had a lot to learn about both.
IN TWO SHORT weeks, Mark and I were in Washington, looking for a middle school and an apartment, and attending some of the inaugural activities for the country’s thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter. A reporter noted that two Georgians began new jobs in the nation’s capital on the same day, January 20, 1977, albeit with very different spheres of influence and responsibilities. Being in Washington and observing President Carter’s leadership was a model of how to use power from an “outsider” perspective. This created challenges for him in working with Congress, but in many ways also led to some of the most notable accomplishments of his presidency. He has become the most admired former president for his peace-building work through the Carter Center in Atlanta, where I continue to observe his values-based leadership.
I replaced a very popular host at Panorama, Maury Povich. The person who made this risky hire of putting a woman in the host chair was Phyllis McGrady, barely thirty, who was already getting quite the reputation for being a risk-taking, talented producer.
Phyllis and I knew every decision we would make about Panorama would be judged through the lens of “what are those women doing?” We were making some changes, for sure—booking more women writers, activists, and leaders, and putting women forward on our small producing team for open positions and promotions. Having more women on-screen and on the production teams was starting to shift the focus, the stories, and the issues. Panorama’s audience wasn’t predominantly women, however, as my talk programs had been in Boston, making many of our decisions to focus on women risky in terms of ratings and reputation. It’s hard to envision just how much influence and impact Panorama had in those pre-CNN and no internet days.
Before 24/7 cable-news channels, our ninety-minute live TV program was the closest to current news in DC at the time. Political power players, White House aides, Cabinet secretaries, and congressional leaders all showed up when invited, and the program was viewed daily in the White House press room, congressional offices, and in the places where televisions now are most likely tuned to CNN or Fox.
HOSTING PANORAMA WAS like getting a PhD in political theory as well as marketing. Some days, I didn’t feel nearly informed enough to be cross-examining the Speaker of the House about proposed legislation or a senior White House official about the president’s prescient call for environmental regulations, but by this time in my life, after the challenges and successes of Boston and New York, I had experienced the reality that being ready could mean being ready to learn quickly while doing. I had also discovered that with each job, there were elements of the work I’d done before that I could incorporate or draw from. So while I had never hosted a live, two-hour program with guests who ranged from members of Congress to movie stars, often on the same program, I’d road-tested the interviewing and researching skills I’d need to do a credible job. And if the research hadn’t been deep enough, I’d rely on my own curiosity. Panorama confirmed for me that the best interviewers are the best listeners and the most curious, and to this day, that’s the advice I give anyone for how to get the best results from an interview: listen well and questions will naturally follow from a curious mind.
In addition to the politicians and actors, lots of book authors coveted a seat on Panorama’s sofa because in those days, when people bought books exclusively from bookstores, it was widely believed that landing a Panorama interview sold more books than any of the network TV talk shows. And unlike many in those heady days of publishing, I actually read the books before interviewing the authors! The stack by my bed reached from the floor to well over my nightstand. I always asked the authors before the show where in the book tour they were. If they were at the beginning, they’d be fresh-faced and brilliant; by the end, they were all pale zombies, repeating the stock answers they had said too many times to count on too many local TV and radio programs. The challenge was to ask something they hadn’t been asked before, and I had to read the books to do that!
I took my job so seriously that Clare Boothe Luce, playwright, politician, and powerhouse, told me, “You are the perfect dinner guest at a Washington dinner party; you can talk about almost anything for fifteen minutes, and that’s all the knowledge you need.”
She was my Virgil to the dynamics of the Washington elite, inviting me to the exclusive Jockey Club, the place where the powerful had their assigned power tables for lunches. Ms. Luce (and yes, I called her that as she was already in her seventies and far too intimidating to be “Clare”) had once been the managing editor of Vanity Fair and gained fame as a playwright for The Women, which was largely derided as antiwomen, and I avoided the subject altogether at our first lunches so I wouldn’t be asked my opinion.
She had also been the first female ambassador and was famously witty—“no good deed goes unpunished” was a favorite line. She treated being a social hostess as the power position it was, and at our every encounter, she emphasized the importance of doing your homework—whether for a dinner party, meeting, or interview. We couldn’t just google them then, but the investment in preprep could have life-changing consequences and, if nothing else, would make for a more engaged conversation.
