{"id":1228,"date":"2017-05-08T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2017-05-08T08:00:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T12:00:51","slug":"sexism-politics-spain-united-states-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/sexism-politics-spain-united-states-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexism in Politics in Spain and the United States: Is There a Difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[[caption id=\"attachment_1230\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1230\" src=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Sexism-in-Politics-in-Spain-and-the-United-States-Is-There-a-Difference-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Sexism-in-Politics-in-Spain-and-the-United-States-Is-There-a-Difference-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Sexism-in-Politics-in-Spain-and-the-United-States-Is-There-a-Difference.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/> Mayor Ada Colau of Barcelona, Spain.[\/caption]\nI love Spain and have spent a lot of time there for work and leisure travel. I was, therefore, particularly interested in an article by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/03\/08\/world\/europe\/spain-women-sexism.html?_r=0%20\">Raphael Minder<\/a> in the <em>New York Times<\/em> reporting that women in Spain have achieved greater parity in their national parliament, the Cortes Generales, than we have made in the US Congress. Women make up 40 percent of the Spanish Cortes while, according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cawp.rutgers.edu\/women-elective-office-2017\">Rutgers Center for Women in Politics<\/a>, women hold only 19.4 percent of all seats in the US Congress.\nNonetheless, female politicians in Spain complain of having to counteract entrenched sexism. I understand that Spain has a deeply embedded culture of machismo, so I wondered whether female politicians in Spain have different experiences than their US counterparts. Minder interviewed a number of female politicians in Spain who reported\n\n\n<ul>\n \t\n\n<li>Sexual harassment is common, which includes inappropriate touching, leering, and sexualized comments.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>The women receive insults for daring to express opinions that differ from those of male colleagues. Last year a group of female colleagues held an open meeting under the banner \u201cWe Haven\u2019t Come to Look Good\u201d and read aloud insults they have received on the job. These remarks tend to mix political criticism with personal insults. Legislator Anna Gabriel explained, \u201cWhat we hear has to do with our political stance, but the comments almost always include something about our bodies, sexuality, sex lives, and whether we\u2019re beautiful or not.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Ada Colau, the woman mayor of Barcelona, reports that she has been told she should sell fish or scrub floors instead of being mayor.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nMinder notes that sexism and sexual harassment are not limited to Spain, and I agree. In fact, I don\u2019t detect any difference between these reports from female politicians in Spain and my previous <a href=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/misogyny-and-double-standards-for-women-in-politics-and-at-work\/%20\">article<\/a> about the double standards women face in US politics. We see these same sexist dynamics in Donald J. Trump\u2019s many demeaning comments during the 2016 presidential election about the appearance, attractiveness, and body parts of his female opponents and of other women who dared to challenge him.\nA recent article by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-fix\/wp\/2017\/04\/08\/hillary-clinton-says-misogyny-played-a-role-in-her-loss-research-suggests-she-might-be-right\/?utm_term=.1bed4ae9cb89\">Amber Phillips<\/a> of <em>The Washington Post<\/em> about Hillary Clinton\u2019s loss cites research from the nonpartisan Barbara Lee Foundation, which studies women in politics. Phillips includes the Lee Foundation\u2019s suggestions for candidates:\n\n\n<ul>\n \t\n\n<li>Voters (both male and female) care whether their\u00a0female politicians are <em>likable<\/em>, an attribute that is not something they need from their male political leaders.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li><strong><em>Women candidates should not<\/em><\/strong> pose for a head shot. Instead, circulate more candid, informal photos of the candidate engaging with her community\u2014say hanging out with children on a playground. \u201cTo show likability, a woman doing her job among constituents is effective,\u201d the study&#8217;s authors say.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li><strong><em>Women candidates should not<\/em><\/strong> take credit all the time for their accomplishments, which men are expected to do.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li><strong><em>Women candidates need to<\/em><\/strong> recognize that their hair, makeup and clothes will be scrutinized by voters much more than a man&#8217;s.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li><em>If the candidate is a mother<\/em>, voters worry about the impact her\u00a0public-office job will have on her\u00a0children. They do not hold men to this same standard.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Voters recognize this is all a <em>double standard<\/em>, and yet they \u201cactively participate in it <em>and<\/em> are conscious of doing so.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\u201cTime and again, we found that women candidates still bump up against the gendered expectations voters have (for politicians),\u201d said Barbara Lee, citing research her foundation and the nonpartisan Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University will release this spring. As for a woman running for president, Lee comments, \u201cAfter all, for 228 years, the presidency has looked decidedly male.\u201d Not enough American voters were able to accept a woman in that role.\nThe misogyny displayed during the 2016 election has energized a record number of women to run for office in the United States in 2018 and 2020. Let\u2019s work together to support our women candidates by pushing through this culture\u2019s entrenched misogyny.\nPhoto courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/bcnencomu\/17470876806\/\">Barcelona en Com\u00fa<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/2.0\/\">CC by-nd 2.0<\/a>]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[206,274,349,457,523,526,543,612,613,615],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-female-politicians","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-likability","tag-politics","tag-sexism","tag-sexual-harassment","tag-spain","tag-women","tag-women-candidates","tag-women-in-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}