Clare Foran, The Atlantic – September 17, 2016
Hillary Clinton can’t be trusted because she’ll do anything to win. That’s what several participants in a focus group of thirty undecided voters moderated by Republican strategist Frank Luntz on Friday in Alexandria, Virginia seemed to believe. At least some of the group of Democratic, Republican and Independent-leaning voters felt the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party was too ambitious.
Heidi M Przybyla, USA Today – September 6, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign may be a case study in the kind of missteps that can be particularly punishing for U.S. political candidates who are women.
Linda Feldmann, Christian Science Monitor – August 22, 2016
American history is riddled with male politicians who get into legal trouble. Some go to prison. But such stories are rare for women, and that has created a different sort of narrative around women in politics.
Emily Crockett, Vox – August 4, 2016
National Memo put together a video compiling nearly 40 years of sexist questions asked of Hillary Clinton during interviews and debates. The result is illuminating, and infuriating. It shows how painfully bad America was at dealing with women in public life even just 20 years ago — and how bad at it we often still are.
Kim L. Nalder, Meredith Conroy, and Danielle Joesten Martin, LSE Blog – July 22, 2016
If it was not for Donald Trump’s presence in the 2016 race, Hillary Clinton would be the least favored presidential candidate there has ever been. At the same time, however, she is rated by fact checkers as being far more honest than Trump or any other primary candidate. Using a survey of Californians, the authors explore how voters feel about Clinton. They find that Trump’s framing of Clinton as “crooked” has stuck, with most of his supporters describing her as a “liar” and “untrustworthy”. Clinton’s own supporters on the other hand, were more likely to describe her as “experienced”, “smart” and “strong”. On gender lines, women tend to describe Clinton more positively compared to men, and also note her gender.
Janell Ross, Washington Post – May 29, 2016
With all the talk this week and during this entire campaign about honesty, transparency, emails and tax returns in the 2016 race, The Fix thought it time to examine just how gender and honesty play out in politics. Do voters have different expectations for honesty among male and female politicians? And, if they do, what do these dynamics mean for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the likely major party White House nominees who have been had their honesty called into question frequently (Clinton for her alleged secrecy and Trump for his many false statements)?
Amber Phillips, Washington Post – March 31, 2016
Luckily for Clinton (and every other woman aspiring to public office), there are tangible ways female politicians can convince voters they’re both qualified and likable. That’s according to the nonpartisan Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which attempts in a new study to pinpoint exactly how voters measure this hazy, intangible quality of likability among women officeholders, so they could give such advice.
Allee Manning and Jody Sieradzki, Vocativ – February 24, 2016
According to entry and exit poll data, Donald Trump has continued to woo female voters, pretty much across the board. He scored higher than any other candidate with female voters at the past three primary events in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, earning almost half of popular female vote in the last contest.
Mary Nugent and Emma Pierson, The Washington Post – February 9, 2016
In total, 8 percent of tweets — nearly 1,000 — criticized Clinton for her appearance, her femininity, or her husband. On the one hand, these gendered criticisms of Clinton are far less common than criticisms of her trustworthiness. On the other hand, if one out of twelve comments you got about your job performance was sexist, you would probably find another job. These comments were also frequent enough that many tweeters noticed and complained.
Prachi Gupta, Cosmopolitan – January 28, 2016
After years of navigating political land mines as a woman, one wonders : How could an ambitious woman rise in politics, if not with dogged persistence and guardedness that Clinton has demonstrated? That’s why the criticisms wielded against Clinton from the younger generation right now seem unfair and yes, even sexist. As Lena Dunham, who is campaigning for Clinton, told Jill Abramson in the Guardian, “It feels so gendered, even from women, so harshly sexist. We never throw claims of too establishment or too stiff or even too selfish at male politicians. It’s unfair in the deepest sense.”