First Female President: Barack Obama

When reflecting on this course, I noted that we subconsciously defined gender to be about women.  This is very similar to the idea behind race, that is, a white person does not have to deal with race, just as men do not have to deal with gender.

Obviously, this makes little sense, as male is a sex just as much as female is.  

And yes, there is a distinct difference between sex and gender, but the concept still applies.

I therefore decided to look at the males in the election, and stumbled on this article in Newsweek.

The author first notes that this is not the first time that a president's values, actions, and persona have emulated a person in a different role or category.  He sites former president Bill Clinton as the "first black president" due to his penchant for playing the saxophone and his display of "almost every trope of blackness"

He goes on to say that Barack Obama seemed to be playing a traditional female role.

Obama doesn't play the sax. But he is pushing against conventional- and political party nominating convention-wisdom in five important ways, with approaches that are usually though of as qualities and values that women bring to organizational life: a commitment to inclusiveness in problem solving, deep optimism, modesty about knowing all the answers, the courage to deliver uncomfortable news, not taking all the work alone, and a willingness to air dry linen.

However, the campaign is over, and the authority with which Obama has taken office has shown that his not one to be trifled with.  Perhaps this has made him appear more masculine, but I believe that it is his willingness to accept these gender stereotypes as part of his own that he has been able to pass the stimulus bill and get a strongly divided congress to agree on so many other matters.

Perhaps America does need a female president, and for right now, his name is Barack Obama

So What Exactly are the Gender Stereotypes for Women Candidates?

Warm, gentle, kind and passive versus aggressive, tough, and assertive.....which are the women stereotypes and which are the men? I can figure it out can you? Women and Men have certain personality traits that most people agree with. However when it comes to being a higher office leader which traits are social allowed in a leader and which are not? According to a scholarly article, masculine personality traits are more acceptable for an ideal leader then feminine personality traits are. They found voters weren't willing to back up a female candidate for president or vice president, because they felt as though women weren't capable of handling "traditional male issues." However this article goes on to find that there are some issues that females are capable of handling more then men. Issues such as arts, education, and health, while a male could handle issues on war, economy, and military.

female candidates can win national office if they convince voters that they possess masculine traits and are competent on 'male' policy issues.

So then a female should be okay for running for higher office if she possesses masculine traits, right? Think again. Hillary Clinton tried to play this role of being more masculine and it backfired. People accused her of being stuck between a double bind. She was conflicted upon whether to show her femininity or to be more masculine to show she was strong enough and capable of handling being President of the United States.

So then what should female politicians do then? If they are too feminine they can't handle being president, but then if a female tries to posses some male traits they get accused of being stuck in a double bind. Why are our female traits so degraded upon?!

Entering a new age of political correctness

Few people will argue that the Saturday Night Live sketches done by Tina Fey and Amy Palmer had an effect on public opinion. While I do not believe it was a deciding factor in the election, I think that it was an important step for the media. These sketches allowed the stigma surrounding women and feminism to fall. Fey and Palmer were quick to note that while sexism runs rampant in our media, we try to pretend that it does not. My attention was recently brought to a piece done by Onion News, entitled: "First Female Dictator Hailed as Step Forward for Women." I noted this because I feel that a dictatorship is a very masculine concept. I am not promoting a dictatorship in any way, shape, or form, but I do feel that it is a very interesting concept.

Why is it the women are not dictators? Is it because there has not been a women with a strong enough following to create such a senario, or is it because we simply laugh the thought off. Society tells us that a women is not strong or aggressive enough to rule a country in such a way.
These views are prevalent enough that The Onion felt that they could mock them. However, I do not believe that, (despite how forward The Onion tends to be) they would have produced this video prior to the SNL skits.
I have thought a lot about why these sketches were acceptable, and I believe it comes back to the two women behind it. Men would not take on sexist issues for fear of being called sexist. However, because Tina Fey and Amy Palmer are represented as strong and self-assured women by the media, they were able to highlight sexism as it presently exists in the media and society at large.
By doing so, Fey and Palmer have brought sexism out from behind the curtain, and I feel that we can only go forward from here.