Staying away from religion, politics, and sex in mixed company, as my first mentor, Mrs. Reid, once counseled me, was quickly dismissed by Ms. Luce, who advised, “Just stake out your position and defend it.” My debate training came in handy at these dinners; at that time, you could have informed debates and civil differences of opinion. Clare Boothe Luce and I were worlds apart in our political leanings; although as a journalist I couldn’t take a partisan position publicly, I was already out of the closet as a feminist and a Democrat. What I observed in these early encounters in one of DC’s social power circles at that time was a truly dangerous, courageous woman who was prepared to use her power and influence—and being in her circle certainly widened mine and added to my growing list of dangerous women role models.
Thanks to my high-profile position, I was invited to a lot of dinner parties and pitched a lot of ideas for interviews. In Washington, the celebrities were people in political power; journalists came next in the power parade, especially if you had ninety minutes of free air time to offer them to promote, advocate, debate… or as happened once, make demands while holding AK-47s pointed at the heads of hostages.
I was barely two months into my job when, on March 9, 1977, seven men from a former Nation of Islam rival group called the Hanafi movement took hostages at B’nai B’rith, the Islamic Center of Washington, and the District Building. Hanafi’s leader was a man named Hamaas Khaalis. Five years earlier, five of his children had been murdered and he held the Nation of Islam responsible. Now he was demanding that the men convicted of the murders be turned over to his group. He wanted Panorama to be the messenger.
We were the only live program in those pre-CNN days. The captors knew that and put in a call to us. I was interviewing someone when my station manager passed me a note: “There’s been a takeover at B’nai B’rith. They’re demanding to be heard on the air. We have to acknowledge that this is going on; they’re threatening to kill the hostages.” With no other instructions, I stopped the interview and turned to the camera to explain to our viewers what was happening as calmly as I could and with as little information as I had. Going to commercial to regroup, Phyllis and I assessed our options as more calls came from the gunmen. “Tell her we have our guns trained on fifteen people,” the voice on the phone said over our audio system, demanding that his message be broadcast. What if we said one thing that they misinterpreted and someone died?
“The FBI wants you to take the call and try to keep them on the line.” The message was delivered to me, now alone on the sofa, guests having been dismissed. With absolutely no training or further instructions, I was on the air, taking a call from a man holding hostages a few blocks away. I just started asking questions—like the reporter I was—about who the group was, their purpose, trying to keep him talking, which he did, explaining their cause and his intention to kill the people he was holding if his demands weren’t met. After what seemed like an eternity, the call was disconnected. The FBI had the number and information they needed.
The ordeal lasted through the next day as three Muslim ambassadors pleaded successfully with the hostage takers to spare their victims. Tragically, a reporter for WHUR FM radio, Maurice Williams, had already been fatally shot; a security guard later died in the hospital. Marion Barry, then a councilman and later mayor of Washington, DC, was injured when a bullet ricocheted. The captors eventually released their hostages. Khaalis died in prison in 2003.
Since that first event, there have been many instances of live takeovers of media in attempts to get publicity or issue threats. Thirty years after my first encounter with the outsized power of the media to make news as well as cover it, we’re facing a different kind of power play. With news organizations sometimes being barred from the Trump White House, the president referring to the press as “the enemy of the people,” and with media becoming more partisan, the very existence of independent media as a source of facts is threatened, as is the democracy that depends on its independence.
THE FIRST TIME I stepped into the White House press room, a much saner place then than it is today, it felt to me like a sacred place. I was in awe and more than a bit intimidated by the network news anchors and White House reporters I had watched and admired for years. For the first two press briefings, I sat there in silence—surprising for someone who’d already been on television for nine years.
Then NBC’s Tom Brokaw introduced himself, leaning in to advise, “It’s important to ask questions in this room or no one’s going to take you seriously.”
I went home and read every shred of anything I could find to prepare myself for the next day’s briefing. When Press Secretary Jody Powell opened the floor for questions, my hand shot up, forgetting that Helen Thomas, as the senior reporter in the room, traditionally got the first one. A glare from her, a frown from others, and my raised hand was ignored by Powell. Toward the end, I tried again and got the nod to ask a question, which I did in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. But I had broken my silence and conquered that fear.
From that day forward, I’ve encouraged women to be prepared for all opportunities to ask an early question. If you wait, either your question gets asked by someone else or you start obsessing—which means you stop listening—or you just get more and more intimidated and lose your turn. Speaking early also helps calm the nerves so that once you hear your voice in the room, you can be more focused on the active listening that is as critical as the speaking.
