A Female President? Big Deal.
Originally published by Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times
In her concession speech to President-elect Donald Trump in November 2016, Hillary Clinton declared, “We have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will — and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”
There was lots of talk about gender in politics then. Many of us thought that Clinton lost in part because of both hard-core misogyny and a softer unconscious bias that led just enough voters to think of presidents only as guys in suits.
I’ve been thinking lately of that glass ceiling because of a conversation we’re not having — one about the gender of the Democratic nominee if Joe Biden takes the advice from so many of us to drop out of the presidential race.
If Biden withdraws, his most likely successor is a Black woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, who polls a bit better than Biden against Trump. Some of us have urged instead that Democrats nominate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, believing that she would be the nominee most likely to defeat Trump. And a few of us have mentioned the talented Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a former governor and a star of the Biden cabinet.
Our argument isn’t a feminist one about the significance of elevating women. It’s not even an argument that these politicians would perform better than Biden as president. Astonishingly, given our history, it’s that they would also be more electable.
Perhaps even more intriguing, gender has largely gone unmentioned. I’ve had people push back at my recommendation of Whitmer on the basis that she’s untested nationally, that choosing her over Harris would antagonize Black voters, that her name recognition is weak. All fair objections. But I haven’t heard anyone scoff: But Whitmer is a woman. We tried that in 2016, and it got us Trump.
Another marker of progress in how we evaluate female candidates is that the conversation is about their policies, experience and political prospects. We’re not diverted by, say, their clothing choices.
Granted, a female nominee in 2024 may still pay a price for her gender. Gallup this year found that 5 percent of Americans still said they would not vote for a female candidate for president. That reflects a steady decline in chauvinism — in 1937, 64 percent said they could not vote for a woman — but that 5 percent is still enough to decide an election (of course, conversely, some voters may be more likely to vote for a female candidate).
(Americans spread their prejudices around. Some 5 percent would not support a Black candidate, 7 percent would not back a Jew and roughly a quarter would not vote for a person who was gay or was Muslim. Two-thirds say they would not vote for an octogenarian and an even higher percentage say they would not vote for someone convicted by a jury of a felony — which is at odds with whom they support in November’s election, a reminder that politics is ever fluid.)
At least in the past, researchers also found that women faced a frustrating challenge in competing for top jobs. A man could be regarded as both authoritative and a nice guy, but assertive and competent women were often regarded as less likable. That may be one reason that even in 2024, only 10 percent of Fortune 500 C.E.O.s are women.
Yet hold on. There’s also some evidence that female leaders outperform men on average.