"Gender Affinity Affect", Major or Minor Play in the 2008 Election?

Gender was one of the play cards used in the 2008 election; however, to what extent did it work? According to a scholarly research article, the gender affinity affect is when women voters are most likely in support for female candidates. This article found women do actually feel positively towards a female candidate because of the "shared sex identity".

In this past election Hillary Clinton was a female candidate up for running as president. The Washington Post conducted a survey and found that 51 percent of women supported Hillary while 24 percent supported Obama and 11 percent supported John Edwards. Here is a clear example to the gender affinity affect. However how far does this affect go? Far enough for women to cross over parties? Interestingly, John McCain was the main candidate that tried to used this phenomenon for his advantage, and it somewhat worked. He felt as though having Sarah Palin as his vice president nominee would switch women supporters of Hillary Clinton over to support his campaign. However this article states otherwise:

......women often evaluate female candidates through the lens of political party. That women respondents feel more positively toward female Democratic candidates than do men, but do not have the same affective feelings for female Republican candidates, suggests that any gender gap in evaluations of female candidates should take into account partisan differences as well as sex-based identity.

Overall John McCain's pick for Sarah Palin as his running mate made a difference, but not a drastic difference. A poll conducted by Newsweek found that only 14 percent of female Hillary Clinton supporters wanted to switch and support McCain. This was an affect on McCain's campaign, but not substantial change enough to help him win the election.

The gender affinity affect, in my opinion, played a major role for Hillary Clinton. There were huge numbers of Hillary Clinton supporters that were female and this did help her in the election. On the other hand, McCain thought he could use this affect to his advantage, but it ended up only playing a minor role and not helping out as much as McCain wanted. The gender affinity affect did exist in this election as much as we did not want it to. This article has found that with the number of women increasing in office, we as women are getting a greater understanding and becoming more complex in our thought patterns, when choosing a candidate to support. To some this affect may play a minor role, but the gender affinity affect does exist sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst.

The Election Is Over; Now It Is Time to Analyze It

Yes, the election is over, and Obama is already taking his first few footsteps in the White House, but we cannot leave this noteworthy election behind.  This past election was important to us in so many ways.  It marked the beginning of many opportunities for change.  It was the first time a serious woman candidate was in the running, and it was also the first time an African-American was running to be president of the United States of America.

As a very aware and intellectual society, it is our calling to analyze the results of this 2008 presidential election.  As a whole, as a country, we need to work together in trying to understand the twists and turns of this election-- who voted for whom, possible influences on voters' preferences for a candidate, etc.  Our class has been pondering this all quarter long now.  It is very hard to know exactly what caused specific events or situations to happen and how much of an effect certain influences did have.

Our class sent out an online survey that included questions about the reasons why voters voted for whoever they chose.  People's reasons varied immensely; however, it was interesting to see and note that some women voted for Clinton (in the primaries) just because she was a woman.  Interestingly enough, some African-Americans voted for Obama for the same reason-- just because he was an African-American.  They wanted to see "their kind" take foot in the White House.

The New York Times has posted a very interesting interactive graphic on "How Different Groups Voted in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primaries."  You can click on the boxes underneath the graphic to see how different demographics of voters voted.  I examined "Women" and "Blacks."  When I clicked on the "Women" box, I noticed that there was a pretty even split-- about half the states had stronger Clinton support, and half had stronger Obama support; however, when I clicked on the "Blacks" box to see how African-American voters voted, all 28 states represented in the graphic were on the right-hand side.  They all had stronger Obama support.  This really sparked my interest.  Did African-Americans feel a greater need to support an African-American candidate than woman did to support a female candidate?

There are so many factors that probably influenced the election.  There was a range of different influences that could have affected voters' decisions-- from media to voters' perceptions.  There is no way to perfectly analyze the election results and the reasons why everyone voted the way they did, but we should look at all the results and hard proof that we do have to better understand this 2008 presidential election.

