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Expensive Readers: We shall be reacting to Wednesday night time’s second Republican presidential main debate on the “Politics is Every thing” podcast. Search for it later right now right here or wherever you get your podcasts.
— The Editors
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE
— Like so many different feminine politicians, Nikki Haley faces a “girl downside” and should fight sexist rhetoric that’s prevalent in politics and has been since Victoria C. Woodhull grew to become the primary girl to run for president in 1872.
— Campaigns and elections are tougher for ladies than males attributable to structural disadvantages, together with media protection of candidates, public opinion, and stereotypes.
— Girls are extra pessimistic than males in regards to the prospects for a feminine president. Fewer ladies than males suppose many Individuals are able to elect a lady to larger workplace although extra ladies than males personally hope {that a} girl will turn into president of their lifetime.
The challenges for ladies working for president
Like so many different feminine politicians, Nikki Haley faces a “girl downside.” Regardless of Haley’s political expertise as governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations in the course of the Trump Administration, she was not taken severely as a candidate till the primary Republican presidential debate. Protection solely after the primary debate conceded that the talk had earned her a re-examination and made her “tougher to disregard” among the many contenders.
There’s a long-standing precedent for the way American feminine political candidates are handled by the media and considered by the broader public. Victoria C. Woodhull, our nation’s first girl candidate for president in 1872 as a member of the Equal Rights Social gathering, ran on her assist of girls’s suffrage, free love, and establishing a brand new structure. Her marketing campaign got here on the heels of years of girls’s suffrage efforts, together with an 1871 petition of Congress to permit ladies the correct to vote. Although it needs to be famous that her feminism, together with others on the time, was racially charged and outlined and justified by eugenics.
Determine 1: Girls Presidential Candidates 1872-2020
Scroll over to see get together affiliation and the entire variety of votes forged for every candidate.
Newspaper testimonials on the time point out that the general public was not significantly receptive to her marketing campaign, they usually took equal concern along with her politics as along with her womanhood. In November 1871, the New York Occasions printed a profile of a Catholic clergyman who was quickly gaining reputation by denouncing Woodhull and her insurance policies. On the altar, the clergyman condemned her stance on free love as “extremely harmful to advantage and morality” and closed his handle by “warning his congregation towards all doctrines so harmful as these of Victoria Woodhull.” An notorious Thomas Nast cartoon labeled her as “Mrs. Devil.” In a 1927 interview, Woodhull herself recalled, “My sister, Tennessee, and I have been mercilessly slandered fifty years in the past after we dared to advocate ladies’s emancipation.”
Flash ahead 100 years: Shirley Chisholm — who received election to the U.S. Home from New York in 1968 — grew to become the primary Black girl to run for president. Chisholm equally needed to cope with rampant misogyny. She arrived on the Democratic Nationwide Conference with a small variety of delegates, however her journey ended there. Chisholm was accused of taking part in “vaginal politics” to “piggyback off of the success of the ladies’s rights motion.” Journalists have been typically extra targeted on reporting on Chisholm’s bodily attributes than her insurance policies, a phenomenon that also plagues feminine candidates right now. A 1972 article within the Oakland Submit reported that she appeared “diminutive and quick in knee-high lace up boots” earlier than making commentary on her marketing campaign guarantees.
Whereas it could be tempting to dismiss these accounts as historic artifacts, greater than a century and half has handed since Woodhull’s candidacy, and we’ve got but to see a lady ascend to our nation’s highest workplace. What’s going to it take?
Why campaigns are unduly laborious for ladies
Optimists will say that issues are trying up for ladies politicians. Extra ladies are working for larger workplace (see Determine 2). We’ve a feminine vice chairman, and there are extra ladies in Congress now than ever earlier than. These are some main strides. Or are they?
Determine 2: Feminine main and basic presidential candidates, 1964-2023
Supply: Federal Election Fee; analysis by authors
There are three fundamental interrelated (although actually not the one) causes campaigns and elections are tougher for ladies than males: 1) structural disadvantages; 2) media protection of candidates; and three) public opinion and stereotypes that affect how voters consider candidates. We focus on every purpose in flip.
Structural disadvantages
Whereas vital progress has been made by political events and teams to recruit and prepare ladies for workplace, extra work must be performed. Based on a latest research by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, males are two-thirds extra probably than ladies to have been inspired to run by an elected official, get together chief, or political activist to run for workplace. And being requested to run and having the assist to run are extra essential to ladies than males.
Whereas feminine candidates working for Congress on common outraised male candidates for the primary time in 2018 ($1,675,000 versus $1,537,000), ladies have traditionally been deprived on the subject of fundraising. Girls have struggled to entry and attain massive particular person donors, PACs, and other forms of funding.
One more reason why it has been troublesome for ladies to interrupt limitations, particularly on the highest ranges of elected workplace, are incumbency and retention charges. Historically, males have dominated the political area, and due to this fact benefit from the incumbency benefit. When incumbents run and win workplace, it makes it tougher for brand spanking new voices and pursuits to enter the political area. It’s solely been within the final 50 years that girls have run for workplace in rising numbers. Girls even have comparable challenges in breaking into and advancing within the political consulting trade, which Politico Journal described in a 2018 headline as “the toughest glass ceiling in politics.”
Blame the media
Girls candidates proceed to face routine obstacles in how they’re lined by the media, which additionally takes the type of gendered and even racialized media protection on their paths to the White Home. When Vice President Kamala Harris was introduced as Joe Biden’s working mate in 2020, 61% of the media talked about her gender and race, whereas simply 5% of protection talked about Tim Kaine or Mike Pence’s gender and race in 2016. Analysis has proven that reporters emphasize ladies’s conventional roles and focus extra on their look. Media protection of girls candidates has additionally perpetuated stereotypes of girls politicians as weak, indecisive, and emotional. An evaluation of protection of girls presidential candidates in 2020 confirmed that the media largely characterised ladies candidates as “nasty, punitive, imply, or strident.”
