You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

As a long-time foreign correspondent, I've worked in lots of places, but nowhere is

important to the world as China. I'm Jane Perlase, former Beijing Bureau Chief for the New York

Times. On face-off, the U.S. versus China will explore what's critical to this important global

relationship, Trump and Xi Jinping, AI, TikTok, and even Hollywood. New episodes of Face Off are

available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

I am a father of a soon-to-be nine-year-old girl.

In 2020, she was delighted to learn that a half-Indian woman was going to be the vice president of the United States, not just because she is half-Indian herself, and she could therefore see herself,

her ethnic identity reflected in the nation's leadership. But I think even more so because it

meant that she as a girl could one day rise to such a position,

could attain that kind of respect, that kind of admiration, and could influence the world.

A few years into the Biden administration, when she was in first grade and turning seven, she learned that

we had never had a woman president. And according to her teacher, she got very upset over this,

raising her voice and expressing outrage at the unfairness of it. When she eventually asked

her mom and me why there had never been a woman president, we had

to try to explain misogyny to her, which is a rather devastating idea to convey to a child,

much like telling a child about racism.

We told her that in other countries there are women presidents and leaders.

But we didn't tell her that even today, only 2% of elective democracies in the world currently

have a woman as chief executive, and less than 5% have ever raised a woman to executive

office.

Nor did we tell her that the first woman to achieve such a

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