Newsflash: Candidates Reinforce Patriarchy

The vast majority of Americans are aware that this year is an election year. In November, we will be ending the nearly 15-month process that is the presidential election. While the conventions are still a few months away, we can safely assume that the two candidates will be President Barack Obama for the Democrats and Mitt Romney for the Republicans. Even though we are a little over 6 months away from the election, the candidates are starting to compete against one another directly and are trying to claim how they will be the superior to their opposition. They will be discussing things like the economy for the next few months. One of the issues that has been discussed by both candidates lately is the “War on Women.” While this is definitely an issue that deserves further discussion, the candidates have to walk a fine line when they talk about women. They have to make sure that they are not treating women differently than men. In this way, it is not a good thing for candidates to give extra attention in order to prevent them from become a token special interest group.

            Some people do not think that there is a war on women. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has a funny yet thoughtful clip about whether there is a “War on Women.”¹ Predictably, there is disagreement depending on what side of the political spectrum one falls on. In his clip, the conservatives do not believe that there is a war on women, unless it is just against conservative women. The liberals see the recent laws enacted across the country, many by Republicans, as limiting women’s rights. Stewart’s show highlights some of the ridiculousness of the political divide and acts as a reminder that laws regardless of what political party they identify with will affect women.

            The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert also adds humor to this crazy situation and other situation by his telling of the news on his fake news show. Colbert’s host character is a conservative. Therefore, his show’s take on the situation must first be considered under the understanding that he is playing a role. His expressed views are much less his own compared to Stewart’s, which have a greater probability of being his, or at least his writer’s, viewpoints. His hyperbolic style helps him to address issues that may be hard to hear from either political party. Like Stewart, Colbert’s show recently had part of an episode about the recent political relations involving women². This show did not discuss whether or not there is a war waging on women. Instead, it focused more on the political parties targeting women. As can be seen with the clip, both parties have been giving special attention to women in the last few months. When Colbert jokes about acknowledging that women exist, he is likely remarking about the way that both parties are only targeting women now that it will benefit them. By remarking that motherhood is hard work, they are attempting to win over female voters. The Colbert Report and The Daily Show put a comedic spin on the news and can pick up some of the subtleties that the regular news often either misses or glosses over.

            Polls, polls, polls. The next few months will be filled with polls trying to figure out how well Romney and Obama are doing in comparison to each other. There was a poll by the USA TODAY and Gallup that was released earlier this month. According to this poll, President Obama has a lead over Mitt Romney³. Susan Page wrote an article in USA TODAY that discussed the poll and helped understand how the candidates were doing in regards to certain populations. Romney is doing much better in the category of men age 50 or older, not surprising since they typically vote for Republicans. However, President Obama is doing much better in the category of women under 50. To compare men’s and women’s polling directly: “In the poll, Romney leads among all men by a single point, but the president leads among women by 18. That reflects a greater disparity between the views of men and women than the 12-point gender gap in the 2008 election.” ³ This is likely due the recent laws coming from state legislatures that have gained national attention. There have been many laws passed in the recent months that have directly targeted women. These include things like restricting abortions or increasing the amount of regulations involved in receiving one. Since the poll was conducted and released, the Wisconsin governor repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act in his state.⁴ This act repeals the law in Wisconsin that would allow anyone who was discriminated at their work to seek damages. There has not been a suit filed, but the law itself was enough to scare employers with the income disparity between men and women decreasing greatly.⁴ This law was not directly written for women, it was for anyone discriminated against, but it was largely targeted towards women.⁴ It is likely because of repeals like this and the abortion laws, which have been backed by Republicans, that Republican candidate Romney is lagging behind Democrat President Obama. It is very easy for women to project state-level politics to the national politician who would be representing their party.

            Whether or not these laws equate a war on women are easily debatable. What is less outwardly controversial is saying that Romney and President Obama are responding to these laws. As alluded in the Colbert Report clip, President Obama is trying to distance himself from those laws by stating that he sides with women and wants to protect their rights.² Romney is taking a different approach. He has been on the campaign trail attacking Obama’s policies. He has been saying that the president’s economic policies have failed women.⁵ Adam Sorensen writes about some of Romney’s recent campaign tactics. He says that Romney’s statistic of 92.3% of the jobs lost since Obama took office is correct, however this largely ignores that the recession started well before January 2009 and that the original fields targeted were dominated by men.⁵ The first industries that were affected when the economy started to slump were blue collar jobs that were largely dominated by men, such as construction and factory work. Sorensen points out that the reason why Romney is trying to say that Obama hasn’t helped women because, “Democrats have been aggressively making the case that the GOP is carrying out a nefarious “war on women,” seeking to deny them free contraception (Republicans support a broad “conscience clause” exemption to allow employers to opt out of providing coverage under a new mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services), abortions (Romney wants to withdraw federal funds for Planned Parenthood, which provides a range of women’s health services), and unfettered access to reproductive health (a number of Republican state legislatures have passed prerequirements for obtaining an abortion, such as receiving an ultrasound or hearing a description of the fetus).”⁵ Sorensen continues on to say that Romney is completely valid in criticizing Obama’s economic policies, but he shouldn’t do it by separating it out to gender. He would have a better argument if he did not use such a misleading statistic. It seems that if they were honest about it, Republicans would have a better argument.

            Indeed, Sorensen is on to something. The candidates should not be targeting women. While it is very important that they acknowledge that women should have rights that are not impeded upon, it is more important that they do not treat women like a special interest group. By treating women like they are something different from men and that they need to be catered to politically, the candidates are just reinforcing patriarchy. As Allan Johnson discusses, the nature of patriarchy is that men and women are inherently different.⁶ In this model, men are there to protect women. They have rights, but men give those rights to them and then the rights are also protected by men.⁶ Women are never given true equality when their position in society is always considered in relationship to men. By targeting their campaigns to women, the candidates are automatically giving women a separate value to women compared to men. This is just falling back into the system of patriarchy. If the candidates want to truly improve women’s rights and to place them in equal positions to men, then they will not be targeting women. They won’t put their wives on stage to say that women are “special”, because tactics like this only reinforce patriarchy.    

Works Cited

1. Stewart, Jon. "Battle for the War on Women." Accessed 29 April, 2012. http://www.hulu.com/watch/351127/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-the-battle-for-the-war-on-women. 

2. Colbert, Stephen. "A Beautiful War for Women." Accessed 29 April, 2012. http://www.hulu.com/watch/351130/the-colbert-report-a-beautiful-war-for-women

3.Page, Susan. "Swing States Poll: A shift by women puts Obama in lead." USA TODAY, April 2, 2012. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-04-01/swing-states-poll/53930684/1

4.Goldberg, Michelle. "Wisconsin’s Repeal of Equal Pay Rights Adds to Battles for Women." The Daily Beast, April 7, 2012. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/07/wisconsin-s-repeal-of-equal-pay-rights-adds-to-battles-for-women.html

5. Sorensen, Adam. "Why Romney Shouldn’t Bother Fighting in the ‘Women Wars'." Time, April 12, 2012. http://swampland.time.com/2012/04/12/why-romney-shouldnt-bother-fighting-in-the-women-wars/

6. Johnson, Allan. Patriarchy. pg 39.