I HAD MY share of encounters with famous people during my tenure at Panorama. One day a pale blue envelope arrived with “Elizabeth Taylor” emblazoned on the letter inside. In beautiful handwriting was written, “I’m a fan of your show. I’m a Washington housewife now, sitting at home, watching television. Panorama is keeping my mind from going totally to waste.”
Elizabeth was married to Senator John Warner of Virginia, and the gossip was that she wasn’t exactly having the best time of her life in her new role. A few weeks later, I was invited to a soiree at the home of Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran’s prerevolutionary, peripatetic host whose parties at the embassy were legendary, and found myself sitting next to Mrs. John Warner. Even this world-famous movie star was experiencing the power dynamic of Washington that made her senator husband a more desirable dinner companion for many, but not for me.
We talked all evening about everything from the women we admired and to the politicians we didn’t. She was funny and even profane, and I almost forgot that I was having a conversation with one of the most famous people on the planet—certainly among the most beautiful, too.
Mrs. Warner—Elizabeth—and I were now both on the same dinner party list and as she sometimes requested to sit next to me, my Washington celeb status was on the upswing on the social circuit. I was told by one hostess in the know, “Elizabeth knows you don’t need anything from her and won’t expect anything from her or her husband, and that’s rare in this town.”
But what did people want and expect from me? What was the motivation for an invite to dinner or an embassy or even the White House? Seldom did or does anything happen in our nation’s capital without a motive. What, for example, was I to think about the huge tins of Iranian caviar from Ambassador Zahedi that began arriving at my apartment? I had to request that the deliveries cease, reminding Zahedi’s staff that it’s not appropriate for journalists to receive gifts from people whose lives and work could be newsworthy.
The very next year, 1979, Ambassador Zahedi’s life became newsworthy for sure. A revolution began in Iran, overthrowing the shah and sending the ambassador into exile—a revolution that transformed that country from top to bottom and contributed in no small way to the end of Carter’s presidency.
CAVIAR DELIVERED TO my apartment! State dinners! Celebrity interviews and dinner partners! I should have been feeling a little of the power drug by now, but it all felt very fragile. I was observing power up close and personal in the bubble that’s our nation’s capital, then and now. The power paradigm in the late seventies felt audacious and feels even more so today as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—the purpose of our representative democracy—seems to be less representative of the people it governs.
The way power is used in Washington is one of the most significant reasons why women in particular distance themselves from the association with power or with being seen as powerful. There have always been women with power in DC, but power is still largely defined as white and male, reflecting George Orwell’s comment: “No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
After the 2018 midterm elections in the United States, we have more women leaders in Congress than ever in our history, including more women of color and more women from different generations, ranging from the youngest-serving member to the oldest ever elected—and seventy-eight-year-old Nancy Pelosi was reelected to be the Speaker of the House, the third most powerful position in the US government, after the president and vice president. These new women in Washington have an opportunity to redefine what power looks like and acts like.
Will they work together across political and ideological lines to shape important policies that will serve all women? We can expect that some will approach their responsibilities with a gender lens and some will not, but I am counting on this largest coalition ever of women to dismantle the divisiveness, shape new legislation, and perhaps even finally secure equal-rights protections under the US Constitution by passing an Equal Rights Amendment. Already, by their presence, Congress is a lot closer to looking like the American population, and for the world, they offer a new and potentially transformative paradigm of power.
I didn’t feel powerful during my early years in the power game of Washington, but I surely learned a lot about how it can distort and distract. I did feel watched and judged, and I was always aware that my value in a room, at a dinner, at a press conference, and even on television was dependent, at least in part, on what I did or what I could do for someone else or how close I was to someone with real power. That part about living in DC didn’t change when I returned twenty years later to lead PBS—but more on that story later.
My status as a single woman started to feel more and more like a liability, too. On my own, I was more tempted by the whirlwind of activity, often choosing to go out rather than have a quiet dinner at home. Meanwhile, I was worried about Mark; he’d recently become a sullen, seemingly miserable twelve-year-old. He wasn’t doing well, socially or academically, in Washington; in his school, sixth graders were already smoking dope at recess, and his environment was taking a toll. It should have been clearer to me earlier that Mark needed more than he was getting in terms of direction and attention.
