July 17, 2007
· Filed under Angela Merkel, Hillary's platform, Obama, corruption, female voters, female vs. male politicians, feminism, gender, iraq, pioneer, sexism
I recently received some interesting and timely correspondance from a questioning reader. She writes,
“I have spent some time this summer talking to my mom and her friends about politics. These older women, mostly of Hillary’s generation, say that they see her as the most unethical of the candidates, someone who would lie and cheat and stop at nothing to get her way. No matter how much they would like to see a female in the White House, they would never vote for Hillary. I think that most people would agree that political candidates in general are far less moral than we would like. Is Hillary really any worse than the others?”
These questions are timely because they remind me of a recent cover story in The Nation, which focuses exclusively on the way women, and more specifically feminists and/or her generational peers, view Hillary Clinton. The article addresses many of the questions that my reader asks.
So, is Hillary really more unethical or ruthless than the other candidates?
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July 12, 2007
· Filed under Hillary vs Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Obama, campaign strategy, democratic nomination, female voters, female vs. male politicians, gender, insider, sex
To start off today’s lesson: the difference between ’sex’ and ‘gender’, as defined by academia:
Sex = the biological signification of femalehood or malehood
Gender = a social construct that exists outside of biology and the body; has more to do with subjective terms like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which can be applied to a person regardless of sex
so why is Salon saying that Hillary is the male-gendered candidate while Obama is the female one?
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May 6, 2007
· Filed under Hillary Clinton, campaign money, campaign strategy, donors, female voters, philanthropy
As Hillary continues to compete with Barack Obama in the campaign cash race, she has decided to focus more intensely on appealing to female voters. This Washington Post article by Matthew Mosk , sent to me by the lovely Ben, states that women usually contribute 27% of the money eventually raised in overall presidential elections.
In general, I think that women have been less numerous and less generous donors than men– I know that my coed prep school had a far larger endowment than my sister’s nearly identical single-sex prep school, and I have a feeling that this is true for many traditionally male vs. traditionally female colleges as well (although colleges currently do not allow statistics to be kept of donations given only by women).
So why do women give less money than men? And How will Hillary address this challenge?
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April 23, 2007
· Filed under Hillary Clinton, Hillary vs Obama, Obama, female voters, reporting, the issues
I was reading an interesting blog today “about the politics of reporting– and the reporting of politics.” On it, Greg Sargent dissects and analyzes the way in which reporters and popular newspapers, such as the New York Times, write about politics and political candidates.
In one article, Sargent points out that, when asked about Hillary, most pundits will say something about the impossibility of her being elected because she is “polarizing” and, although she sticks closely to her pretty centrist agenda, this makes her “unelectable”. Sargent debunks this myth with an ABC/Washington news poll showing that Hillary is in fact far more electable than another presidential hopeful, John McCain.
So why the presumed “unelectability”?
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March 27, 2007
· Filed under Hillary Clinton, Hillary's platform, campaign strategy, female voters
There are two ways in which Hillary could conduct campaign strategy with regards to her gender: she, like other recently elected female politicians, could try to ignore or mitigate her gender and instead focus on issues that speak to her broadest base of voters; in other words, run her campaign as a male candidate would. Her second option would be to try and capitalize on her difference to garner support from voters that she would otherwise not be able to reach.
Hillary seems to be taking a two-pronged campaign strategy, combining both of the above approaches. On the one hand, she is attempting to downplay the fact that she is The Female Candidate, and instead emphasizing that she is running for office because she beleives that she is the best person, irrespective of gender, for the job. On the other hand, however, she is using her gender to play to a very specific audience: the female voter. For example, as the article mentioned below states, she “appears to be splitting the difference, playing up domestic issues that could have a special appeal to women without presenting them as such”.
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