How much does sexism matter for female candidates?
Source: Vox
Sexism plays a role in every election — but using it to disqualify female candidates completely misses the point.
During Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed back on CNN reporter Abby Phillip when she asked why he said he “did not believe that a woman could win the election,” comments Sen. Elizabeth Warren says he made in a private conversation.
“How could anybody in a million years not believe that a woman could become president of the United States?” Sanders asked, while denying he ever made this statement.
As it turns out, a lot of people seem to. (And Warren maintains Sanders said so.)
While polling has shown that Democrats are overwhelmingly open to a female president, voters remain concerned that others — including a subset of swing voters — are not. A common refrain? People want to support a woman, but they don’t know if other voters can get past their gender bias to do it.
This dynamic is evident in a 2019 Ipsos/Daily Beast poll. The poll found 74 percent of Democrats and independents said they would be comfortable with a female president, but 33 percent believed their neighbors wouldn’t be quite as accepting.
Earlier this month, former Vice President Joe Biden expressed a similar sentiment, noting that Hillary Clinton encountered sexism when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 2016. “That’s not going to happen with me,” he said, seeming to imply that he’d have a leg up over a female contender. (His campaign has since said his remarks weren’t intended to question a woman’s electability.)
On one level, it’s understandable there’s a perception that sexist attitudes hold back female candidates. Sexism does impose additional barriers on women: Studies show that women have to demonstrate their qualifications in a way that men simply don’t, that they have to calibrate the way they show ambition, and that they’re still judged on tenets like “likability” in a way that male candidates are not.
Click here to read the full article published by VOX on 15 January 2020.
Image by VOX
Sexism plays a role in every election — but using it to disqualify female candidates completely misses the point.
During Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed back on CNN reporter Abby Phillip when she asked why he said he “did not believe that a woman could win the election,” comments Sen. Elizabeth Warren says he made in a private conversation.
“How could anybody in a million years not believe that a woman could become president of the United States?” Sanders asked, while denying he ever made this statement.
As it turns out, a lot of people seem to. (And Warren maintains Sanders said so.)
While polling has shown that Democrats are overwhelmingly open to a female president, voters remain concerned that others — including a subset of swing voters — are not. A common refrain? People want to support a woman, but they don’t know if other voters can get past their gender bias to do it.
This dynamic is evident in a 2019 Ipsos/Daily Beast poll. The poll found 74 percent of Democrats and independents said they would be comfortable with a female president, but 33 percent believed their neighbors wouldn’t be quite as accepting.
Earlier this month, former Vice President Joe Biden expressed a similar sentiment, noting that Hillary Clinton encountered sexism when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 2016. “That’s not going to happen with me,” he said, seeming to imply that he’d have a leg up over a female contender. (His campaign has since said his remarks weren’t intended to question a woman’s electability.)
On one level, it’s understandable there’s a perception that sexist attitudes hold back female candidates. Sexism does impose additional barriers on women: Studies show that women have to demonstrate their qualifications in a way that men simply don’t, that they have to calibrate the way they show ambition, and that they’re still judged on tenets like “likability” in a way that male candidates are not.
Click here to read the full article published by VOX on 15 January 2020.
Image by VOX