As the President of a non-partisan organization, which does not endorse candidates, I see our job as providing information that levels the playing field as much as possible with regards to gender. So it is in that light that I want to suggest that taking issue with a policy platform is one thing, while the troubling, gender-based treatment that Clinton receives is quite another. I know that most men and women alike are deeply disappointed with the treatment that Clinton often receives in the media; more than just a side-effect of her “Clintonianism,” this kind of rhetoric stems from systemic, embedded fears of women in power, and our country’s historical legacy of gendered discrimination. Remember, we rank 67th in the world in terms of the number of women in our national legislature.
Of course, Clinton is not the only “first and only.” As the first viable black male candidate for the presidency, Senator Obama is also blazing a trail. In the beginning there were frequent conversations about whether he was “black enough” or whether he was an insider or a true “outsider” And I am sure that racism will rear its ugly head soon enough, but the truth is, so far their candidacies have received glaringly disparate media attention. The study by Kathleen Hall Jamieson was originally intended as a web search to look for “racist invective” directed against Obama. Jamieson was surprised when her study instead found so much misogyny directed at Clinton.
I think most Americans are extremely proud that either the first woman or first black man will be a nominee for our nation’s highest post in 2008. But we have so much further to go. When there are enough women running for the presidency, there won’t be signs asking them to “go home and make sandwiches” because their leadership will be normalized. Young men on Facebook will no longer demand that these women go “back to the kitchen,” because these women’s leadership will no longer be circumspect. And talking heads on MSNBC won’t describe our women leaders as “castrating” or “cackling” because such terminology will no longer be acceptable.
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