Women. Just a Formality.
Major Name It. Change It. kudos going out to Professors Kathleen Dolan and Jennifer Lawless on their CNN article “In Veepstakes, Women Don’t Rate” in which they definitively call out the media in their sexist treatment of potential women nominees for Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate (which sadly, we’ve already had to do).
Dolan and Lawless highlight the particularly egregious article by Jonathan Karl that categorizes potential VP candidates as top tier, second tier, wildcard, and ‘others who will get a look’. Oh. And there is one more category, top women.
Of course, Karl is not the first to evaluate politicians as women first and politicians second. As scholars of gender politics, we are long familiar with the tendency among the media and those who practice politics to refer to a “woman governor” or “women candidates.” We hear talk about the gender gap and the Republican Party’s “woman problem” as if women are one large, undifferentiated group best identified by their sex.
They point out that Fallin, Martinez, and Ayotte have the same or more experience as the men who ranked in Karl’s top two tiers. So why have them in their own little group? Oh wait…I think we know why:
Anyone can debate the pros and cons that each of these candidates would bring to the Republican ticket. What is not up for debate, however, is that Karl, and undoubtedly many others, consider certain potential candidates as women first and political professionals second.
Sadly, none of this is new or surprising.
And we routinely see pundits, pollsters, and politicians refer to women running for office as “outsiders” (even when they’re insiders) or “out-of-the-box choices” (even when they’re quite conventional). This is, of course, because women are still woefully underrepresented at every level of American government. As long as women remain an anomaly in politics, their sex will continue to cause them to stand out.
All we can say, is keep naming it, keep publishing fantastic articles like this one, and someday we will change it for good.
Published by Kate McCarthy on 04/26/2012