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Conversation | 05/21/2008 8:35 am

Percentage of Voters Say They Would Never Vote for a Woman, Regardless of Qualifications

© AP

Editor’s Note: Featuring Kathleen Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a professor of communications and the former dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

LESLEY: Well, what about sexism? Yeah, let’s talk about the second “ism.”

LIZ: Can I say something?

LESLEY: Please.

Click here to read Part One: At a Table in So-Called Liberal NYC, Woman Announces: I’ll Never Vote for a Black Man for President.

Click here to read Part Three: Who Says Older Ages Equal Serious Health Problems?

LIZ: I want to preface my remarks now by saying I’ve always been a really lousy feminist and Gloria Steinem once said that I was the worst because, she said, “Liz, you want to be the only Jew in the club.” And so I got the message then. I tried to repent. But now sexism is coming late to this discussion. I think it’s probably too late. And I think the sexists mostly all say they just don’t like Hillary. But they don’t have anything against women in office. I think if you look at the statistics, 13 percent of voters say they would never vote for a woman no matter how qualified she was. And our friend Cynthia McFadden spoke this weekend at Bryn Mawr and she said the world economic forum in Davos assessed gender equality in 93 percent of the world population, and the United States dropped from 23rd on the list in 2006 to 31st in 2007. So only 13 percent of Congress is female. Women make 77 cents for every dollar men make. I just think sexism is really alive in this world. And The New York Times had a wonderful piece in the magazine Sunday, by Peggy Orenstein, discussing this.

LESLEY: You know what’s really interesting to me? That this bubbles up at a time when Hillary Clinton won virtually half the primary votes, from lots and lots of white men, who essentially were saying they could see her as a commander-in-chief. She raised a whole lot of money; people said women would never be able to raise a whole lot of money. I mean, there is some kind of disconnect here.

LIZ: Yeah. Well, I think these discussions are too late to be of any use to her. But it all leads back to us being reminded that black men were given the right to vote in America 50 years before women received it. So nothing much has changed.

KATHLEEN: But it’s got to be possible in this kind of discussion to say that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not the campaign that could have been waged on her behalf — there are failures in the campaign. There were failures in its assumptions about how to deal with the caucuses. One can’t say that Clinton’s candidacy faltered because of sexism; one can say that — gender and race out of the equation — tactically the Obama campaign ran a much better campaign. It figured out how to get the advantage of higher numbers of delegates in caucus states. It figured out how to go to those districts that had essentially more votes; more capacity to produce delegate strength. And it concentrated there, while the Clinton campaign was off in those areas — that had less capacity to generate the delegates — with the same amount of effort. And the Obama campaign figured out how to raise money. So, I think that sex and race are at play this year and I think that they are playing in ways that are both obvious and subtle. But, there are also all the other dynamics that come into play when campaigns do well and do poorly, regardless of race and gender.

To another point on this subject, the amount of sexism on the Internet is just appalling. And that young people will put their own names and their own identities up on space on the Internet, such as Facebook, attached to demeaning comments about women in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. And then when someone comes onto the site to object, that person will be subject to what we would call ad staminem rather than ad hominem. We should find attacks that are vulgar in the extreme disturbing, regardless of whether or not we are Hillary Clinton supporters.


LESLEY: So the idea that racism is a taboo, but sexism is fine, is alive and well on the Internet?

KATHLEEN: I believe that sexism is alive and well on the Internet. And the productive piece is that recently, after Tina Fey’s segment on "Saturday Night Live," a couple of groups have emerged to try to fight what they see as misogyny on the Internet and misogyny in mainstream broadcast.

LESLEY: And when you say on "Saturday Night Live," what misogynist —

KATHLEEN: Tina Fey. When Tina Fey went on with the segment that concludes that “bitch” is the new black, a site emerges on the web that basically plays out of that segment and produces commentary about it. And a second site emerges as well which basically takes on the concept that these sorts of attacks in broadcast and on the web, against Hillary Clinton but on misogynistic grounds, are inappropriate.

