Kelly Dittmar on The Persistence of Gender in American Politics
On Thursday, February 27, Professor of Political Science Mariela Daby introduced Kelly Dittmar, Ph.D. as a guest speaker to give a talk on “The 2024 Election and The Persistence of Gender in US Elections.” Dittmar works as an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, where she focuses on gender in American political institutions like the U.S. presidential election.
Gender played a notable role in the 2024 presidential election. On the one side, there was Kamala Harris, the second female and the first female multiracial presidential candidate nominated by the Democratic Party. In contrast, Republican Donald Trump ran on a position of open misogyny and racism for the third time, and emphasized his movement’s particularly strong anti-trans rhetoric. Given Trump’s victory, Dittmar noted how those who opposed Trump’s views have felt a lot of anxiety and stress about politics. On the topic, she said, “I can’t promise to ease your anxiety… but it’s worthwhile to have these conversations.”
In the principal part of her talk, Dittmar discussed three ways in which gender impacted the presidential election: how the candidates intentionally leveraged or avoided their own and their opponents’ racial and gender identities, how the candidates experienced and exploited prevailing stereotypes, and how candidates responded to the racialized and gendered climate of the 2024 election.
Throughout the campaign trail, Harris rarely invoked her own race and gender, instead saying, “My gender and racial identities are self-evident. I would rather focus on the American people than myself, as my opponent does.” Dittmar analyzed this strategy as intended to avoid accusations that Harris sought votes from minorities simply because she was a multiracial woman. She noted how this strategy was also employed by Barack Obama and Nikki Haley, as an attempt to “transcend” their oppressed status. Obama notably employed a stance of fighting for “equality for all,” rather than calling attention to Black and racial minority issues. Nikki Haley once quoted how her mother had said to her, “Your job isn’t to show them how you’re different. Your job is to show them how you’re similar.”
In the talk, Dittmar discussed the pros and cons of the strategy of avoiding direct references to candidates’ identities. On the one hand, it wins votes. On the other hand, it wins votes compared to more explicitly race-deconstructing strategies because it appeases white voters. Dittmar cited Melanye Price, who claimed that Obama’s “post-race” campaign won votes because it avoided talking about race and hence maintained white privilege. Dittmar stressed that Harris did not run from her identity, rather, Harris expressed that if somebody was questioning her identity, it was their job to sort through their own biases rather than she do it for them.
Trump attacked Harris for her identity long before her nomination for president and didn’t stop when she became his direct opponent. Dittmar’s investigation focused on the ways in which prevailing stereotypes played out for both candidates. Dittmar referenced Jackson Katz in saying, “Presidential politics has long been the site of an ongoing cultural struggle over the meanings of American manhood.” The same was true in 2024, as Trump continually attacked Harris’s strength and leadership ability. Harris countered by saying, “strength is who you lift up, not who you beat down,” and emphasised how she cared more about voters than Trump. Unfortunately, it seemed for Dittmar that “on election day, people more strongly favored the candidate's ability to lead, rather than how much they cared about the voter.”
Trump’s status as a white man allowed voters to assume he was a competent leader because of the history of the presidency as a white and male-dominated position. Dittmar explored how Trump did not have to justify his merit and leadership ability in the same way Harris did. Trump continually attacked Harris’s merit, enabling claims that she slept her way to the top or that she was a “DEI hire.” Harris’s attempts to discredit Trump by showing clips of his ramblings and confusions, on the other hand, were not evidently effective, as Trump was already seen to be competent due to his identity among the demographics Harris needed to flip.
Prevailing stereotypes of Black women put Harris in particular danger of being seen as angry by the white public. Dittmar cited a study showing how Republicans were more likely to mislabel Harris as Black, rather than multiracial/Black-South Asian to clarify that Harris likely took this into account in her campaign. While this perception would be acceptable and even preferred for a man, it would be unacceptable for Harris to be seen as angry for most voters. As a result, Harris often posed instead as stoic, calm, and persistent. Dittmar highlighted what she called the “Mr. Vice President, I am speaking” energy of the 2020 vice presidential debate.