Why I Voted for Barack Obama

I'm a moderate republican. I like the 2nd amendment, the death penalty, and Ayn Rand. I'm a capitalist at heart and I believe the best societies have more financial freedom. I'm also a woman, and some of my social views are pretty liberal. Because of this I spent a long time debating who I should vote for, making lists of the candidates' platforms and voting records, and trying to align those with my own views. Even though there were only two choices, I felt like who I picked would tell me a lot about myself and which views I found more important. For a long time, I couldn't make the decision. The answer easily came to me in early September, and my decision never wavered after that.

I chose to vote for Barack Obama because of the introduction of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential pick. When I initially heard rumors of McCain's choice, I thought two things. 1) He is using her gender to get the female vote, and to compete with the fact that the democrats had a historical nominee. 2) It could be nice to have a female as second in command for a change. The second thought disappeared as soon as I discovered Sarah Palin in no way represented the values that I do, as a female, and Barack Obama absolutely did.

When I heard Palin say things like, "I'd oppose abortion even if my own daughter was raped," my feelings about guns and the free market were no longer important. When I found out about her desire to push an abstinence-only sex education on the nation's youth, it was like I had not even read The Fountainhead. Sarah Palin opposed expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation (I believe homosexuality is included in women's issues), and advocated making women buy their own rape kits, and just in general, seemed to oppose everything women activists have fought for for the past century.

2008 was my first presidential election, and it was certainly very interesting. What I took from it, more than anything, was that the economy will rise and fall as it normally does. I am always open to my political views changing, as they have in the past. I was not born a republican, but a woman, and I will die a woman, so I am a woman first, and my rights need to be protected. My right to govern my own body, my right to marry who I want, my right to not have to take out a loan to find out who raped me, my right to the knowledge about safe sex - all of these made Obama the right choice for a female who finds these issues important. Most of all I learned that the gender of an individual doesn't make them a feminist, their actions and choices do. If Sarah Palin had become the Vice President of the United States, I believe feminism would have lost a lot of hard-earned progress, and that is why I voted for Barack Obama.

Gender in 2008 Survey

Here is the link to the survey created for this class.

Send it to people you know so we can get as many responses as possible!

Obama's Desire for More Women in Science

I found an interesting article in the New York Times on how Obama plans to address issues of women in science.  It is not that women are not capable of researching such math-heavy and logic-oriented concepts.  Likewise, it is not that women do not not have the drive and stamina to keep up with the work of such time-consuming jobs. Rather, it is actually for a science-related reason that most women choose not to go into such demanding careers within the field of science.  Women are the child-bearers of our country.  Women are needed to have families and produce children that can continue our nation, our ways of living, etc.  This hugely time-dependent reason might be what is holding women back from pursuing careers in science.  Obama wants to try to fix this.  In the article, "In 'Geek Chic' and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science," Natalie Angier writes:

Dr. Mason and other legal experts suggest that President Obama might be able to change things significantly for young women in science-- and young men-- by signing an executive order that would provide added family leave and parental benefits to the recipients of federal grants, a huge pool of people that includes many research scientists.

This would probably cause there to be less of a gap between genders when it comes to math and science and research.  It is nice to know that Obama is looking out for women wanting to reach their full potentials, career-wise and all.

Hard times help women in politics?

Sexism is a double edged sword, and in every imaginable situation, women seem to be getting shortchanged due to this concept. In a recent news article, the author suggests that in the political world, we see that in some cases, voters will point to a woman running for office and consider her to be weak because she doesn't live up to the masculine expectations society holds of effective leaders. In turn, voters refuse to accept her as a viable candidate. In other cases, a female politician might be looked upon as a caring individual that would be more concerned about the people and their issues. The latter seems to be the case with Queensland's Anna Bligh, who is on her way to becoming Australia's first elected woman premier. The article insinuates that during hard times such as those being faced by Australia seem to be the perfect conditions for a woman to come and and "clean up the mess" left behind by her male predecessor.