One New Year’s Eve in Washington, I decided to stay home with him. I had considered going out on the town, but without a steady companion, I could either go out on a casual date that could turn out sour or so-so, or go to a party where I wanted to hide at the dreaded celebration moment of kissing—or having no one to kiss—as the clock struck midnight. Forget it! I chose to forgo the invitations and planned an evening with my son.
I had thought a fun New Year’s Eve would be going to a concert and the fireworks on the Washington Mall, but he wasn’t interested. Since I was unable to engage, let alone excite him, with the idea, we ended up at home with one of my special frozen-food meals. Mark’s cat, a female feline he named Frank, stalked up and down the back of the sofa, shredding it with her claws as we sat in silence, with me occasionally reverting to my interviewer role and asking questions he didn’t want to answer. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by an incredible sense of sadness and failure, feeling emotionally separated from my only child.
I felt as if I’d failed as a mother and decided then and there to find a man who might like to join our lives—a companion for myself and a fatherly influence for Mark.
The very next month at another Washington dinner party, I was introduced to Adam, a charming, smart, stable lawyer with four seemingly well-adjusted children. We moved quickly into a committed relationship, though my time with Adam felt more like a solution than a romance. Still, within six months, we moved in together.
My fantasies of our becoming one big happy family evaporated pretty fast. Instead of flourishing with a male role model at home, Mark was becoming more and more miserable and showing it. Finally, his school psychologist suggested a boarding school might be the best solution to get him back on track academically and socially. Mark liked the idea, and we chose Cardigan Mountain in New Hampshire, near the slopes where he had learned to ski during his much happier days in Boston.
“It’s the right decision,” I told Adam, joyfully. “Mark will love it there. And the timing is great because I’ve been asked to audition for a pilot for CBS that’s being shot in Los Angeles, so Mark will have the stability of boarding school and not having to move schools again.”
“You’re going to what?” Adam’s face darkened. “You’re considering moving to Los Angeles? And this is how you tell me?”
He was furious—and with good cause. He felt blindsided, and I understood his frustration. But I’d been offered a chance to cohost a new primetime TV show based on the wildly popular People magazine for CBS. It would be my first spot on network TV. Since I knew that Adam had a temper, one that seemed to be growing, I didn’t want to provoke him when I hadn’t even been offered the job.
“It’s unlikely I’ll be chosen,” I reassured Adam, but inside I felt much more optimistic that I would. “And if I am, I’ll commute back and forth.” This sent Adam into a rage. I had good reason to question whether I could marry a man who didn’t understand or support my need to pursue a career opportunity; he had good reason to question whether or not he—and his children—would ever be a priority for me. This was not the first and would not be the last time that I pursued a job at the expense of a relationship.
I GOT THE job. I’d be hosting along with Phyllis George, a former Miss America, and Alan Hamel, known primarily at that time as Suzanne Somers’s husband. Even better, CBS had hired my old friend Raysa Bonow, my producer from Boston, to do the show.
At our first production meeting in New York, I felt like a beginner again. I had to learn a lot, fast, about being in the big time with the big boys and girls, proving myself again, competing again. Raysa took me aside for a talk.
“Pat, I know I told you this before in Boston, but here, at the network level, it’s even more important to think about your hair and your clothes. When there is a brunette and a blonde on the screen at the same time, the blondes get more attention, and since Phyllis is a brunette and your hair is sort of in between, I think you should become a blonde or maybe a redhead.” During the pilot production, I changed hair color on a weekly basis, seeking that blonde-but-not-too-blonde or red-but-not-quite-red color that would compete but not be too distracting.
This started a pattern that I am sad to observe characterizes my entire television career—changing hair color and styles to suit some producer, to respond to some viewer’s criticism, or to respond to my own growing sense of insecurity about how I looked on television. Eventually, this preoccupation with looks rather than substance initiated my move away from being on television to becoming a producer and eventually an executive.
Many of the activities surrounding the production of television programs have very little to do with going for mindshare or meaningful content, and everything to do with marketing and publicity. Perhaps you’ve heard of the upfronts—the show-your-hand moment where the network executives present the next season’s shows to advertisers and the media? Lining up alphabetically with all of the network’s stars, I found myself going onstage next to Mary Tyler Moore. Thunderous applause erupted as MTM, one of television’s most beloved stars, walked with power-filled strides across the stage. My heart filled with dread as I heard my name called, followed by what felt like a funereal silence and a few people loudly whispering, “Who’s that?”
The next day, David Susskind, the executive producer, called me to come see him. I was sure I was going to be fired.
