HERSTORY with PolySue
We are featuring a new series called HERSTORY and excited to partner with our good friend, Suzanne Chod, for our first installment. Suzy, as we call her, is our go to when we need an explanation on policy and politics. She is passionate, ridiculously intelligent, funny, witty and knows her ish! She also loves this stuff, which we don’t understand, but we love her for it.
HERSTORY with PolySue will run through the presidential election. Future posts will appear on our new HERSTORY tab but for now we present…
Part 1: THAT TIME SIX WOMEN RAN FOR PRESIDENT
As a professor who teaches Political Science and Gender and Women’s Studies, the 2016 election knocked me on my ass. I mean literally. After Donald Trump was declared the winner in the wee hours of Wednesday November 9th, 2016, I fell to the floor of my bedroom and cried. I cried for me. I cried for my two young daughters. I cried for my grandmother who was a feminist and didn’t even know it. And, finally, I cried for my students (especially my female students) who I assured Hillary Clinton would be the first female president. As a political scientist, I was sure of my prognostication based on traditional indicators. As a woman, I had to believe the most qualified candidate to ever run for president would win as opposed to an unqualified, misogynist. But then I remembered, we still live in a country where the patriarchy runs deep, hostile sexism is real, and partisanship rules all. In my first class of the day on Wednesday November 9th, 2016, through tears, a female student asked me, “When will it be our turn?” Through my own tears I answered, “I don’t know.”
The Women’s March, incubators like She Should Run and VoteRunLead, and early candidate filings indicated that, like the early women’s suffrage moment, the women were at the gates. Anecdotal evidence illustrates that the John Lewis quote from the 1960s rang true for women after 2016: If not us, who? If not now, when?
In the 2018 midterm elections, we elected a record number of women, and particularly, women of color. According to the Center of American Women in Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers, 102 women were elected to U.S. House and 15 to the Senate in 2018; 36 of them were new members. Across both chambers, 47 are women of color and 10 are members of the LGBTQ community. Moreover, according to analysis from Vox, 28 women in the new Congress are moms of younger children. And while this is cause for celebration (pop some champagne), there are some truths about our American political system that remain unsettlingly true (pull out the vodka).
1. According to the Brookings Institution, in 2018, 23% of all congressional challengers were women, up from 16% in 2016. So, that means 77% were men.
2. According to CAWP, 44 women have served as governors across 30 states. So, that means there are 20 states who have never elected a female governor. Moreover, the most women ever serving as governor at the same time is nine…across 50 states.
3. There is convincing evidence that hostile sexism was a factor in Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill objectification and oppression. Hostile sexist attitudes rest on the belief that women are trying to take too much control, too much power, away from men. Those beliefs drove votes toward Donald Trump. And before you hit the man next to you while you are reading this; women have hostile sexist attitudes just as much as men.
So, where are we? We’ve made gains in Congress. Women are motivated to protest, donate, and run. But what about what Hillary Clinton called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling?”
At its height, there were six women running to defeat President Trump in 2020: Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren; Representative Tulsi Gabbard; and self-help author Marianne Williamson. While Sen. Gillibrand withdrew from the race in early September, the fact that five women are running, and two are women of color, is not nothing. What’s more, almost every Democratic primary poll has one of those women in the top three
(and some in the top two), Senator Elizabeth Warren. There is MUCH discussion in political science and among journalists and pundits about whether a woman is “electable.” This amplifies, as you would imagine, when we talk about the electability of women of color. But here’s the thing: if you believe that other people believe that a woman is not electable, and you are a strategic voter whose singular goal is to oust President Trump from the White House, then you may vote for the old, white man you can stomach the most. If everyone in the Democratic primary electorate did that, then, we would end up with the same type of candidates (cough cough, white men, cough cough) we always do. This is partially illustrated by the fact that the two candidates in the top three with Senator Warren are Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Why do I care about all of this? Well, I am a mother of two small daughters, one of whom wears her “the future is female” shirt on a regular rotation. I am an ally who tries to use her privilege to speak out for those who don’t have the same platforms. I am an unabashed feminist, caught somewhere between the second and third waves, who desperately wants to see more women in the federal government. I am also a political scientist who understands why it is ridiculously difficult. During this election season, I hope to continue to contribute to CTC on all things political, but especially those that affect women.
Finally, on her run for president in 1972, Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman ever elected to Congress, said, “I want to be remembered as a woman … who dared to be a catalyst of change.” So, let’s honor Representative Chisholm and do the damn thing.
Author: Suzanne Chod
Dr. Suzanne Chod is an Associate Professor of Political Science and coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at North Central College in Naperville, IL.