Sign in to wowOwow

Enter the email address that you used when registering at wowOwow.
The password field is case sensitive. Click here if you have forgotten your password.

Please register for wowOwow

Newsletter subscriptions
Sign up to receive wowOwow's weekly newsletter and get our best picks delivered right to your inbox. Our newsletter content is hand-picked by the wowOwow editorial team and provides the top features, news, and commentary from our site. Subscribing to our newsletter is free and safe. We will never share your email or other information with a third-party without your direct consent.
By registering, you indicate that you have read and agree
with our privacy policy and terms of service.

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

elaine s
HRC has set back the cause of feminism by being mean spirited, whiny and by getting caught in her own lies. It is tragic that most of the country is ready to have a woman President but has not been presented with a woman candidate worhty enough to fill those shoes. I truly believe that had we had a different woman than HRC, someone with as much integrity as intelligence, we would be looking at the next President. She has made her own bed.
By elaine s on 05/21/2008 12:34 pm
mary lou s
elaine, are you suggesting that media coverage of obama caught in his own lies would change your opinion of him. i have a few if you care to listen…
By mary lou s on 05/21/2008 2:54 pm
James the Game
You must be referring to the “Fix” network. Yeah, if you believe Hillary - or anyone else - to be false, then by all means, vote your conscience. But I still believe many people did not vote for her simply because they subscribe to the view that women are incapable of holding the highest position. It’s a stereotype and a concrete ceiling, any way you cut it.
By James the Game on 05/21/2008 11:48 am
Kay Sara
Before this primary really got underway - I said that a black man would get more support in this country than a woman. Unfortunately I was right.
By Kay Sara on 05/21/2008 5:34 pm
Victoria Wolcott
Liz repeated the often quoted statement that “black men were given the vote fifty years before women.” In reality black men were fully disenfranchised in the South, primarily through violence, by 1900 and did not have voting rights until 1965, forty-five years after white women. The implication, perhaps unintended, is that it is white women’s “turn” for political power. We need to have a better sense of the interconnected histories of sexism and racism, and stop viewing the issue in an either/or paradigm.
By Victoria Wolcott on 05/21/2008 11:55 am
K O
Good point, Victoria.
By K O on 05/21/2008 12:20 pm
Mugsy Peabody
Yes, except you don’t mention the violence that women lived with throughout that period and continue to live with today. FYI, rape is not sex.
By Mugsy Peabody on 05/21/2008 1:12 pm
Ms. Dee
Another good point.
By Ms. Dee on 05/21/2008 3:33 pm
Kay Sara
Domestic violence, verbal abuse, intimidation, slavery, sex trafficking, held back from education, premarital pregnancy stigmas, back alley abortions, unable to own property….
By Kay Sara on 05/21/2008 5:39 pm
Deni G
Discrimination is awful and it’s stupid. Dividing people along lines of racial vs. sexual discrimination makes life harder for everybody. One is not worse than the other. Those in power seem to feel thinking others are less, verbally demeaning them and keeping them ‘in their place’ makes some bloody sense. I worry about their mental and emotional fitness of leaders, when they display such insecurity. Sexism has been the norm throughout the world since at least the beginning of recorded history. It is deeper more insidious and much harder to recognize, than racism. Racism varies from country to country. In a general sense, a person of a given race can look at another country where they are not second class citizens. They can see a graphic example of what it looks like, where they are not subjugated. They can realize that this is not the norm. They can see clearly the injustice. And of course whose on top, varies from country to country. The point I am trying to make is that the brainwashing of a race covers a relative period of time. The brain washing of women has been going on for as long as anyone can remember. I wonder if there were a country, even a history of a country, where women were in power, where that was normal, if we as women could see more clearly how extreme the sexism that pervades the world, actually is. When your neck has been under somebody’s foot for two thousand years and you have heard the mantra, ‘this is your place’ beaten like hypnotic rhythm, it makes sense you might be a little disjointed in where you get your release. The undoing of 2000 years of indoctrination, is not a smooth path. And we often think we have come further than we have and enough is enough already and why don’t uppity women just STFU. Thank the goddess for uppity women. In this country it is still said that women are genetically disposed to be inferior. Remember, we have not passed the ERA. People think we have, but we haven’t. Since 1926 , the Equal Rights Amendment , has been voted on repeatedly, but never ratified. And here it is: Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1921 by suffragist Alice Paul. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923.
By Deni G on 05/21/2008 3:00 pm
Ms. Dee
Deni, I totally back you up on this. And I’d like to recommend Barbara G. Walker’s “The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.” She has a rather rabid bias, but she does expose a number of ancient matriarchal societies that are thoroughly researched. They were more common than I ever realized. And really brutal.
By Ms. Dee on 05/21/2008 3:40 pm
Kay Sara
Deni, another very destructive aspect of sexism that is not a component of racism is that sexism occurs within families as well as in society as a whole. Sexism in families from people who supposedly love you. People you are raised to love and trust telling you you are second class. But then again the Chinese kill their baby girls, India burns with acid their sisters, Africa mutilates the genitals of their daughters. Islam calls for the killing of sisters and daughters who dishonor the family — if they are victims of rape. Please do not tell me how racism is worse than sexism. Deni’s points are excellent.
By Kay Sara on 05/21/2008 5:46 pm
Deni G
Very excellent, Kay.
By Deni G on 05/21/2008 8:38 pm
Diana T
I find it very sad that in the 21st Century, that this kind of thinking persists. When I think of the women that have led countries starting with Queen Elizabeth 1st back in the 16th Century all the way up to the 20th Century women like Golda Meir, Indhira Ghandi and Prime Minister Bhutto(god, I’ve forgotten her first name), all of the female CEO’s that we take for granted, the members of the Senate/Congress, it just boggles my mind. We had a woman governor years ago here in Kentucky, Martha Laine Collins, and she did a wonderful job. I guess I shouldn’t say this, but I think this is the ultimate in ignorant thinking.
By Diana T on 05/21/2008 12:03 pm
Lady Gator
When I read ANYTHING (pardon me for yelling) posted by the great Dr. Mark — I thank my lucky stars that I have never been around men who ‘put me down’ because ‘I Am Woman’. I was blessed during my earlier career with men I worked “With” not “For”. I was always considered a major part of their businesses. I have further been blessed by being married to a man who recognizes the strength and abilities I bring to our marriage. Now, we are in a business together and I am his equal partner in both our business and in our married life. He truly believes that women, in many ways, are stronger than men. He thinks a woman should be able to attain all of her ambitions and achieve anything she wants to go after. I’ve been married to this wonderful man for 47 years and one of the extraordinary things is ——we still like each other! He, would be very puzzled as to the verminous spewing from Dr. Mark. His question to Dr. Mark would probably be — Did you like your mother?
By Lady Gator on 05/21/2008 12:14 pm