Kamala Harris was a candidate of many firsts, together with the primary Black and South Asian lady to run for president because the Democratic nominee.
Her resounding, swift loss within the presidential race to Republican Donald Trump on November 5 means many issues to completely different individuals, together with the truth that American voters are unable to break the glass ceiling and elect a lady president.
Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Dialog U.S., spoke with Farida Jalalzai, a scholar of ladies political leaders and gender in politics, to higher perceive the importance of Harris’s defeat—and the way the U.S. stands aside from different international locations which have had feminine leaders.
How necessary was Kamala Harris’s gender in her loss?
I can’t say it was a most important cause she misplaced. However what I can say is it was an element that contributed to her lack of assist, particularly once you evaluate her performance with Joe Biden’s in the identical locations and with virtually the entire identical voting teams he gained in 2020. Gender was a part of the marketing campaign panorama in many various methods this election. Trump and his supporters used insulting tropes about what a lady chief would appear to be on the world stage. He used a lot of misogynistic and racist appeals in his marketing campaign and tried to mobilize voters in ways in which aimed to bolster patriarchy.
What does Harris’s loss say about the place gender equality stands within the nation?
I’m not shocked that the glass ceiling for women in politics remains to be tremendous sturdy within the U.S. That is an instance of the nation’s limits of creating true progress on ladies’s empowerment and equality. After all, the truth that Harris was a lady of coloration vying to be the primary lady president of the U.S. is pertinent.
Trump asserted that the country needs a strong man to guide. He portrayed Harris as a liberal extremist and customarily obtained the message by means of {that a} woman would not be up to the job of president.
When Geraldine Ferraro ran as the primary feminine vice presidential candidate nominated by a serious get together in 1984, there have been a whole lot of questions on whether or not she could be tough enough on the world stage. Now, there are nonetheless questions on whether or not a lady could be powerful sufficient to guide.
How does this election evaluate with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 marketing campaign in opposition to Trump?
In 2016, Hillary Clinton highlighted the historic nature of a lady operating for president of the U.S.—and, in fact, she obtained nearly 3 million votes more than he did, although she nonetheless misplaced the election. Harris was reluctant to say the historic nature of her candidacy. She didn’t point out this when she gave her acceptance speech on the Democratic National Convention in August 2024. She not too long ago defined this by saying, “Nicely, I’m clearly a lady. The purpose that most individuals actually care about is are you able to do the job and do you have a plan to actually focus on them.”
One other necessary issue is Trump’s political trajectory. In 2016, Trump was nonetheless seen as an outlier and an extremist. Many political scientists—together with myself—didn’t assume he would obtain the nomination, not to mention win the overall election that yr. We see now that Trump is the new normal of the Republican Get together. Extra reasonable Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, are additionally not in energy anymore. The get together has change into extra excessive.
Is the nation shifting backward on gender equality, or is it caught in impartial?
A couple of months in the past, I’d have stated that the nation is shifting ahead, however I really feel prefer it’s shifting backward now. That Trump’s sexist and racist messages resonated with a considerable variety of individuals—or at the very least didn’t trouble some sufficient—is a priority. Trump additionally stated excessive issues about ladies in 2016, together with calling Hillary Clinton “a nasty woman.” This time round, these assaults appeared extra normalized, saying that Harris was in a robust political place solely as a result of she traded sexual favors, for instance.
Ladies have led different international locations. What makes the U.S. completely different?
The U.S. is a nuclear energy and a serious army and financial drive. These realms are usually stereotyped by some as masculine. The president stands atop the U.S. political system and is instantly elected. Women leaders often ascend through appointment as prime ministers in parliamentary systems. One of many vulnerabilities of prime ministers is that their terms in office are less secure. The traits deemed becoming for these roles—in search of compromise, for instance—could show much less of a problem to ladies than they might in the event that they have been in search of to be president of a robust nation just like the U.S. on the world stage.
At the moment, solely two ladies presidents who govern in presidential programs have been instantly elected, and they’re in Honduras and Mexico. The previous is a former first girl, and the latter has sturdy ties to her predecessor. Whereas ladies have been presidents of countries, a number of, resembling the present presidents of Ethiopia, India and Greece, are basically symbolic. These positions are very completely different from the U.S. presidency, which has a extra dominant function.
Additionally it is fairly unusual for a lady to be elected president in a presidential system with out being a member of a robust political household or with out being supported by a male predecessor. Once you have a look at Laura Chinchilla, the previous president of Costa Rica, or former president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, what related a whole lot of these feminine politicians is that they have been very a lot aided by male predecessors.
Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner, the previous president of Argentina, had a wealth of political expertise earlier than she got here to workplace in 2007, however she served instantly after her husband, Néstor Kirchner, was president.
There’s a complexity to those instances, and a whole lot of these ladies introduced in their very own political credentials and expertise. However there’s nonetheless an inclination to have the extra demand that ladies in politics have these connections.
Farida Jalalzai is a professor of political science and an affiliate dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech.
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