A right that women don't have is the right to mediocrity

It's not just Harris. Women are judged far more harshly than men for not being exceptional

- MANU JOSEPH

A few weeks, when Donald Trump takes over as US President once again, people will wonder if things might have been different had his opponent been someone other than Kamala Harris. By which, they also mean someone with a better game, who was not so ordinary. There is an implication in this view that one has to be exceptional to become America's leader or reach the top of other fields. Yet, they would struggle to list what is exceptional about Trump. A way of the world is that it punishes the ordinariness of women and is more understanding of the mediocrity of successful men. A right that women do not have is the right to mediocrity. I call it a right because it is what most people are, by definition, and people have the right to be themselves.

There was a Trump before Trump, and her name was Sarah Palin, a former governor of Alaska who was a vice-presidential nominee when John McCain ran for president. She once said that she could see Russia from her house in Alaska. She said things an average person would. While Trump was rewarded for that quality of discourse, she did not survive the torrent of ridicule.

The word 'mediocrity' has come to mean something demeaning, but it is intended to describe something between excellence and terrible—the common output of an average person. Ideally, a characteristic of most people, their ordinariness, should not be held against them. And it is often not held against male leaders. If anything, their ordinariness makes them endearing to others. But when female leaders slip up, or are just dour or mediocre in other ways, they face much more severe scrutiny.