PhD researcher Mary Crawford was quoted saying that "research suggests that while women politicians don't pursue a different style, voters perceive their interests are different - that they are more likely to be concerned with the daily concerns of people, like jobs, food prices, education and so on." Unfortunately, the situation isn't that simple, especially when we take the recent United States presidential election into consideration. Taking into account the weak state of the economy and the hard times we are facing as a society today, why is it that Crawford's theory didn't hold true? Americans had two opportunities to elect a female candidate, and chose to cote for males in both situations.

Preconceived notions about how a female candidate would lead as a politician continue to thwart any progress our nation can hope to one day achieve in terms of gender equality. Women have always been looked down upon by men as the "weaker" gender. As much as the people of this country go on talking about equality and acceptance, the truth is that even though we are living in the 21st century, our underlying ideals and stereotypes seem to resemble those which Americans held almost a century ago. If we truly want to see ourselves taking a step in the direction of equality, we have to set aside this discrimination.

At the Crossroads: An Examination & Analysis of Women's Political Images on the National Stage

Mary Beth Leidman, Jaclyn M. Emershaw, and Sarah Tourtellotte recently compiled data on photographs of currently serving women Senators and Governors. They were seeking to discover the physical attributes shared by these elected women (hair color, body type, etc.). 

Can you guess which obvious physical patterns emerged from the study? (I'm not telling! The answer is at the bottom of page 3).

Here is the abstract of the study: 

However the 2008 Presidential election has turned out, it was an epic moment for women in national politics. Senator Hillary Clinton's competitiveness in the Presidential Primaries was at the epicenter of gender political studies during the Presidential Primaries season. There are lingering questions concerning why she did not triumph given her experience, savvy and general background. This study concerns itself with the projection of image for women in politics. It endeavors to develop a methodology which could be replicated and examines the idea of whether or not successful image can be codified and act as a predictor of electability for women in national or executive level state politics.

The study can be downloaded here.

Despite the study findings, I can spot several physical similarities among the women of the 110th Senate. Can you?

Satire is not just for Sarah

http://www.pantsdown.wild.net.au/vote1.jpg

In a recent interview, Sarah Palin credits the loss of the 2008 presidential election in part to Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live sketches and her interview with Katie Curric.  This idea is debatable in its own right, but begs the question, how much does satire and "electoral guerilla theatre" play into the public’s opinion?  Does satire really work to mold the public's opinion of a person?  Personally I find this to be a bit far fetched, but to Palin's credit, precedent does exist. One such example is the October 1989 election for Austrialian Parliament. 

In 1996 a lower working class woman from a small town in Queensland by the name of Pauline Hanson was elected to represent the Oxley seat. Despite being expelled from her party shortly before the election due to some anti-Aboriginal comments quoted in a local paper, she won the seat, and quickly gained support as a leader for the far right. Her anti-Asian and anti-Aboriginal views resulted in the creation of her own party known as the “One Nation Party,” which quickly gained followers.

As Hanson's support grew, her values were thoroughly questioned, including many allegations of racism and xenophobia. While she insists that she is not racist, her views take the form of “cultural racism”, and while these setiments gave her followers, they also created enemies

One such person was a man by the name of Simon Hunt.   When Hanson was up for reelection, Hunt legally changed his name to Pauline Pantsdown and got himself on the ballot.  Besides wearing Hanson’s clothing and taking on her accent, Pantdown used political satire to attack Hanson.  His first attack took the form of a song known as “I’m a Backdoor Man,” which, once released, soared to the top of charts.  It was being played all over the nation, and because Hanson was such a well-known figure, the nation quickly learned of Pantsdown’s cause.

“Instead of dealing directly with Hanson’s white supremacism, he [Hunt] used her argumentative methods and her actual (digitized and rearranged) voice to make Hanson’s unwilling mouth advocate gay supremacy.”

In retaliation, Hanson and her party filed a defamation suit, and despite public requests, no radio stations would pick up the song.