“So I’ve got good news and bad news,” he told me. “Phyllis is going to be called the host. You and Alan are going to be cohosts. The good news is that you get to travel around the country reporting the interesting stories and she’ll be stuck in the studio. Okay?”
It was a strictly rhetorical question.
WE PRODUCED AND broadcast four episodes of the People show. Alan and I traveled coast to coast for stories that I don’t remember now—and that says everything you need to know about why the show didn’t make it beyond the first four. “Thank you very much, but we won’t be renewing the show” was the not-at-all-unexpected news from CBS.
Meanwhile, a big-time ICM agent reached out to say he wanted to represent me after the People gig. “Can you move to LA?” he asked. “There are so many opportunities out here for you. NBC is looking for a cohost or correspondent for a new daytime talk program, and you’d be perfect for it.”
I hired him, officially broke up with Adam, and officially resigned from Panorama. I felt badly about leaving the show, but it turned out to be a good choice; a year later, Panorama was replaced by reruns of Alice and a syndicated home shopping show. As TV critic Tom Shales wrote in the Washington Post, “Canceling Panorama was a supposedly sound business decision that also happens to be morally indefensible.” He placed the blame at the feet of the FCC, which had abolished public-service requirements for stations four years earlier.
“Stations now have no official mandate to air regular, locally responsive, public-affairs programs,” Shales wrote. “They are free instead to turn that pesky old public-service time into moneymaking time—say, with tired off-network reruns or home shopping sprees.” That was the beginning of a power shift inside media companies who no longer had to be responsive to community needs but could focus on the ever-increasing profits to shareholders… until the power shifted again through technology’s transformation of the media landscape.
IN MY NEXT move, to Southern California, I was experiencing a new landscape and, in many ways, a new life of freedom. Mark was settled into his boarding school and thriving. I was feeling good about having made the move because I felt it was right for me, even though there had been pressure from Adam to give us another shot. I was living alone for the first time, now that Mark was away at school, and for the first time, I wasn’t feeling guilty. I was feeling independent.
With my new cohosting spot on America Alive!, I was at last on national TV, and my mother and father could finally see what I did for a living! I invited my mother into the NBC studios for a mother-daughter program in New York (her first plane ride) and sent my parents on their first cruise and an anniversary weekend at the Plaza Hotel. I was finally a success that they could somewhat understand.
My father, visiting a television studio for the first time, observing me in the spotlight, noted afterward, “Looks like an easy job to me. You’re just reading.” After nearly twelve years of working hard not to be dismissed or denigrated, his comment almost unleashed the rage I had never allowed to surface. But I ignored the pain and pushed down the memories, again.
My job was best described as the active cohost, since I was live every day doing something exciting—or at least I had to make it appear to be so. From driving a race car at the Indy 500 to walking with flamingos at Disneyland to sailing with Walter Cronkite—and yes, that was exciting—I was contributing my time and talents to a television show the New York Times described as “comfortable placebo entertainment for those who like to turn their sets on in broad daylight.” Far from satisfying after the heady and more substantive fare of Panorama.
I wasn’t connecting to the work I was doing, and I wasn’t feeling all that comfortable in LA, even though the power dynamics were similar to those in DC. Both are one-industry towns, and your power is pretty much determined by your latest appointment or election in DC or your latest movie or TV series in LA. In DC, I’d been in the power circle because of my job and what it meant in that ecosystem of politics and policy. In LA, I orbited in and out of the power circle, not because of my job or its importance but because my agent, who was also my live-in partner, was powerful. And I was losing a lot of myself in that relationship.
We weren’t married, but this relationship was the first full capture of my heart and mind in the nearly twenty-five years since my divorce. We lived among the elite in Montecito, commuted to Los Angeles and New York for work, wrote a film script that was optioned by Columbia Studios (never produced), wrote a Broadway-bound musical (never performed), and traveled by train through the newly liberated Eastern Europe interviewing writers, artists, filmmakers, and world leaders for a project never completed. When we finally separated, after several attempts, it took me some time to recover my balance. I had lost some emotional independence, but I had gained a better understanding of what I wanted from a life partner. So had he, apparently, as he was married within a year.
Old friends commented on how much less confident and less free I seemed as a person, devoting so much of my time and energy to his happiness and not my own. After too long a time, I confronted the reality within myself and with him and ended what had been more than a decade-long commitment.
