"The Hidden Sexism that Could Sway the Election" --PBS Newshour

Hey All, 

I found this article a while back regarding the not-so-hidden sexism in the election. The article, unlike others which offer similar claims, highlights the principles of Social Psychology. The first is the "theory of ambivalent sexism" which helps illustrate why men's (and women's) subconscious bias is geared against Clinton, or any woman, as Commander in Chief. A study conducted by social psychologist Peter Glick and his colleagues. They came up with two distinct categories: the first is "hostile sexism," overtly negative views about women; and “benevolent” sexism: "positive attitudes and actions which men take toward women that are based, deep-down, in feelings of superiority and dominance." Glick stated that: “Men have ambivalent attitudes toward women that are prejudiced and paternalistic, but that are also based on love and interdependence.”

Other theories of gender based sexism and discrimination, especially evident with Clinton's historic campaign has to do with violation of gender norms. Women who are viewed in traditionally masculine lights (eg. being "aggressive" or competitive, or self promotional) receive backlash from both men and women for violating gender-based and societal norms.  “The more female politicians are seen as striving for power, the less they’re trusted and the more moral outrage gets directed at them,” said Terri Vescio, a psychology professor at Penn State who studies gender bias. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” she continued. “If you’re perceived as competent, you’re not perceived as warm. But if you’re liked and trusted, you’re not seen as competent.”

Check out the full PBS article here!: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/hidden-sexism/

Comparing Representation of Women in National Assemblies

Shout out to Lauren for a great post on gender in the ongoing U.S. Senate races. It made me think about a website (hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union) that I came across a few years ago in the course of research. It compares most of the governments in the world, providing the percentage of women in each country's legislative body (usually an upper house like the Senate and a lower house like the House of Representatives). It's a little disheartening to see that the U.S. is relatively low on the list, but that is due in large part to the fact that many countries have quotas of women for any given ballot.

link here: http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

***I'm not sure if this link is under maintenance right now. If it doesn't work, here is the link for regional comparisons: http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm

Gender Parity / Senate races!

As Professor Selig mentioned in class, there are lots of fascinating non-presidential races going on all around the country. This whole business of "flipping the Senate" to turn Democratic is a huge deal, and it's really going to boil down to Senate races in about seven states. I've been following quite a few of them, and it's absolutely fascinating to watch the polls vacillate between R and D on a nearly daily basis.

As we know, the Senate has 100 seats, two for each state, and each senator's term lasts 6 years. Whereas representatives are up for reelection every single two-year term, senators are ranked into three classes that put about one-third of them up for re-election every two years. The current Senate is made up of 46 Dems (technically 45 + Bernie Sanders, an Independent) and 54 Reps, so the GOP controls the Senate. Typically, the president's party loses seats in a midterm election, which happened to a fairly damaging extent in 2014, when the Democrats lost control of the Senate.

In the 2016 election, all 34 senators in "Class 3" are up for reelection. If the Democrats want to flip the Senate, they'll need to secure 51 seats, some way or another. Let's see the breakdown of what's likely to happen (here's a fun interactive map):

• 30 Republican senators are not up for reelection, and they're fairly likely to win 14 of the seats that are up for reelection, giving the GOP a safe total of 44.
  
• 34 Democratic and 2 D-leaning independent senators are not up for reelection, and they're fairly likely to win 9 of the seats that are up for reelection, giving the Dems a safe total of 45.
  
• This leaves us with 11 contested or toss-up races. Dems need to win 6/11 to flip the Senate, or Republicans need to win 7/11 to maintain control.
  
• Nevada: Senate minority leader Harry Reid is retiring, and hand-picked a successor, former AG of Nevada Catherine Cortez Masto. This one flips almost every week, Masto against Republican Joe Heck.
  
• Arizona: My home state and an election I am heavily invested in! Guess who's up—the one, the only, John McCain, against longtime U.S. Representative, Democratic Ann Kirkpatrick. Ann has represented Arizona's District 1, a huge area that encompasses many low-income, Native American, and minority areas, and she's done a great job at it. She's a rather center-left candidate, which makes her appeal to more than just hard Dems, but John McCain is a beloved Arizona institution. He's leading by a lot right now, but we'll just have to see!
  
• Wisconsin: Dems have a lot of hope to gain a seat here, with Russ Feingold (D) against Ron Johnson (R).
  
• Missouri: Democrat and current Missouri SecState Jason Kander is challenging incumbent Republican Roy Blunt. Dems probably won't have a lot of luck here, since MO is usually red in federal elections and is a fairly strong Trump state right now. Still, the fact that this is even a tossup election is pretty remarkable!
  
• Illinois: Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat and current U.S. Representative (and the first disabled woman in Congress - she was injured while serving as a helicopter pilot in the Iraq War) is running against incumbent Mark Kirk (R).
  
• Indiana: Republican senator Dan Coats is retiring, so the former Democrat governor of Indiana, Evan Bayh, wants to step in to replace him. However, current U.S. Representative Todd Young (R) has received lots of money from outside groups to challenge Bayh. This one has been a tossup only since September, when Bayh was clearly leading before that.
  
• Ohio: Although it's fairly clear now that Rob Portman, the Republican incumbent, is going to win the Ohio seat by about 16 points, he and Democrat Ted Strickland were basically neck and neck in June and July.
  