Unfortunately for Hanson, the Party hurt themselves when they sued Pantsdown, as they demonstrated to the country that they were only supporters of free speech in certain cases. Knowing that he was supported, Pantsdown launched another attack, using Hanson’s own words to create a new song, entitled “I Don’t Like It.”

“While its satirical method is simpler, “I Don’t Like It” is more technically complicated than “Backdoor Man.” It actually creates new words from different Hanson syllables; for example, “San Francisco” was pieced together from four different words.”

Because the song was not using analogy, and therefore was less obviously damaging to her campaign, the One Nation Party largely ignored the attack, and the song was able to play on the radio. In fact, it because so popular and because One Nation did not sue, Pantdown’s friends and supporters banned together, and created a music video, allowing for a new dimension to the song.

After a long campaign from both Hanson and Pantsdown, the election came, and Hanson was defeated. She had spent so long fighting against Pantsdown’s attacks, that she was not able to focus on her campaign, a mistake that eventually lead to her downfall. Of the other candidates, some felt that the parodies were a good campaign tool, while others were frustrated because Pantsdown made the election into something of a joke. Nevertheless, most agreed that it was because of Hunt that Hanson lost the election.

I do not know if the Palin and McCain campaign was adversely affected by Fey or Curric, but the introduction of satire into the public political domain will certainly grow, and only time will tell where it takes us.

You can download the full article written by UC Davis Professor Lawrence M. Bogad here.

Barack Obama as unisex?

Download Frank Rudy Cooper's article, forthcoming in the Denver Law Review, here.

The abstract follows:

People often talk about the significance of Barack Obama's status as our first black President. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, however, a newspaper columnist declared, "If Bill Clinton was once considered America's first black president, Obama may one day be viewed as our first woman president." That statement epitomized a large media discourse on Obama's femininity. In this essay, I thus ask how Obama will influence people's understandings of the implications of both race and gender.

To do so, I explicate and apply insights from the fields of identity performance theory, critical race theory, and masculinities studies. With respect to race, the essay confirms my prior theory of "bipolar black masculinity." That is, the media tends to represent black men as either the completely threatening and race-affirming Bad Black Man or the completely comforting and assimilationist Good Black Man. For Obama, this meant he had to avoid the stereotype of the angry black man. Meanwhile, though, the association of the Presidency with the hegemonic form of masculinity presented difficulties for Obama. He was regularly called upon to be more aggressive in responding to attacks and more masculine in general. As a result, Obama could not be too masculine because that would have triggered the Bad Black Man stereotype but he could not be too feminine because that would have looked unpresidential.

Obama solved that dilemma by adopting a "unisex" style. He was a candidate who was designed to be suitable to either gender. I believe Obama's unisex performance on the world's biggest stage suggests that we are all more free to perform our race and our gender as we see fit than we had previously believed.

Race versus Gender

I just found a news article on Politico, a great news site for those interested in politics. The title of the article is "In politics, does race trump gender?"

Here is an excerpt from the article:

How come Roland Burris has had such an easy time getting to the U.S. Senate while Caroline Kennedy has had such a hard time? Could it be that the race card trumps the gender card in U.S. politics? Well, yes. It could be.

The article makes an interesting argument about how easy Roland Burris, the Senator-designate from Illinois, made his case to win the fight against congressional Democrats who had refused to seat him in the Senate. Burris was appointed by scandaled-tainted Illinois Governor Blago. Because Blago ignored warnings against taking such an action the Senate Democratic leadership threatened not to seat any successor. If sworn in today, Burris will officially take over President-elect Obama's seat.

In contrast, the author claims how difficult a time Caroline Kennedy is having in obtaining Hillary's seat. Kennedy has publicly announced that she is interested in Hillary's seat and even did a tour in New York a few weeks ago. Unlike Burris, who would be the sole African American in the US Senate, Kennedy cannot use the claim of being the only woman in the Senate to her benefit, because there are plenty of women Senators.

It's a great article and the author does make some interesting arguments (i.e. The Senate is 17% women, while women compose of 51% of the United States)