gender: politics

Allegra K. suggested that we take a look at Palin-based pro-conservative message from PalinPAC for this past November’s election. The nearly-two-minute commercial is an excellent example of a gender-specific populism. We recently discussed populism in response to Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m Not a Witch, I’m You” commercial.  Populism is, by definition, in opposition to elitism.  Political populists believe that the average person is better suited to lead than the exceptional person.  In this ad, Palin attempts to personify not just the average person, but the average mom.  Allegra writes:

Throughout the video, numerous women are pictured. However, they are a specific type: they are the “real” women; not models, or especially good-looking, dressed up, or even business or political figures. They are “average moms”…

The average woman, according to Palin, is the American hockey mom (just like her), who is (supposedly) middle class, an at-home mom, who cooks and cleans, takes her multiple children to school, and then to after school sports, probably drives a mini van, and uses Clorox on her sons’ jerseys after they get muddy at practice.  Palin puts the power of change in their hands because, she says, “moms just kinda know when somethin’s wrong.”

A “just kinda know” kind of knowledge (based on the notion of female intuition) is a great example of Palin’s gendered populist message.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dmitriy T.M. and Jeff H. sent in a link to Mapping the Measure of America, a website by the Social Science Research Council that provides an amazing amount of information about various measures of economic/human development in the U.S. Here’s a map showing median personal (not household) earnings in 2009:

The District of Columbia has the highest, at $40,342; the lowest is Arkansas, at $23,470 (if you go to their website, you can scroll over the bars on the left and it will list each state and its median income, or you can hover over a state).

You can break the data down by race and sex as well. Here’s median personal income for Native American women, specifically (apparently there is only sufficient data to report for a few states):

Native American women’s highest median income, in Washington ($22,181), is  lower than the overall median income in Arkansas, which is the lowest in the U.S. as we saw above.

Here is the percent of children under age 6 who live below the poverty line (for all races):

Life expectancy at birth differs by nearly 7 years between the lowest — 74.81 years in Mississippi — to the highest — 81.48 years in Hawaii:

It’s significantly lower for African American men, however, with a life expectancy of only 66.22 years in D.C. (again, several states had insufficient data):

The site has more information than I could ever fully discuss here (including crime rates, various health indicators, all types of educational attainment measures, commuting time, political participation, sex of elected officials, environmental pollutants, and on and on), and it’s fairly addictive searching different topics, looking data up by zip code to get an overview of a particular area, and so on. Have fun!

Made in America‘s Claude S. Fischer posted this figure depicting the percent of the voting-age U.S. population who voted in presidential elections, 1824-2008:

The figure shows radical shifts in the percent of the voting-age population that turned up at the polls, putting the recent Obama bump in perspective.  Fischer narrates two of the trends:

Americans streamed to the polls at rapidly growing rates during the antebellum years (the upwardly slanted oval) probably because: competitive two-party politics emerged; barriers to voting such as property requirements were lowered; states added more polling places so rural voters did not have to travel as far; a growing spoils system provided more government goodies for the victors; and the parties made elections entertaining – parades, fiery speech-making, and well-lubricated election days… By the 1880s and ‘90s, voting rates hit about 80 percent.

The downward oval is accounted for, in part, by women.  Women were granted suffrage in  1920 but, as Fischer says it, “…it took a while for women to get into the habit of voting.”  The drop started before this, however, so there’s more to it.  Fischer continues:

One factor was declining party competition; the Republican and Democratic parties retreated to different regions of the country.  In addition, two general sorts of innovations helped discourage voting: changes in rules and changes in incentives…

Native-born, upper-middle-class, largely Protestant Progressives were able, after much struggle, to reform election rules in many places… The new rules narrowed suffrage by, for example, requiring voters to be citizens, to register long before elections, and to pass literacy tests to vote. Other rules eliminated straight party-line voting… and even party identification on ballots, making it more difficult for less-educated voters to know whom to vote for. These moves raised the barriers to voting and helped drive down participation in the North. (In the South, of course, new Jim Crow laws essentially prevented any blacks from voting.)

Progressive reforms also eliminated some of the incentives people had to vote… The arrival of the secret ballot in the late 19th century eliminated the easy opportunity to sell one’s vote…

The institution of civil service employment reduced other financial incentives to vote …many Americans voted in order to get jobs for themselves, their relatives, or their friends. The fewer the positions filled by political appointment, the less the incentive to vote…

…government reforms also made it harder for the parties to raise money… [and t]hat, in turn, reduced the hoopla – the parades, bands, and such – and the free goodies that parties could dispense on election day. By the time women got the vote, a lot of the fun had gone out of voting. Turnout rates fell to about 50 percent.

Read Fischer’s full postfor his thoughts on why Americans do and don’t turnout to vote today.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

How ironic that so many women are telling men to “man up.” Enjoy:

Thanks Dmitriy T.M.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Being a voter in Nevada, I have been inundated with political mailers this season. I have clearly been identified as a Liberated Woman Voter who will respond to arguments that a candidate’s opponent hates women and plans to have us all chained in the kitchen immediately upon taking office. I meant to save some of the images from the mailers for a post about targeting female voters, but I forgot to. Well, not so much forgot as became so overwhelmed with the pile that I threw them away. Apparently I have not been targeted as a voter who cares about environmental concerns and might be horrified by the number of things I’m receiving in the mail, often the identical mailer several times a week.

