Thinking about the historic number of women running for office this year made me return to a piece I wrote back in 2016, trying to understand why there was such a big gender gap in terms of who holds political office in the United States. One hypothesis: Women candidates may not be any more likely to lose an election than their male counterparts, but they are more likely to experience gendered, sexist criticism and objectification when they run. (One paper demonstrated this by googling candidates’ names alongside the word “porn” and comparing the difference in search results for men and women.)
That difference in rhetoric can be hard to quantify because it is, in some ways, subjective. Also, it’s not always possible to count the number of times it happens. But it can have practical impacts and, some researchers, it could be a factor in discouraging other women from running for office in the future.
But then there’s this year. In the midst of a lot of public attention focused on sexism and sexual violence against women — and following a historic loss by a female presidential candidate whose campaign was the target of a lot of sexist rhetoric — more women are running than ever. So what gives? I asked Amanda Hunter from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which works for gender equality in politics. She told me that, while female candidates are still getting a lot of the same old sexist attacks, there are a LOT of big policy issues — including gun violence, health care costs, education and sexual violence — in play that matter to women candidates. And the ability to have a policy impact on a specific issue is a major factor in why women run. It’s possible that, even if sexist rhetoric does discourage women from running, there were just way more other things this political cycle that made running now seem important.