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Hillary's Bias Problems Have Deep Cultural Roots
By Elizabeth L. Keathley
Women's eNews
Wednesday 20 February 2008
Hillary Clinton's campaign is pulling at
the deep cultural roots of gender bias. Elizabeth Keathley says that's why the
senator is so often caught in the double bind between being considered either
"too feminine" or "too masculine."
Earlier in the primary contest, when comedian Chris Rock quipped on "Saturday
Night Live" that Barack Obama was more disadvantaged than Hillary Clinton
because "everyone loves white women . . . except other white women,"
he might have been channelling the mid-20th century philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.
Beauvoir famously argued that women had difficulty uniting and supporting each
other because their livelihood and status depended on a "good" marriage.
Their competition for husbands engendered envy and hindered female bonding.
Although Chris Rock's joke sparks a laugh of recognition, we should acknowledge
that white women are actually the ones showing Hillary the greatest love at
the ballot box, voting for her in primary after primary.
That suggests that other women are not the enemy of Hillary nor, for that matter,
of all other women. Rather, the enemy is culture and history.
The socio-economic changes of 19th-century Europe and America gave momentum
to the international women's movement. Urbanization stripped unmarried women
of their traditional, agrarian occupations, while numerous wars depleted the
population of available husbands to support them. Women sought traditionally
male occupations and civil rights, but these "first wave" feminists
of the late 19th century reaped opprobrium and physical abuse for violating
the ideals of domesticity, humility and deference to men.
Two centuries later, the ideal of separate spheres for men and women still
holds sway in the public imagination and fuels the petty media criticism of
Hillary that gets so much attention.
Voices as diverse as Virginia Woolf, Barbra Streisand and punk rocker Kathleen
Hanna have remarked that women and men doing the same things are judged differently - women
more negatively - and that this double standard has circumscribed the range of
socially acceptable behavior available to women.
Feminine Speech Signals Incompetence
Education researcher Bernice Sandler and linguist Deborah Tannen have shown
that women who speak in a conventionally "feminine" manner (soft volume,
high pitch, upward inflection) are perceived as less competent, while those
who speak in a more decisive (masculine) manner (lower pitch, downward inflection)
are perceived as aggressive.
When Hillary conforms to the norms of feminine vocal comportment, she is too
careful. When she raises her voice in passion, she is shrill. Lectern-thumping,
emotionally charged rhetoric by a female candidate would be dismissed as hysterical.
How, then, is a female presidential candidate to speak?
Because the expression of sentiment is so profoundly linked to the domestic
sphere, women who refrain from such displays are heartless, yet those who do
show emotion are weak and irrational. This can be seen in the media reaction
to Hillary's now famous "emo moment" before the New Hampshire primary:
Some saw her as more human, others saw her as unfit to be commander in chief,
and others thought she was just faking emotion.
No male candidate is required to demonstrate his humanity in similar ways.
Mitt Romney's numerous misty moments have gone largely unnoticed, but Maureen
Dowd's cynical Jan. 8 column in The New York Times, "Can Hillary Cry Her
Way Back to the White House?" circulated internationally.
Hillary's Double Bind
Hillary's double bind plays out for women across this country. I see it in
my own experience as a college professor as well as that of my female colleagues.
Even though professional competence should matter most, we are excoriated for
failures of femininity. Students, for instance, expect us to be more nurturing
and indulgent. When we hold them to academic standards - in other words, when
we do our jobs - we are often labelled harsh.
Interviewing Hillary after the New Hampshire primary, Katie Couric - a woman
who should understand the double bind - pressed Hillary to be more "humble"
about her chances to win the Democratic nomination. But similar bravado by male
candidates has gone unquestioned. The cultural code is clear: The confidence
of the public campaign is masculine; women should stick to the humility of traditional
femininity.
Gender, of course, also inflects the perception of age. In spite of decades
of criticism of this practice, the visual delectation of female bodies remains
the dominant pop-culture lens for viewing women: Age is a liability for women,
an asset for men.
This perception of middle-aged women as hopelessly out of date assists the
media's easy dismissal of Clinton after every setback, most notably her loss
at the Iowa caucuses.
Pundits rationalized their wrong predictions in several ways, but the idea
of Hillary as a has-been was preconditioned by a long tradition of late-night
television jokes about her putative lack of sex appeal. For example, last week
David Letterman remarked sarcastically that Hillary's pantsuits make her look
"even hotter."
Sequential Opportunities
Our social structures do not demand that men build their families and careers
in sequence, as many women must do.
Like many working mothers, Hillary deferred to the professional ambitions of
her husband, reserving her highest aspirations until their daughter was older,
and during that time she developed important knowledge, skills and relationships
that can serve the presidency well.
What does it say about the opportunities for any woman in our culture if her
professional clock runs out while she raises her family and develops skills?
By the time a woman has earned her credentials for the highest public office,
is she already too old?
Perhaps the most devastating residue of gender bias during the campaign is
the easy dismissal of Hillary's long and effective record of advocacy for women
and children, but this should not be brushed aside.
As United Nations reports show, most of the world's poor are women and children;
and nothing promotes a society's wellbeing like educating women and assuring
their access to nutrition and health care, including family planning.
The cultural benefits of attending to women's concerns echo through successive
generations. We should consider this when we seek to change our society.
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Elizabeth L. Keathley teaches music history and women's studies at
the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She writes about women, music
and modernism.
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