Not solely do ladies should cope with obstacles in media protection, quite a few research have proven that girls and different traditionally minoritized candidates and politicians are considerably extra prone to face abuse, harassment, and assaults on-line than their male counterparts. Girls candidates of colour are twice as probably as different candidates to be focused with or the topic of misinformation and disinformation and the more than likely to be the goal of sexist, racist, and violent abuse on-line.
Surveys say
With social desirability bias, it’s troublesome to seek out voters who admit they don’t suppose a lady may be president. Nevertheless, after we dig into public opinion, we will see the challenges ladies proceed to face.
On steadiness, Democrats usually tend to assist ladies candidates than Republicans. When Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president, a majority of respondents in a number of surveys main as much as the 2016 election reported assist for a girl president or hoped for one of their lifetime (Pew Analysis, CBS, Harvard IOP, CNN, AP-NORC, and Gallup present a couple of examples). However, greater than two-thirds of Donald Trump supporters in 2016 stated society as an entire has turn into “too gentle and female.” We noticed the methods during which masculinity was used as a political technique within the 2016 Republican nomination course of. And, these partisan attitudes persist, together with within the voters. Take for instance Rep. Lauren Boebert (R, CO-3), who stated she believes “ladies are the lesser vessel, and we’d like masculinity in our lives to steadiness that.”
Moreover, some surveys following the 2016 elections confirmed that voters grew to become extra cynical about ladies’s probabilities within the presidential area, and particularly towards Donald Trump (although it’s price noting right here that Clinton received the favored vote in 2016). When requested for main explanation why ladies are underrepresented in excessive political places of work, extra ladies respondents in 2018 (57%) thought it was as a result of the general public was not able to elect ladies, a better quantity than 2014 (41%). In a unique survey carried out in 2019 asking Democrats and independents in regards to the attributes they thought have been essential in selecting a Democratic nominee that election cycle, these respondents stated they have been comfy with a lady being president, however believed their neighbors have been much less accepting.
Girls additionally face a catch-22 and should work tougher on the subject of how voters consider them. Girls have to look certified and likable, competent and heat. Male candidates merely don’t face the identical (double) requirements that girls do in being required to steadiness stereotypical masculine and stereotypical female traits. Republican ladies candidates particularly obtain evaluations which might be extra crucial. And it will get tougher as we transfer the elected political ladder such that girls face the largest challenges on the stage of the presidential ticket.
Truthful girls
Are there methods to make electoral politics extra honest for the women? We’re not holding our breath, however we’ll begin with a couple of concepts. First, analysis has proven that the seen gender of a candidate alone isn’t sufficient to activate a voter’s reliance on gender stereotypes. Voters depend on further cues related to gender stereotypes in descriptions or pictures of the candidate made by different candidates, political teams, and the media, and so forth. Feminine candidates have usually responded to gendered stereotypes by being strategic in emphasizing masculine or female traits on the marketing campaign path. Nevertheless, there’s an essential position for a spread of actors, particularly journalists, political consultants, candidates, and points teams, to think about how they evoke stereotypes in reporting, messaging, advertisements, and so forth. and to do higher in how they painting ladies candidates. It’s going to take greater than the Barbie film to repair how ladies are portrayed, however to cite Sharon Rooney’s Lawyer Barbie, “I’ve no problem holding each logic and emotion on the similar time, and it doesn’t diminish my powers. It expands them.”
Second, the newest information reveals pessimism amongst ladies in regards to the prospects for a feminine president. Fewer ladies than males suppose many Individuals are able to elect a lady to larger workplace although extra ladies than males personally hope {that a} girl will turn into president of their lifetime. Moreover, larger shares of males than ladies say it’s both “in no way essential” or “not too essential” or that “the president’s gender doesn’t matter.” As Determine 3 reveals, ladies are extra probably than males to say that girls nonetheless expertise a “nice deal” or “quite a bit” of discrimination right now in the US, with the widest gaps in responses between male Republicans and feminine Democrats. Girls additionally usually tend to see structural limitations dealing with ladies in politics, corresponding to lack of assist from get together leaders, gender discrimination, and having to do extra to show themselves. So we have to do extra to deliver males alongside when it comes to each understanding the limitations ladies face and asking for his or her contributions to assist break these limitations down. However, discrimination towards highly effective feminine politicians and candidates additionally transcends race and gender; look no additional than Nikki Haley’s adaptation of attacking Vice President Kamala Harris to garner consideration for her personal presidential bid. Haley’s assaults, in flip, paved the best way for different GOP contenders to comply with go well with.
Determine 3: Views of discrimination towards ladies by partisan identification and gender
Hover over to see particulars and toggle between totally different identities.
Supply: American Nationwide Election Survey.
Lastly, quite a few surveys have proven that almost all of Individuals favor time period limits (e.g. Program for Public Session at UMD, Ipsos). For places of work under the presidential stage — the place limits exist already for some places of work, though the U.S. Supreme Court docket dominated that states couldn’t impose them on U.S. representatives and senators — time period limits may foster larger representational parity. Though time period limits aren’t designed to advertise the election of girls and different traditionally marginalized candidates, they may have a optimistic facet impact of accelerating alternatives for ladies to run and win workplace.
Kylie Holzman is a second-year UVA scholar interning with the Heart for Politics in Fall 2023. Carah Ong Whaley, PhD, is the Educational Program Officer on the Heart for Politics, researching and writing about political studying and participation. She additionally teaches programs in politics at UVA and is Co-Chair of the American Political Science Affiliation’s Civic Engagement part.
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