I was also asking a lot of questions about my career choices. I had stayed with television because I believed in the potential to make a positive difference, but nothing I was doing now felt that it made any difference to anyone, least of all, me. I wasn’t unhappy when the show got canceled. I needed to stop and reassess my next choice.
I didn’t. I got a job offer from the new cable network, went right into cohosting Daytime (which later became Lifetime), and then the nationally syndicated daily talk show, Hour Magazine, another program intended for women hosted by a man. The title card blared “Hour Magazine with your host, Gary Collins” in huge type followed by, in tiny little print, “with Pat Mitchell.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, seeing my name in those tiny letters, when in fact I did more than half the show. Once again, I was in a supporting role—the attractive, articulate, vivacious personality who was good at bringing out the best in people I interviewed and being able to wing it live when things went wrong, which they did all the time—all to make someone else look better and not, in any discernable way, to make the world better. Time to move on again in my pursuit of media that mattered.
I needed to get back to my original commitment to telling the stories of women, to providing a media platform for substantive conversations and for raising awareness of the many challenges I knew were a part of the lives of the women we were supposedly programming for. I believed there could be a new kind of daytime television program to connect women to women. With my producer from Hour Magazine, Mary Muldoon, we began to shape a new format and a different option to soaps, game shows, male hosts, and giddy studio audiences: to produce instead a real conversation with real women.
My agent and all the men I worked with said, “You’ll never sell it.”
They were wrong.
DANGEROUS TIMES CALL FOR DANGEROUS WOMEN
In Conversation with Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson was advised by many that a woman would never be elected president of Ireland, but she proved them wrong. I met her during her first campaign for the presidency and went with her door to door as she told voters what she intended to do as their leader. And after she was elected, she delivered on her campaign promise to transform the presidency to make it more relevant at the local, national, and international levels.
Following Mary’s term, she was appointed a UN high commissioner for human rights, then founded Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, whose objectives included strengthening women’s leadership and encouraging corporate social responsibility. She’s now chair of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders convened by Nelson Mandela and others to fight for peace and human rights. In 2010, she started the Mary Robinson Foundation—Climate Justice to fight for the often-overlooked victims of climate change. She also has served as a UN envoy for climate change.
Mary is one of the most effective leaders I have ever observed, and when I asked her whether she thought of herself as dangerous, she answered in her usual forthright style.
Do you think of yourself as dangerous?
Mary: I haven’t always described myself as dangerous; I always thought it better not to be too explicit about what I wanted to achieve at various stages of my life! But when I served as president of Ireland, I operated on the principle of “seeking forgiveness, not permission”!
I did like the description of me in my absence by Laurence Tubiana at a women’s leadership conference on gender and climate change in Ottawa last May. There was a discussion about bad girls, and Laurence referred to me as a “sophisticated bad girl”!
Did becoming more dangerous have anything to do with age for you?
Mary: As I get older, I find it easier to feel dangerous. The breakthrough moment for me was when I introduced a bill to legalize family planning in Ireland in 1971 and suffered a huge backlash of public criticism and denunciation by bishops. I wobbled a bit at first, but then realized it was important to be prepared to pay the price of being unpopular. When you fight for what you believe in, you may risk being unpopular, but in the end I think you gain people’s trust.
Who or what has inspired you to become more dangerous?
Mary: I am very inspired by women who live in difficult circumstances and fight for the rights of their community. I met many when I served as UN high commissioner for human rights. It is no accident that nine of the eleven stories in my book, Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future, are about women.
If you agree that these are dangerous times, how do you see the role of women in such times?
Mary: These are dangerous times, and they require passion and courage from everyone. We also need to find smart ways to communicate our messages—hence my recent podcast series, Mothers of Invention, with its tagline: “Climate change is a man-made problem—with a feminist solution!” Women need to take seriously the existential threat of climate change. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes it clear that limiting global warming to no more than 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is the only really safe level for the future, so this needs to become a priority of the women’s movement worldwide. We need to change people’s behavior and begin to live sustainably with Mother Earth—and who changes behavior in the family and community? Women!
In September 2014 I took part in the big climate change march in New York as an elder, alongside fellow elder Gro Brundtland. I spotted another banner too far away that I would like to have marched behind: “Angry Grannies!” We need angry grannies, mothers, daughters, aunts, nieces to rise up and fight for a safe world for our children and grandchildren. They need us to take action during the window of time we have, which will be gone if we don’t use it.