Luckily, Leigh C. sent us a nice example. Leigh got both of these voter guides in the mail on the same day, both from the exact same group, with the exact same content inside. However, as you’ll notice, one is the default guide, and one is the guide specifically for women. And how do you clearly signal something is for women? With a flower! (Or, as Leigh put it, a “vaginal poppy”):

The mailers I got tended to prominently feature women in business suits, the universal signal for Liberated Career Women, obviously.

In a society in which masculinity is valued over femininity, like the U.S., the words “woman” and “girl” (not to mention words like “pussy,” “bitch,” and “cocksucker”) are effective slurs against both men and women. The flipside of this, of course, is that acting like a man is considered good. Acting like a man means being powerful, assertive, and effective. In masculinized arenas, like politics, both men and women are expected to act like men and being accused of being a woman is an effective slur against any politician.

Case in point: Dmitriy T.M. sent a 30-sec Politico video in which Sharron Angle tells Harry Reid to “man up.”

Politico reports five other instances in which candidates of both sexes delivered this chide to opponents. The fact that both men and women find this insult useful suggests that everyone has accepted sexism in politics and is willing to endorse and manipulate it to win. But, while the slur may help individual women and men win races, it ultimately affirms the idea that politics is no place for a woman.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

On this day in 1911, suffragettes in California squeaked out a victory, making the state the sixth to give women the vote and doubling the number of female voters in the U.S.  See David Dismore’s great summary at Ms.

Campaign poster reproduction (c. 1896-1910, from David Dismore’s collection):

The New York Times reports:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Considering what obvious justice suffrage for women was, it’s surprising that it took 62 years from the birth of the U.S. suffrage movement to come up with an equally simple way of making the case. But in 1910, the National American Woman Suffrage Association distilled their best arguments into one-paragraph gems printed on postcards. Their “Think It Over” series proved to be not only an excellent consciousness-raiser but fundraiser as well, since NAWSA received a commission on each card sold. Here’s a particularly insightful one:

Some other sample sayings on these postcards:

The Declaration of Independence was the direct result of taxation without representation. Either exempt WOMAN from taxation or grant her the right of Equal Suffrage. What is sauce for the GANDER is sauce for the Goose.

Woman, if granted the right of Equal Suffrage, would not endeavor to pass new laws for the benefit of WOMAN only. She would work and vote with MAN on all legislation. …

WOMAN should not condemn MAN because she has not the right of franchise–rather condemn parents for having trained their sons since the beginning of time, in the belief that MAN only is competent to vote.

Of course, suffragists didn’t rely entirely on gentle logic. At the bottom of each card was the phrase, “An ounce of persuasion precedes a pound of coercion.” Symbolism was employed as well. In the upper left corner was a shield of stars and stripes shown as having a dark spot in the center, labeled “The ballot is denied to woman” with “The blot on the escutcheon” inscribed underneath.

Though people today generally associate black and white images and grim determination with the suffragists, here’s proof from 1916 that they could be colorful and whimsical:

The disarming image of a child was common and popular, as above and below. The following image from 1913 was created by  Bernhardt C. Wall (1872-1956), an exception to the rule that most postcard artists labored anonymously:

No doubt the suffragists were well ahead of their time, but the card that follows from about 1916 is unusually far-sighted. (Of course, Victoria Woodhull had already run for president in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket.)

Lots of adults were expressing similar sentiments in 1914, when the card below was in circulation. On May 2, 1914, there were more than 1,000 coordinated demonstrations, parades and rallies nationwide, and that same year the all-male Senate took its first vote on a suffrage amendment since 1887. (It gained a majority, 35-34, but was still well short of the 2/3 required). Of course, the term most suffrage workers in the U.S. preferred for themselves was “suffragist,” because “suffragette” was originally used by opponents in Britain and then the U.S. as a derisive term implying “little voter,” or to give the false impression that all supporters of woman suffrage were female. But in this case it seems uniquely appropriate, since it’s a cute little girl with a ballot in her hand.  The postcard was sent as a Valentine on February 12, 1914 from “Marjorie” to “George”.

Finally, this still-appropriate postcard, issued in Great Britain in 1909 by the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, shows a woman being pulled away from “Justice” by “Prejudice.” The WWSL was founded in June, 1908, by playwright Cicely Hamilton and novelist Bessie Hatton “to obtain the vote for women on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men. Its methods are those proper to writers–the use of the pen.”

Today we might say “the use of the blog,” but the message still rings true !

All postcards are from David Dismore’s personal collection.

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David Dismore is a television news archivist and feminist history researcher for the Feminist Majority Foundation.  As a teenager he was inspired by a photo and a few paragraphs about the suffragists in his high school history textbook in Greenville, Ohio.  The post below, originally published at Ms. magazine, looks at some of the propaganda that helped earn U.S. women the vote. You can read more from David at Feminism 101.

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