GC Times Talk

When Madam President moves into the Oval Office of the White House, she will share a path that several women have helped to pave. Often left off the history pages--and out of the minds of many Americans--are the presidential bids of several women: Margaret Chase Smith, 1964; Shirley Chisholm, 1972; Patricia Schroeder,1988; Elizabeth Dole, 2000; Carol Moseley Braun 2004; and Hillary Clinton, 2008/ 2016. Still Paving the Way for Madam President shows the progress women candidates have made as they have moved from symbolic candidates to viable candidates and in 2016, the Democratic nominee. This study shines a light on the persistent obstacles that face women candidates and offers insight into what it will take to finally shatter the seemingly impenetrable political glass ceiling.

Gender and the American Presidency: Nine Presidential Women and the Barriers They Faced, by Theodore F. Sheckels, Nichola D. Gutgold, and Diana Bartelli Carlin, is a book that includes interviews with several of the subjects, inviting not only the reader, but the women themselves to consider why they have been dismissed as presidential contenders. Gender and media scholars as well as the general public will find the barriers of communication style, geography, stereotyping, and more, both frustrating and fascinating as the US attempts to catch up with most of the world where women are routinely elected presidents and prime ministers.

When Hillary Clinton announced her 2008 bid for president she was the Democratic front-runner. Despite this, she received less coverage than Barack Obama, who trailed her in the polls. Such a disparity is indicative of the gender bias the media has demonstrated in covering women candidates since the first woman ran for America's highest office in 1872. Tracing the campaigns of eight women who ran for president through 2004--Victoria Woodhull, Belva Lockwood, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Lenora Fulani, Elizabeth Dole, and Carol Moseley Braun--Erika Falk finds little progress in the fair treatment of women candidates. A thorough comparison of the women's campaigns to those of their male opponents reveals a worrisome trend of sexism in press coverage--a trend that still persists today. While women have been elected to the highest offices in countries such as England, Germany, and India, the idea that a woman could be president of the United States provokes scoffs and ridicule. The press portrays female candidates as unviable, unnatural, and incompetent, and often ignores or belittles women instead of reporting their ideas and intent. Since voters learn most details about presidential candidates through media outlets, Falk asserts that this prevailing bias calls into question the modern democratic assumption that men and women have comparable access to positions of power.

In order to understand the motivations for and implications of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House- and her subsequent defeat-the authors explore sexism and gender bias in U.S. political and social culture. While there is some indication that overt sexism toward women in politics is declining, whether this is true for women who run for the highest office in American politics remains relatively unknown. Hillary Clinton's historic run as the 2016 Democratic nominee, however, allows scholars and journalists to contextualize decades of scholarship on sex, gender, and the American presidency. In Sex and Gender in the 2016 Presidential Election, the authors, all experts on gender in politics, analyze the nature of gender in public opinion, media coverage, social media, and culture during the 2016 presidential election. They assess whether conventional expectations and theories hold up in today's sociopolitical climate. Moreover, they consider how Clinton's foray into relatively uncharted territory might redirect the political field-and its implications for women with political ambitions-going forward.

What elements of American political and rhetorical culture block the imaginingOCoand thus, the electingOCoof a woman as president? Examining both major-party and third-party campaigns by women, including the 2008 campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, the authors of "Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture" identify the factors that limit electoral possibilities for women. Pundits have been predicting womenOCOs political ascendency for years. And yet, although the 2008 presidential campaign featured Hillary Clinton as an early frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and Sarah Palin as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee, no woman has yet held either of the top two offices. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but the authors assert that the question certainly encompasses more than the shortcomings of women candidates or the demands of the particular political moment. Instead, the authors identify a pernicious backlash against women presidential candidatesOCoone that is expressed in both political and popular culture. In "Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture," Kristina Horn Sheeler and Karrin Vasby Anderson provide a discussion of US presidentiality as a unique rhetorical role. Within that framework, they review womenOCOs historical and contemporary presidential bids, placing special emphasis on the 2008 campaign. They also consider how presidentiality is framed in candidate oratory, campaign journalism, film and television, digital media, and political parody. "