Abstract
Lori Cox Han and Caroline Heldman's Madam President? Gender and Politics on the Road to the White House tackles an important question: what are the remaining barriers to a woman becoming president of the United States? With Kamala Harris's election to the vice presidency in the 2020 election, we might think this question no longer carries the same significance. The insights of this edited volume, though, allow us to explore both the progress and the continuing barriers confronted by women who seek the presidency. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, one hundred years ago, and only in more recent decades have we seen women achieving elected office in visibly higher numbers in Congress, state legislatures, governorships, and mayoral offices. Winning the vice presidency is a profound milestone, made all the more important because Harris is Black and of Indian and Jamaican descent. While there is critical progress for women in politics, this has been and continues to be a long road to travel.
Given that the book's contributors are political scientists, one might expect that the chapters, as they address why no woman has yet been elected president, would focus only on the political realm; but ultimately the volume's take-home point is that the largest remaining barrier is not the political machinery per se, but rather culture and society generally. What stands in the way of a woman occupying the U.S. presidency, according to the book's conclusions, is a widely held set of beliefs that only men are truly fit to be the highest leader of the country. In fact, these beliefs also tell us that only “manly” men should hold this office. The book's cultural argument helps explain why in 2016 a man who had been accused of sexual assault by multiple women and who admitted to such behavior on the Access Hollywood tape was able to defeat the first female candidate nominated to be president by a major political party. In fact, as Heldman and Han remark in their concluding chapter, Trump “weaponize[ed]” the accusations against him to promote a view among some that he was a highly “virile” man, and enough voters were receptive to the argument, along with a litany of racist, anti-immigrant, and nationalist claims, that in the end he won the election.
A number of chapters in the volume provide evidence of the importance of culture in understanding why a woman has not been elected president. For instance, Meredith Conroy examines news media coverage of female and male candidates for the presidency, showing how gender stereotypes that undermine confidence in women's leadership are a common trope, as they appear in both the language and the imagery of the coverage. Her chapter even points out how some male candidates are portrayed as feminine while others are defined as masculine. Anne Pluta and Misty Knight-Finley delve into political party culture, discussing how traditional beliefs about women and their fitness for leadership undermine the Republican Party's ability to promote female candidates. Linda Beail and Lilly Goren take us on a tour of fictional television female presidents and vice presidents to show more acceptance among television audiences today of these characters but also the differential treatment when women and men are portrayed in these roles. Meena Bose, in her chapter, reveals how national security concerns in the post-9/11 years have worked to undermine public confidence in women's ability to lead the country.
Other chapters in the volume help us see that the political machinery itself for the most part is not standing in the way of a woman running for and succeeding in winning the presidency. Pluta and Knight-Finley’s chapter describes the successes of the Democratic Party in supporting female candidates, including many women of color, often because of female leadership in the party. In a close look at campaign fundraising, Victoria Farrar-Myers shows that female candidates are just as capable, if not more capable in some cases, as their male counterparts in gaining significant financial support for political races. Karen Hult's chapter tracks the growing successes of female candidates in winning gubernatorial and mayoral elections, positions that historically have provided a pipeline to the presidency.
In sum, Madam President? offers a straightforward account of both the important progress made by female political candidates and the pronounced cultural barriers that remain and continue to impede the election of a woman to the presidency. The editors’ concluding chapter is particularly helpful in gaining an overview of the work. The book was published just before the 2020 election, and I expected to find the work dated, especially with Harris's election to the vice presidency. While this important victory does date the volume, its cultural and political analysis still holds merit, and a woman still has not broken through this highest glass ceiling. With Harris's election, though, a woman is closer than ever.
As a sociologist, my one caveat regarding the volume is that, given the weight of cultural beliefs in undermining women's campaigns for the presidency, I would have liked greater exploration of those who hold misogynistic and sexist views, how these views intersect with racism, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism, how such views are learned, and, importantly, how they can be unlearned. But this book provides necessary insights into the highly gendered dynamics that affect who fills this highest political office.