“Post-Truth” and the Ethical Pedestal: How Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year Relates to Gender
When Nicholas Kristof asked the question “Is Hillary Clinton Dishonest?” back in April, it was clear that voters thought she was. When they heard “Hillary Clinton,” the top reaction, according to a Gallup survey, was “dishonest/liar/don’t trust her/poor character.” This impression didn’t improve as the campaign went on: In general election exit polls, 61% of voters claimed Clinton was not honest or trustworthy.
Republican Women Poised to Play a Key Role as Messengers in the 115th Congress
The 2016 election cycle broke relatively little ground for women’s representation in Washington. Aside from Hillary Clinton’s failure to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling in the presidential election race, the number of women set to serve in the 115th Congress next January remains stagnant. Among the Republican majority, women actually lost seats in the House of Representatives. While the newly re-elected Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has stated that 2017 was going to be about “doing big things for our country, ” it is worth considering the role that Republican women officeholders will play as policy makers and messengers as the Party hopes to enact significant reforms now that Republicans also control the White House.
Was America Ready for Hillary?
This was supposed to be the year we discussed ad nauseum whether the country was “ready” for a woman president. Far more said in a February CNN/ORC poll that America was ready (80%) than at any time over the last decade, with Gallup showing record numbers saying they’d be open to voting for a woman themselves.
Presidential Gender Watch 2016 Reflects on the Role of Gender in the Presidential Election at The Atlantic’s Politics & Policy Briefing
How did gender influence candidate strategy, voter engagement and expectations, and electoral outcomes in the race for the nation’s highest executive office? Panelists unpacked these themes during “The Politics of Gender: Women, Men, and the 2016 Election,” a discussion among political strategists, scholars, and commentators convened by The Atlantic, and underwritten by Presidential Gender Watch 2016, on December 13 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
The Gender Conversation Continues
In April 2015, we launched Presidential Gender Watch 2016 with the mission to track, analyze, and illuminate gender dynamics in the presidential election. For nineteen months, we did that work with help from expert scholars and practitioners. We raised questions, provided answers, and sought to complicate any simplifications in popular discussions about gender’s role in the presidential race. We were not alone. Multiple media outlets, individual journalists, and political commentators – and even some candidates – grappled with gender in more complex and nuanced ways this year than in elections past. This is not only an intellectual win, but marks institutional progress.
Juliette Kayyem: National Security and Gender in the 2016 Race
On a Presidential Gender Watch call earlier this year (Women Voters: It’s Complicated), Republican pollster Christine Matthews noted that terrorism and national security are top issues for Republican women in the 2016 election. “Republican women are very unnerved in the current environment, and they are looking for candidates with tough rhetoric,” said Matthews. As the post-election analysis continues, it is clear that national security issues were a driving force at the ballot box.
To continue the discussion on the intersection of national security and gender, Presidential Gender Watch asked Juliette Kayyem for her thoughts. Kayyem is currently the Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard Kennedy School and an on-air security analyst for CNN. She is also the founder of Kayyem Solutions LLC, which provides strategic advice in technology, risk management, mega-event planning and cybersecurity, and the author of Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were both “unlikeable,” but that only mattered for one candidate.
Here is a small sampling of the headlines that appeared over the course of the presidential match-up between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton:
2016: The year of the unlikable candidate?
Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking
Poll: Clinton, Trump most unfavorable candidates ever
In an ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll release just over a week before Election Day, six in 10 likely voters had an unfavorable view of both Clinton and Trump. This made them the two most unpopular presidential candidates in an ABC/Post poll since 1984.
Mixed Outcomes for Latinas in Election 2016
Many of us are still in shock over this month’s election results, especially in light of the stalled advancement of women to our highest office. The election results also bring fears over the future ramifications of a Trump presidency including the worry of additional violence, intimidation, and loss of essential rights for many diverse groups in the U.S. We can try to move through this shock by taking a look at the election highlights for women of color, in particular for Latinas.
No, women didn’t abandon Clinton, nor did she fail to win their support.
In an attempt to explain Tuesday’s presidential election results, some media outlets and commentators have looked to pin the electoral outcome on a specific demographic set of voters; black voters didn’t turn out, more Latinos supported Trump than expected, or women abandoned Clinton. These narratives are not only short-sighted, but largely incorrect. For example, experts from Latino Decisions have reported on the inaccuracy of exit polling of Latino voters. Others note the very real voter suppression efforts that have had a disproportionate effect on black voter turnout, and comedian Samantha Bee begged viewers to turn their attention to white voters, the voters who ultimately elected Donald Trump.
Gender is on the Ballot
Gender is on the ballot on Tuesday, but not in the way many of us expected. In fact, while early expectations were that the most prominent gender dynamics in 2016 would be about a woman breaking the highest, hardest glass ceiling in American politics, the reality is that this race may well serve as a referendum on the re-entrenchment of presidential masculinity. The masculine dominance of the presidency is quite literally on the ballot, not simply in the sex of the nominees, but in the behaviors, values, and agendas they espouse.