{"id":959,"date":"2016-04-25T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=959"},"modified":"2016-04-25T08:00:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T12:00:39","slug":"are-women-candidates-changing-presidential-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/are-women-candidates-changing-presidential-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Women Candidates Changing Presidential Politics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-960\" src=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/female-candidates-300x155.png\" alt=\"female candidates\" width=\"300\" height=\"155\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/female-candidates-300x155.png 300w, https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/female-candidates-768x396.png 768w, https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/female-candidates.png 799w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>It is really significant that two women ran as candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign. Kelly Ditmar, writing for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msmagazine.com\/spring2016\/index.asp\"><em>Ms.<\/em> magazine<\/a> notes that while Hillary Clinton felt she had to prove that she was \u201cman enough\u201d to be commander in chief in the 2008 campaign, both she and Carly Fiorina ran on their own terms in 2016, \u201cdisrupting the images, tactics, and rules of the game that have been determined by men.\u201d Neither woman denied the influence of gender on her experience:\n\n\n<ul>\n \t\n\n<li>Carly Fiorina talked about how being a woman informed her bid for office. She also shared her own battles to overcome sexism in corporate America as an example of her toughness.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Hillary Clinton has talked about the \u201cmerit\u201d of gender in that it shapes our lived realities and the perspectives we bring to policy making. She has discussed her understanding of the need for paid family leave by sharing her experiences of being a primary caregiver and a working woman. She gives equal attention to the concerns of both women and men in her campaign agenda.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nEven though Fiorina dropped out of the race during the primary season, the fact that for awhile two women were running for president representing two different political perspectives may help normalize the image of women in leadership in the future. Both Fiorina and Clinton also influenced the agendas of their parties. Fiorina, responding to Trump\u2019s attacks on her appearance as \u201cunattractive\u201d in his <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> interview, called women\u2019s attention to how these attacks demeaned women. Clinton has pushed her party to make paid family leave, pay equity and the provision of affordable, quality childcare central to the party agenda.\nBut double standards remain for women candidates. Dittmar notes that Clinton must still confront the double bind of \u201cneeding to prove her strength without being characterized as unfeminine or unlikeable.\u201d She was recently characterized by a well-known journalist as unacceptably aggressive for \u201cshouting\u201d during rallies and debates\u2014behavior considered normal for her male opponents. Dittmar also observed that \u201cgender shapes the experience and behavior of each candidate and, like any identity, brings variety and richness to the race. In this respect, every candidate is playing a gender card, women and men alike.\u201d Amen to that.\n&nbsp;\n\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/80038275@N00\/24644847102\/in\/photolist-bbWonH-CQzmXn-DDH3nX-8Cxs7x-DxMhqW-DJcDRM-DJcRrF-DJbTi8-DxMAM5-DJbNf2-Dh5wqE-DzVR3a-DzVz7H-dHp6wB-6aHzb1\">Carly Fiorina at NH FITN 2016<\/a>\u201d by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/80038275@N00\/\">Michael Vadon<\/a> and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hillaryforiowa\/17135176916\/\">April 14, 2015 &#8211; Jones Street Java House in Le Claire, Iowa<\/a>\u201d by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hillaryforiowa\/\">Michael Davidson for Hillary for America<\/a> are licensed under <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a>. Both images have been cropped.]]>\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":[77,87,152,208,225,226,274,339,457,464,523,612],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-candidates","tag-carly-fiorina","tag-double-standards","tag-feminism","tag-gender","tag-gender-bias","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-leadership","tag-politics","tag-president","tag-sexism","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","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=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}