269 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

beverly linens
Cat, All prejudice is wrong. Decisions about people should not be made ahead of time. It really is that simple. We were not in any particular society. We were two high school lovers who got pregnant and married. We worked his way through school and together accomplished a lot. It really was from scratch. However it smarted when he was given credit and I wasn’t, even by the women in my world. It bothered me a lot when they wouldn’t stand up for themselves. I’ll tell you a story that happened in 1980. The athletic dept at U of O held a fund raiser in Eugene. The deal was female employees were to run a wet tee shirt race. The feminist in town objected. My then husband came to me in Portland [we’d separated] complaining about those feminist. I explained to him about a woman’s right to choose what she participated in. That some women might find it embarrassing and couldn’t tell her boss No! I thought he understood. Boy was I wrong, he came back a week later madder than h—- at me. He had embarrassed himself by trying to explain the the guys in the athletic dept why they were wrong. They crucified him and he was embarrassed. I wasn’t mad at him or them, I was mad at their wives. They were all married and none of their wives stood up for the women and explained to their husbands. I don’t expect men to always understand, but I do expect women to have a backbone. They could have saved their husbands a whole lot of embarrassment and the athletic dept a lot of grief. Now I’m judging harshly but in this case I think I’m justified.
By beverly linens on 05/21/2008 12:45 am
Margo Porter
To Beverly and Cat; Thank you so much for your posts. I was feeling particularly low today because I spoke out about feeling pressured to do something within my circle of female colleagues that I did not believe in. I only expressed what I feeling in a rather gentle way. My view didnot fit in with the rest of the women’s opinions. Freak that I am.
By Margo Porter on 05/21/2008 3:00 pm
theCHEROKEErose
hello in there!!! the fact of the matter is that as long as their are 2 ‘sexes’ on the planet there is ALWAYS going to be some type of ‘sexism’….i am REALLY getting tired of the fact that for us females we go one step ahead and two steps back..who gave MEN the idea they could lord it over us anyhow???
By theCHEROKEErose on 05/21/2008 8:47 am
DeAnne from Big D
A male dominated society ensues throughout history and is reinforced as it has been woven through the teachings of many religions —- making change hard… But, thankfully there are many strong women that show through in history to fall back on as an example of being very capable of getting the job done (Queen Elizabeth I for one although she certainly wasn’t perfect no one is). Many had to work harder than any man to get their work done and with great personal sacrifice and today is at times no different. I love the quote by Faith Whittlesey: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astair did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” :)
By DeAnne from Big D on 05/21/2008 9:15 am
Frannie Em
DeAnne Actually, Ginger Rogers is the one that said she had to do everything Fred did but in high heels and backwards.
By Frannie Em on 05/21/2008 12:30 pm
Linda Clark
I’m at such a loss on this topic. I simply cannot rationalize the concept of making decisions based soley on race, sex, ect…… Even a mildly curious person would want “more” information when making a choice, wouldn’t they? Does substance not count? Why would anyone surrender their intellect to narrow-mindedness?
By Linda Clark on 05/21/2008 9:54 am
Brooklyn Gal
Thanks Linda for putting into words what I was feeling. I know many women like myself thought Edwards was the better choice, and still have to wonder if the media played a role in his demise. They were more focused on the “it” candidates to use a pop-culture term. I also have to wonder if Hillary’s campaign was a major factor in her not winning pledged delegates.
By Brooklyn Gal on 05/21/2008 1:20 pm
mary lou s
carol, you can stop wondering. the media loaded their publicity gun with his $400 haircut and multimillion dollar mansion and shot him repeatedly. they call hillary a liar and, to a lesser extent, obama a muslim. obama should get down on his knees and thank arianna huffington for her services to his campaign through her blog for the last year.
By mary lou s on 05/21/2008 2:32 pm
Brooklyn Gal
Let’s face it. If Obama was not the candidate, Huffington would have been backing Hillary. I don’t think we should have another ism called richism used against a candidate.
By Brooklyn Gal on 05/21/2008 4:14 pm
mary lou s
carol, what i meant was that the bad media coverage of his style and none of his substance stalled edwards in the starting chute. arianna huffington has been on clinton’s case for a year now. ALL the posters there sound like renata and suzanne (reine) did here when nobody could get an ordinary opinion in for being blasted. huffpo gave me a bad taste for obama supporters, but the ones in here aren’t insulting, accusing or misquoting anybody like that. in the fall, if obama is the nominee, he will have right wing radio mercilessly skewering him with lies they adopt.
By mary lou s on 05/22/2008 1:11 pm
Brooklyn Gal
Hi Mary Lou, I am so glad you responded. Sorry I didn’t see it yesterday. Thanks for clearing that up. Someone on another site accused me of liking Edwards because he was handsome. Of course that comment came from a guy. I have no idea why the media treated Edwards with such disrespect. Even after he endorsed Obama, Leno made fun of him. They seem to forget that he has had tragedy in his life too.
By Brooklyn Gal on 05/22/2008 4:49 pm
JJ GB
This probably isn’t going to go over well, but here goes. I think the Bible was the first to imply that women should “submit” to their husbands and to “obey” and generally do as her husband says or wishes and imply that women are inferior to men. Only this past week, a woman in Clay Co., KY was telling a reporter that Hillary (or any woman) shouldn’t be running for President, that she should be at home taking care of her family and her proof was that it was in the Bible. All manner of religous groups consider a woman or wife not to be equal with a man. Women continue to be denied equal rights based on many aspects of man’s teaching and beliefs. Doesn’t make it so, but women of courage could and can change that, by speaking out and standing up where and whenever they see this injustice.
By JJ GB on 05/21/2008 9:56 am
Buh- Bye
This post probably won’t go over well either. In terms of a “woman submitting to her husband.” I was raised staunch Baptist but have always been acutely aware of the fact that the scriptures were written by men. Men who interrupted the teachings. The scriptures were then translated and retranslated and edited over the centuries by other men with differing agendas. Many books were omitted altogether. They didn’t fit with the throughline. The physical world in which we live is the true teaching IMHO. When I get the old “The Bible is God’s word” thrown at me, I always retort that, if God could create the heavens and the earth in 7 days I think he could’ve written his own Bible too. Oh, I am going to get so flamed for writing this.
By Buh- Bye on 05/21/2008 12:31 pm
Buh- Bye
That should’ve read interpreted, not interrupted. Oh, the typos.
By Buh- Bye on 05/21/2008 3:36 pm
Mugsy Peabody
As a preliminary, I don’t intend to live my life according to a book written by a bunch of men living in tents a couple of millenia ago. If we found a book in Pompeii that told how women and other household slaves should be treated, would we give the proverbial flying rat’s ass about that, other than to think, “Oh, thank heaven! How far we’ve come (or not) in a couple thousand years! After all, it was a woman, Queen Boedicca (spelling varies) who stood up to the Romans in Britain….
By Mugsy Peabody on 05/21/2008 1:06 pm