Can We Finally Stop Asking Whether a Woman Can Be President?
Well, we’ve made it through the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. There are many important issues and conversations yet to have before our respective primaries and the general election, but we do seem to keep circling back to one question: can a woman win a presidential election?
I’m definitely tired of this question and the ensuing conversation but I think this speaks to the same concerns that arise for women in other positions. Yet again, we see women’s qualifications downplayed precisely because they are not like the men who have dominated leadership positions for so long. For example, the issue of a female presidential candidate’s likability (e.g., do you want to get a beer with her?) is not so different from the coded ways in which people downplay women’s qualifications for educational leadership (e.g., will she be able to focus on work when she has children at home?).
A recent Associated Press article tackled this issue and examined data from the early primaries. In a survey of more than 3,000 Iowa voters, half of women said that female presidential nominees would have a harder time beating Trump than would a man. Among men, only about 4 in 10 held that opinion. However, men who reported that opinion were significantly less likely to vote for a female candidate than were women. Women voters seem to be the demographic that is deprioritizing support for a female candidate because they think a male candidate would better stand up to Trump’s inevitable attacks. It seems that, no matter how far women get—in the corporate world, in leadership, or in the presidential race—we continue to see their qualifications undermined. Just one of the troubling parts of this pattern is that women voters are in large part responsible for perpetuating the presidential glass ceiling.
This is a recognized pattern in American electoral politics: “women usually don’t coalesce around one of their own.” The article quotes one political scientist as saying, “Nobody’s going to win an election by unifying women because women are not a unified bloc.” I might contest that no demographic group is truly a unified bloc, and that interest- and issue-based coalitions are constantly shifting. However, I also wonder if there are some issues that should unify women. I hope that these are more than just “women’s issues” and are instead issues of widespread equity and justice that we see in a candidate’s platform and political record.
The AP article offers a few additional conjectures as to why women tend not to vote for women and why they may not support a female candidate in this election cycle. The authors suggest that women are more likely to have experienced gender discrimination and sexism. Women who consider voting for women also account for their own experiences and the ways in which their gender has been an obstacle to success. Those experiences are important and talking about them is essential in order to combat ongoing sexism, particularly in the workplace. However, conversations about systemic gender discrimination and the role it plays in women’s professional advancement may be conflated with questions of an individual’s gender as a criterion for professional advancement. This is a conflation we need to be aware of, and to gently correct when we encounter it.
Why is this so important? As I mentioned above, talking about gender—rather than experience, qualification, or expertise—as a criterion for a job is common across professions. But it does not need to be. The ways in which we talk about female presidential candidates can set the tone for how we talk about women in all professional capacities. Additionally, when we as voters engage this discussion about a woman’s electability, the female candidates have to as well. Admittedly, they are already in a difficult position when it comes to talking about being female candidates. They can talk about sexism in the process which can come off as whiny, or they can ignore sexism in the process and come off as out of touch. These are unfair characterizations, to be sure, but they are real considerations on the campaign trail. They are then forced to spend time on issues that are not salient to their positions, policies, or preparation for the presidency.
Whoever your preferred candidate, I invite you to graciously interrupt the narratives around whether a woman can really be president. Women are presidents in countries around the world. The issue is not gender; it’s qualification. Redirect the conversation to the candidate’s record, platform, or past experiences. Highlight the value of gender diversity in national leadership. Discuss the ways in which gendered assumptions and coded language stop us from seeing all that a candidate has to offer.
-Lauren