The female zealot

In a revealing interview, Harvard's Swanee Hunt explains why women should be more politically active and what she learned from her infamous oil tycoon father.

By Ruthie Ackerman

Read more: Politics, Life

Nov. 15, 2006 | Whether working with mothers in war-scarred Bosnia or bringing together the world's brightest students as the director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Swanee Hunt has devoted her life to increasing the participation of women in politics and peace activism around the globe. In her new memoir, "Half-Life of a Zealot," Hunt retraces the steps -- from her Southern Baptist upbringing in Texas, through the trials of her first marriage, to her life in diplomacy -- that shaped her as a woman, a leader and a mother, and drove her to politics.

The daughter of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, Hunt grew up with everything money could buy. But she realized young that in order to move out of her emotionally absent father's shadow -- and away from the scandals and intrigues that punctuated his life -- she would have to find a mission of her own. Hunt's father's money and notoriety -- as a conservative businessman and ardent anti-communist with suspected ties to the JFK assassination -- may have paved her way early in life, but she was unafraid to forge a divergent path, becoming a philanthropist and later an ambassador to Austria, from 1993 to 1997, under former President Bill Clinton. But though often intimate and revealing, "Half-Life of a Zealot" also looks past Hunt's own life to confront the challenges facing the world's women today -- from the global perils of poverty and poor healthcare to the more personal challenges that come with juggling kids and a demanding career. Through it all, Hunt's abiding hope is to engage women in the political process. Her message: Think big, ask a lot of questions, and know that you have a place at the table.

Despite the progress women like her friend, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi have made in the political arena, Hunt still worries whether America will be ready for a woman in the White House by 2008. But the sweeping changes of the recent midterm elections and the record numbers of women now serving in U.S. government give her faith that women will soon have more opportunity to positively influence international events than ever before. And even if it takes a revolution to change women's place in the world, Hunt is ready to lead it.

"Zealot," is usually a word we associate with fanaticism -- Why did you choose it for the title of your book?

I knew the word could be provocative. But I also wanted to make the point that we need to reclaim zeal. There are absolutely causes that we should be zealots over. We ought to be zealots over ending poverty. We ought to be zealots about having clean drinking water. We ought to be zealots about the fact that 30,000 children are going to die today.

I have huge admiration for people who sacrifice more than I do -- I really don't consider myself a model of sacrifice. I live a very, very, very comfortable life. On the other hand, if we could get everyone to do 10 percent more than they're doing right now we wouldn't have the problems we have. Our problems are not that there is not enough food and clean water in the world -- the problem is distribution. So really it is incumbent upon those of us who live such privileged lives to create the bridge between effort and results. Because there are hundreds of millions of people who put out effort and don't see results.

Have you seen any of the projects you've been involved in really bring about change?

Rwanda, which has a population of 10,000,000, endured a harrowing genocide in which one-tenth of the population was slaughtered. But today Rwanda is stable. What a turnaround. Its constitution demands that women be at least 30 percent of decision makers in every political structure. In October of 2003, women earned almost 49 percent of seats in Rwanda's lower house of parliament. Having achieved near parity in its legislature, that small African country is first among all nations in terms of women's political representation. And it is at the forefront of two international trends: the leadership of women in stopping war, and the use of quotas to boost women's representation. More than 90 percent of countries in the world have some kind of set-aside provision for women. Our work has been to document the Rwandan successes and challenges to use as a model for other countries.

You're friends with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the president of Liberia. How do you feel about the fact that a nation in Africa has elected a female president before the United States?

I am sad about it, but maybe it can serve as an encouragement. I believe it will happen here in the next decade -- even now, it's happening in Europe and Asia too.

Helping women has a cascading effect: Healthcare improves when you give them education -- and then the number of children goes down, which means there is less deforestation because the population uses fewer trees. Which means you don't have as much runoff and environmental degradation. All those problems are so interrelated -- and that's great news. Because it means you can attack the problem cycle from 20 different ways.

So getting women active in politics -- that will be the lever that decides everything else. Once you get women into political office in a certain percentage, they change the budgets of their countries. They take money out of defense and put it into education and health. The only question is, how long will that take? Because a lot of human suffering will go on until we get to that point. The U.S. is 67th in the world in terms of representation of women in Congress and parliament.

What advice do you have for young women?

There seems to be something in women's makeup that makes them devalue themselves and their abilities. I am not sure what the culprit is: Is it hormonal? Is it learned socially? Is it the way our brains are made? But women don't put their hands up in class at Harvard. They won't go to the microphone during our biggest assemblies, when there are three or four men beside every microphone. And these are the smartest women in the world!

So my advice to women is to be excruciatingly conscious of that tendency -- and to push past it. I know that may not be the way every single woman acts in comparison to every single man, but I think it is a majority. So know it doesn't mean you're a bad person if you have self-doubt -- and that it isn't only about you.

Do you think that behavior has affected women's position in the world today?

Well, if you take that and you apply it to women in politics and women in Fortune 500 companies, you notice we are so much more comfortable with the smaller things than we are with the big. And that may have to do with our illusions of ourselves. By far the biggest growth in the U.S. economy in the past 15 to 20 years has come from women-owned small businesses. So why are there only something like six women heading Fortune 500 companies? Small businesses are great, but there is something wrong with that. Why is it that across denominations the women are doing the work while the men are being messiahs, standing up there with the bread and the wine? The biggest challenge is thinking too small.

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