Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns

2. Unnatural, Incapable, and Unviable

2 Unnatural, Incapable, and Unviable S o now women think they are capable of holding the highest office in the land. It’s bad enough that we allow these female creatures to operate automobiles. Imagine what would happen if one of them became president! Let’s keep the women at home where they belong” (Krasner 1964). This opinion, expressed in a letter to the editor during Margaret Chase Smith’s campaign for the presidency in 1964, is just one of many articulating the idea that women do not belong in the political sphere.An analysis of the explicit arguments in the press over the last 130 years of coverage of women presidential candidates reveals three points that were consistently made: women are unnatural in politics; women are incompetent as leaders; and women are not viable as candidates.Though these arguments were rarely justified, when reasons were given it was usually that women were considered too emotional, unable to handle crises, or obsessed with trivial matters. There were also voices in the texts that disputed these themes. The assertions of women’s unsuitability and incompetence were occasionally countered by historical examples of competent and capable national leaders who were women. Understanding these arguments gives us insights into our expectations for both leaders and women. Moreover, an awareness of the rhetorical challenges women are likely to encounter can help women aspiring to lead to develop communication strategies that will overcome these hurdles. “ 32 women for president Many scholars date the idea that women and men belong in “separate spheres” to the rise of industrialization and professionalization in the 1800s. As industrialization brought men into a public work space and as they became identified with an occupation, a parallel private sphere was created for women at home.As one observer put it, “Middle class homes were being built on the concept of men working in the public world and depending on women’s labour, both conjugal and servant, in the private realm of the home” (Ross 2006, 228). The ideology suggested that not only was it proper for women to stay home and take care of the house, children, and other domestic needs, but also that such a position was natural and instinctual. Some scholars note that although the ideology of the public/private divide is often dated to the rise of industrialization in the 1800s, in fact women have always worked (see Bose 1987). Moreover, they note that the idea that women are unnatural in the public sphere has its roots further back in social history. For example, the communications scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson (1988) noted that from the time of Aristotle and before, women were supposed to be silent in public and their primary duties pertained to childbearing and not to public acts. As evidence she cites Paul in the Christian Bible: “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor. Yet women will be saved through bearing children” (1 Timothy 2:9–15). Such sentiments resulted in a cultural taboo against women’s public speech. This taboo persisted though much of Western history so that “it was virtually unheard-of for women outside the Quaker community to give speeches until the ante-bellum period, and then only the brave attempted this feat. Indeed, the taboo was so strong that a man chaired the famous [women’s rights] meeting at Seneca Falls in 1848” (Matthews 1992, 7). Thus political women throughout American history were considered unnatural in part because they were fighting a general belief that the appearance of women in any public sphere was inappropriate.The feminist scholar Glenna Matthews (1992) noted how this ideology has even seeped into our language. For example, “public man” has a positive connotation as one who serves society, while “public woman” is negative, connoting a prostitute. This ideology of the separate spheres was in part based on a conceptualization of men and women as binary opposites grounded in women’s ability (and men’s inability) to bear children (Poovey 1988). Maternal instinct was credited with making women naturally self-sacrificing, domestic, and unnatural, incapable, and unviable 33 nurturing. At the same time a woman’s “natural” talents with children and her ability to bear children were also considered the cause of her irrationality and...