The 2008 Gendered Campaign and the Problem with "Hillary Studies"

During the primaries for the mid-term 2010 election, the media once again unfurled the tired phrase "Year of the Woman," based on the prominence of a handful of interesting and perhaps unexpected women candidates running for office under the mantle of "change." After more than a decade of high-profile women in elected and appointed positions, of women running for office, of the presumed influence of "the women's vote" in national contests, when presidential campaigns now routinely include women candidates (if not as front-runners), and when a woman has been only two heartbeats away from the Oval Office for several years, the slogan "Year of the Woman" seems as tattered and faded as an antique version of Old Glory. How many "years of the woman" must be endured before we recognize that women are critically involved in the political sphere every year, and have been for quite some time?

The resurrection of the "Year of the Woman" label has underlying implications for society, for American politics, and for communication scholars. Although it paints a tiresome picture of women as novelty items in the electoral gift shop, the recognition that there might be a singular, post-Hillary "Year of the Women" in politics points to three important features of the electoral landscape: (1) Women's position in American politics remains heavily symbolic and bound by tradition. (2) Women have not achieved parity with men in terms of leadership and influence. (3) The most prominent illustration of the lack of parity is the absence of a woman president in our nation's pantheon. The critical question of when and how we will gain an American president who is also a woman has entered the public imagination via popular culture, and has driven more than one academic investigation, so we might be well served to pay particular attention to post-2008 analyses that describe, interpret, and evaluate Hillary Clinton's closely fought campaign for the office of president, as do the four books I examine here.

Moreover, these books are instructive about the condition and future directions of gender studies in the context of political communication research, even though that is not necessarily their intent. For one thing, the area of gender and political communication research could use some factual freshening up. A few of the authors who propose to tell readers about the 2008 race carelessly and incorrectly identify Hillary Clinton as the "first serious candidate" for the presidency, a claim that insults Shirley Chisolm, Patsy Mink, Elizabeth Dole, and uncounted others who were very serious about their efforts in that direction. But as the most viable woman candidate for president, Hillary Clinton's experiences are inspiring, instructive, and problematic for envisioning the arrival of gender parity in national politics and for the shape of related scholarship.

Scholarship that examines gender and its relationship to political communication has its roots in rhetorical studies, within the broader realm of feminist scholarship, which sought to rewrite history by recovering primary texts that reflected the "accomplishments and lived experiences" of women.¹ In this, scholars continued the tradition of "great woman" case studies, into which Hillary studies aptly fit, even while her political career is ongoing.² Following the example of political science research, and confronted with the realpolitik of the twentieth century, political...