Finally we are Candidates and not just “women candidates”

June 10, 2010 Written by Women

I woke up Wednesday morning, checked the political news online, and breathed a very happy sigh of relief. It wasn’t that I had favored candidates who won, or that I was emotionally invested in any of the races. Rather, it was the fact that so many of the winners were women, and the press barely batted an eyelash.

For decades, women who ran for office were by definition "the woman candidate," forced to simultaneously defy and embrace gender stereotypes while also going through the already-grueling candidate tasks of getting their issues heard and their supporters rallied. At some point, we needed to move beyond this; female candidates should be seen as unremarkable, rather than the electoral equivalent of unicorns. On Tuesday night, we saw that.

I have a pretty long list of political disagreements with the conservative woman who advanced on Tuesday night. But at the same time, I was pleased to see so many front-page stories about their ascent that focused exclusively on matters of substance: Sharron Angle’s statements on social security, Blanche Lincoln’s use of surrogate campaigners, the political environment that Nikki Haley faced in South Carolina, Carly Fiorina’s opinions on immigration, and Meg Whitman’s campaign spending. These women were, by and large, not reduced to sexist caricatures or stereotypes; they were treated like candidates. Even the accusations of extramarital affairs leveled at Haley didn’t cause the election to devolve into a sexist mess. Save a handful of feature pieces that noted the increase in the number of GOP women running and winning, all of the female candidates were judged in the press, for the most part, on the merits of their candidacies, and not their looks, their “femininity,” or who was home taking care of their kids.

In the coming months, I’ll be rooting for candidates that share my beliefs, and I hope to hear what the conservative women who advanced plan to do to protect and advance women’s rights and increase women’s political participation. But for now, I’m happy to set partisanship aside and cheer for the fact that at last, women running for office are no longer being treated as rare specimens. They’re being treated, as they should be, as candidates
 

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  • Gloria Pan

    I also applaud the strong showing of women during the recent primaries, though I must confess my disappointment that most of the action was happening on the other side of the aisle. I always rather felt that, generally, women in the political process are less cynical, more empathetic, more nobly motivated, more able to go beyond ambition to see the “Big Picture” than men – certainly not always but generally. That so many capable and talented women would want to take up the banner of the GOP rather shatters that illusion. Why? Because the GOP is the umbrella under which racists, anti-feminists and religious fanatics huddle. Of course many Republicans are not these things, and many individuals vote Republican over particular issues important to them without much thought to whose standing next to them in their voting. But if you ask racists, anti-feminists and religious fanatics how they vote, if they vote, they would say Republican, and their opinions matter to the GOP leadership. Why would smart women want to be part of that?

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  • Meg

    I’m truly hoping that the GOP women who won will work to reform their party rather than buying into the ugliness that some interest groups in that party embrace. Whether that actually happens remains to be seen. But the advancement of women like Nikki Haley and Carly Fiorina raises important questions about descriptive representation and whether we can expect a similar leadership style or approach to policy from women candidates because they were socialized differently from men, regardless of their specific issue positions. To what extent should female candidates emphasize the differences between male and female leadership versus issue positions and experience? How much do we expect women candidates to behave similarly? Are these expectations realistic? Can we define the political advancement of women whose views may be antithetical to feminism as progress for women?

    At this point I honestly don’t have a definitive answer, though it is nice to finally quarrel over the policy views of female candidates rather than have to worry about defending them against blatant sexism. But I’m going to be following the midterm elections closely to see how things unfold on the gender politics front. Already the Fiorina-Boxer tiff over hairstyles is providing an interesting case study.