By Katerina Svoronos, Summer 2023 Collaborator at Power in Place
Image From: Britannica
Hillary Clinton ran for office in 2016 for the position of President. While she became the Democratic nominee, she was not the first woman to run. Many women besides her have run and unfortunately were unsuccessful, such as Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
Yet problematic male politicians have run time and time again, and won; for example, Hillary Clinton’s opposition: Donald Trump. There is a clear double standard yet there is no way out of it. It seems as if male candidates are allowed to display problematic behaviors and have an unclean record but the second a female candidate has something bad on her record, it becomes a huge focus of the election. If women address the double standard, people complain, and if they do not, they are branded a sellout. This is the result of systemic sexism, which has been around forever. Women did not even get the right to vote until 1920, over 100 years after our country was founded.
One clear facet of sexism is that men are powerful and thus, in charge. While we have female elected officials, the president is essentially the face of our country, and people are so set in their ways that they often believe women are too emotional and too irrational to run a country. People who have this belief do not usually understand exactly what power a president has and can delegate, but instead have the intention of keeping institutionalized sexism in place. Women in powerful positions, especially one as dignified as the president of the United States, threatens that very system itself. Regardless of political party, a female president would bring about a great deal of attention to issues that may have been buried under the rug.
As we can see, though, other countries have had female leaders including countries that have even more active sexism than we do. They have had female leaders for many years yet still have laws in place that actively harm women. So why have they been able to elect a female leader and we have not? Well the answer is simple. A big part of our presidential election is essentially how popular or likable a candidate is. The grandiose and intense attitude of Donald Trump made people believe he was passionate and would get things done, while Hillary Clinton’s calmer demeanor may have been off putting to some people. Unfortunately, this is a self fulfilling prophecy. Women in powerful positions are forced to act calm because otherwise the narrative will be told that they are too emotional to hold power. People typically wanted to be captivated by the candidate they are voting for, and unfortunately in the 2016 election that had seemed to happen with Donald Trump. It also seems that when women run, their male counterparts try to dig out every bit of their past in order to attack them. Donald Trump even attacked Hillary Clinton’s husband during the 2016 election, which is a sexist ploy in it of itself.
Americans are also hesitant to make big changes. To elect a woman president would be a categorically big change. It would shift the political sphere forever and people do not want to deal with that. It would not be just tackling sexism but also toxic masculinity. Sexism and toxic masculinity need each other to function and a woman president endangers those concepts.
Yet women are constantly under attack. The recent Dobbes decision threatened women and non-binary people everywhere and it will only continue to get worse. It is imperative that we elect a woman president now more than ever but with our current system it will be difficult.
References
[1] Alter, Charlotte. Other Countries Have Elected Women Leaders for Decades. Why Can’t America? March 7, 2020. https://time.com/5798122/elizabeth-warren-woman-president-america/
[2] Aalai, Azadeh. This is What Institutionalized Sexism Looks Like. May 12, 2017. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-first-impression/201705/is-what-institutionalized-sexism-looks
Katerina Svoronos is a rising sophomore at Haverford College. She is an intended political science major with a concentration in international relations and law. She hopes to be a journalist one day and would love to work for the New York Times. In her free time she loves watching movies, hanging out with family and friends, and exploring new places.