“I just don’t like her.”
This common statement, used by voters in reference to a female political candidate or elected official, represents a complex assortment of mental gymnastics, ultimately declaring women unfit for their positions and discouraging female onlookers from future political pursuits. Women running for office are constantly deemed too accomplished, not accomplished enough, or just not appealing.
There appears to be something uniquely difficult for voters to grasp about women in positions of power.
One research study explains that “power and power-seeking are central to the way masculinity is socially constructed and communality is central to the construction of femininity.” Therefore, these researchers suggest that “intentionally seeking power is broadly seen as anti-communal and inconsistent with the societal rules for women’s behavior.”
But that explanation fails to acknowledge voters’ fear of breaking tradition, particularly when considering candidates for the presidency. Women may not seem apt for the position partly because they have never held it before.
Men have publicly dominated the political playing field since the Constitutional Convention, when famous men crafted the famous words “all men are created equal”. Yet women have begun to participate in politics, publicly and privately, in steadily increasing numbers. For example, in every United States presidential election since 1984, women have shown slightly higher voter turnout than men, and this gendered gap is only widening. Additionally, women have recently been voted into office in record numbers. Right now, 27% of all members of Congress are women - the highest proportion of women ever to hold that legislative power.
As more and more women run for office and are elected, the country continues to experience many firsts for women in politics. Yet, one seemingly insurmountable goal remains: entrusting a woman with the responsibility of the most powerful position in the country, in the most powerful country in the world.
Because of the public’s discomfort with their goal, female presidential candidates are aware that they must go out of their way to seem attractive, likable, and less power-hungry in order to win the votes necessary to secure power in a democracy. The effort needed to meet these expectations consumes time, energy, and funds that could otherwise be used for other areas of the campaign, such as voter outreach or policy development.
In the Hulu biographical documentary Hillary, former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laments the amount of time that she spent having her hair and makeup done on her campaign trail.
“There were 600 days, give or take, on the campaign… I calculated it, and I spent 25 days doing hair and makeup,” Clinton said. “I knew that the man I was running against didn’t have to do any of that.”
In a zero-sum competition, female candidates’ loss of time, energy, and funds amounts to a gain for male candidates. With men in power as the default, and these sexist standards benefiting them, it is clear why they have been allowed to remain part of the conversation during election season.
Appearance-based critiques and the need to strategically manage a female candidate’s personality keeps a campaign busy enough. Yet female politicians are also faced with the prospect of being defined by the men around them.
When former Secretary Clinton was first elected to the Senate in 2000, many political commentators and some of her political colleagues adopted the belief that she owed her success to her husband’s presidency rather than to her own extensive experience as a lawyer and as a policy advocate.
This story of a powerful woman and the male figure(s) that must have aided in her success is not uncommon throughout power hierarchies in the country. But there is another element that can damage a female politician’s reputation - when a man around her does something wrong.
Recently, men in positions of power have been increasingly faced with scandals as part of the Me Too movement. Those headlines seem like a victory for women; they seem to demonstrate that powerful men can also be heavily scrutinized by the public. But as a consequence of this movement, powerful women still suffer: their husbands’ sex scandals are treated as their own.
In 2016, just minutes before the final presidential debate and weeks before the presidential election itself, Donald Trump hosted a surprise panel with three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. This panel, with its intent to damage Hillary’s reputation, is widely believed to be in response to Trump’s own leaked tape from Hollywood Access, in which he brags about sexually harassing women.
With this panel, Trump aimed to deflect criticism of his own actions by drawing attention to his opponent’s husband’s alleged actions. The method of this attack makes one thing strikingly clear: Trump and his team had determined that the most effective attack upon Hillary did not directly involve her, but her husband. They also determined that to launch this type of attack - to judge a woman based on the actions of her husband - would be acceptable to the public, or at least to their voting base. It is difficult to deny that Bill Clinton’s scandals have followed his wife throughout her life in a way that would not be possible were their roles reversed.
In Hillary, Amy Chozick, a reporter for the New York Times, summarizes an infamous sentiment among female voters in the 2016 election, “I want to vote for a woman, just not that woman.” Chozick continues, “I always ask them, did 30 years of sexist attacks make her that woman?”
References
Okimoto, Tyler G. & Brescoll, Victoria L. “The Price of Power: Power-Seeking and Backlash against Female Politicians”. Gender Action Portal, published June 2, 2010, https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/price-power-power-seeking-and-backlash-against-female-politicians
Burstein, Nanette, director. Hillary. Hulu, 2020.
Neumann, Sean. “Everything You’ll Learn from Hulu’s Revealing New Hillary Clinton Documentary”. People Magazine, published March 9, 2020, https://people.com/politics/highlights-from-hulu-hillary-clinton-documentary/
Igielnik, Ruth. “Men and women in the U.S. continue to differ in voter turnout rate, party identification”. Pew Research Center, published August 18, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/18/men-and-women-in-the-u-s-continue-to-differ-in-voter-turnout-rate-party-identification/
Blazina, Carrie & Desilver, Drew. “ A record number of women are serving in the 117th Congress”. Pew Research Center, published January 15, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/15/a-record-number-of-women-are-serving-in-the-117th-congress/
Miller, Zeke J. “Donald Trump Meets With Bill Clinton Accusers Before Debate”. Time, published October 9, 2016, https://time.com/4524362/donald-trump-bill-clinton-accusers-debate/