• Pennsylvania: Incumbent Republican Pat Toomey against Democrat Katie McGinty. This one's really close, but an interesting facet that might give McGinty the lead is that Clinton has a five point lead in PA.
  
• North Carolina: Team Clinton is heavily funding former ACLU lawyer Democrat Deborah Ross, who is facing off against incumbent Republican Richard Burr.
  
• Florida: Guess who could potentially be losing in Senate seat this year? That's right, it's Marco Rubio! Current Democrat Representative Patrick Murphy is challenging him, but it's not likely that Rubio will be defeated.
  
• New Hampshire: This is a fascinating race because it's the only tossup contest between two women! Incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte faces current Democratic Governor of NH, Maggie Hassan. When I was talking about races that keep flipping back and forth almost on a daily basis, I was basically talking about this one. 

One thing that I've noticed when researching and following these races is that there are several women up for election. It was even kind of historic when California's Senate race came down to two female Democrats, even though California has had women senators for a long time now. I did a little bit of searching on women in the Senate and found this thought-provoking yet ultimately disheartening article from Five Thirty Eight about gender parity in the Senate. There are currently 20 female senators, but even with current growth rates being exponential, 538 predicts that gender parity will probably occur around 2043. Sad! 

P.S. Does anyone know the name of the first female senator? 

(I didn't! "The first woman senator, Rebecca Felton, served in 1922 (for a single day), but the first woman elected to the Senate was Hattie Caraway in 1932." - from Wikipedia.) 

Does Donald Trump Talk Like a Woman?

Fascinating read from Politico about Donald's speech and linguistic patterns, and how his manner of talking often resembles a woman's. The article also mentions a political psychologist who has indexed 35 political candidates over the last 10 years by how "masculine" or "feminine" their speech is. (In case you were wondering, Trump is the most feminine-speaking candidate, and Jim Webb—remember him?—is the most masculine-speaking candidate.)

Here are the features that the author mentions give Trump more feminine speech. She also notes that this analysis is not what Trump talks about, it's how he says it.

• Heavier use of the pronoun "I" rather than "we."
• More frequent use of emotion-laden descriptive words, such as "phenomenal," "disgusting," "beautiful," "despise." 
• Less frequent use of long words in speech and writing.

Here's the Politico article: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/trump-feminine-speaking-style-214391

And here's a short but effective rebuttal from Vox: http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/10/27/13437050/donald-trump-linguistics-politico-female

Women Activists in Poland- Feminism as a Political Movement

Here is a link to a news story about women activists and their protests in Poland. They are continuing their protest against the extremely strict abortion laws in very Catholic Poland that was successful on 'Black Monday' earlier this month (for more information on Black Monday: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37540139). 

For this protest, "women also stayed away from work and school and refused to do domestic chores, in a protest inspired by a women's strike in Iceland in 1975." I think that this is a significant news story on its own, as these women are undoubtedly making history, and the demonstration of solidarity in this strike is inspiring. 


However, it is also interesting in relation to Caitlyn's post about feminism as a political movement, and Steph's comment on that post as well. For these women in Poland, feminism is most obviously a political movement. And, it has to be political for a significant portion of these women for the protests and strikes to have an effect. I think Steph was right to say that perceiving feminism as more of a personal than political movement could be celebrated because it means that we have no need for protests like these to retain our freedoms in America. But personally, I believe feminism is also believing in the equality of all women, and this goes beyond our borders. And when you look beyond those, you see the struggles of the women in Poland, trans women everywhere, and so many other areas where political activism is still needed for progress. So, perhaps we are not yet ready for feminism to be just personal. As Steph said, "this assumption would lead us to stop pushing change and may forever hold true feminist society at bay."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37745693

10 Amazing Women That You Won't Find in History Books

I came across a post on Facebook titled 10 Amazing Women That You Won't Find in History Books and I think this is worth taking a browse through. The only women I recognized was Ida Wells and I learned a lot of interesting facts about female activists, innovators, and scientists around the world. Just as we read about Rosa Parks in Freedom's Daughters, there was a civil rights activist a century earlier named Elizabeth Jennings who refused to give up her seat on a New York City streetcar in 1854! Jennings set an important precedent in challenging segregation and by 1860 most of the streetcar lines in New York City were integrated. If you'd like to read more about her (or others), Jennings is the second women highlighted in this article:

http://www.livescience.com/55485-amazing-women-history-forgot.html

Reaction to Melania Trump's Anderson Cooper Interview

http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/melania-trump-conspiracy-theorist

Melania Trump has been a figure of much discussion throughout this presidential campaign. She unflinchingly believes in her husband, but is also not allowed to speak for herself for much of the campaign. The few times in which she has spoken for herself, like her speech at the Republican convention, she has come off as oblivious, unintelligent, a fraud, and blindly obedient to her husband and his policies. During this interview with Anderson Cooper that happened last night, she labels all of the mainstream media that has reported on her husband's allegations of sexual assault as dishonest and that the media outlets are in a conspiracy with Hillary Clinton to make Trump look bad. Her inclination to disparage and criticize women in a similar way to how her husband does is confusing to consumers of modern media and also unlike other female political figures in the limelight. I watched this whole interview but I thought that this reaction to it was something worth reading.