Because of the aforementioned perception of Black people and women as more radical than their white male counterparts, Harris ran a remarkably conservative campaign, particularly in reference to trans rights. Dittmar characterized Harris’ platform as promoting “rights for all” and bodily and medical autonomy, then allowing pro-trans voters to allow trans people to fall under that umbrella.
During the Q&A, an audience member noted how discussions around gender “feel different” now than they did in 2020, 2016, or earlier, because of the rise in acceptance of non-binary gender identities. Particularly, Dittmar focused on the rise in discussion of the “biological woman” as something new brought to the table compared to previous battles for gender liberation. Citing the women’s suffrage movements, she said, “You could make the case that…the perception and demonizing of extremes... is not new.” Essentially, slippery slope arguments and defense of patriarchal values were the same now as they were then. She also brought up abortion rights as a parallel to illustrate how Trump tapped into classical patriarchal ideals of a protective, controlling man and subservient wife and children. However, she also acknowledged that “as we evolve in general societal thinking [of] gender as a societal construct,” people on both sides of the aisle will change how we think about women and how masculinity affects politics.
Dittmar said she has been asked one question time and time again: “Would Kamala have won if she was a white man?” She asserted that this question is impossible to answer with certainty. Harris’s identity as a multiracial woman doubtlessly came into effect on election night; however, Dittmar also claimed that it was by no means the deciding factor in the election. She cited the unprecedentedly short campaign, as well as Biden and the Democrats’ extreme unpopularity, as possible larger factors. She noted that Harris lost ground among almost all demographics compared to Biden, including among Black, multiracial, and female voters, indicating that factors other than Harris’s identity might have been more influential in deciding the election.
Dittmar said, “I would argue that Joe Biden would also have suffered from the same white male grievances that Trump exploited.” Despite being a white man, he supported policies which aimed to diversify the US across many levels, which Trump targeted in both 2020 and 2024. She noted how, even with Biden as the presidential candidate in 2023, “these attacks were aimed at the Biden-Harris ticket.” But she also noted that, “we must reflect on how they were amplified by Harris’s embodiment of [sexist and racist fears].”
The presidency is a white and male institution. It is both an artifact and a source of white male supremacy. As Dittmar put it, “[American governmental] institutions are commonly race-gendered.” Given two losses of female presidential candidates to a sexist, conservative man, Dittmar acknowledged that this monolithic institution of patriarchy can be daunting, even depressing, as she said, “We’ve been doing this work for over five decades…and we have seen positive change.” She stresses that we continue the work of identifying “what are the roots of the problem?” and targeting efforts to change them.
Dittmar noted that “just because you’ve elected a woman into office… doesn’t mean the institution immediately changes [to become less sexist].” The retention of female and minority candidates in politics is notably lower than their white male counterparts, due to the sexism and racism they face. As a result, Dittmar stressed the importance of supporting racial and gender minority candidates, both with your ballot and via personal actions in your life, and widening the pipeline to allow more worthy candidates to run.
In the Q&A section, Dittmar discussed a current topic of political science research on the question of “is there room for Black and Brown people to show up in minority cultural ways in politics?” This comes in response to how many Black candidates avoid expressing Black culture through presentations such as hair styling, mannerisms, and language. This is an active area of research, and nobody quite knows the extent to which white voters are accepting of such expression. However, the one thing that Dittmar said we do know for sure, is that the more we see disruption of white male presentations, the more voters will be willing to accept it.
Dittmar admitted one of her reasons for giving this talk was to spread the message that Harris did not lose exclusively because she is a woman. Democrats need to hear from key voters that they should feel confident in running female candidates in the future. In all elections, as in 2024, identity may have a role, it is not strictly determinative in election politics. Even after Hilary Clinton’s loss in 2016, a record number of women ran for and won local offices. Dittmar called for continued work to make our institutions more accessible and accepting to all candidates in the face of patriarchy.