We've all heard it before, there is a difference between certain behavior when exhibited by a man and exhibited by a woman. A man can be cunning, clever, on the ball and intelligent, while a woman exhibiting the same behavior is pushy, uppity, moaning and the dreaded B-word. However, we must ask to what degree do these stereotypes become invoked due entirely to gender and to what extent is it a result of certain behavior conflicting with the more positive stereotypes of masculinity and femininity that people assume in their everyday lives. When does shrewdness become just plain shrewish?
This question has been gnawing at me ever since last week's elections. What was supposed to be the Year Of The Woman Governor fell far short of the hype. There were nine states where women were nominated in contentious races, but in the end only four were elected. One of them was Linda Lingle, R-Hawaii, whose opponent was also a woman. Democratic nominees in Maryland, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, which all should have been slam-dunks for Democrats, went down in defeat. Meanwhile, Michigan, Arizona and Kansas, states which are historically difficult for Democratic gubernatorial nominees, saw women Democrats elected by anywhere from a small lead to a landslide. Such a result spread across the country shouldn't be possible, yet it happened, and by the time Election Day had rolled around few doubted the certainty of the eventual results.
To understand the results we have to look at the individual candidates and the races they ran. A common thread is that the losers were making their femininity a campaign issue, paying attention to certain issues over others or saying there was something about them being women that gave people a reason to vote for them. The winners tended to avoid that idea, and were rewarded by the voters. There seems to be something in the image of a governor with which traditional ideas of femininity cannot be reconciled. A man can take command and be a leader, but a woman unfortunately becomes a bitch.
The most jarring example was Maryland, which elected its first Republican governor since 1966. The Democrat, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, had some disadvantages in inheriting the ethical grime that had built up over 32 years of entrenched one-party rule, but that shouldn't have meant a thing. Maryland is intensely Democratic, and on the rest of the ticket Democrats did very well. While Democrats lost House seats nationally, Maryland Democrats picked up two for a 6-2 advantage on the delegation. The problem for the public wasn't Maryland Democrats, just her. Throughout her campaign, she was something of an empty suit, relying more on her image as the daughter of Robert Kennedy and her constant appeal to the so-called \women's issues,"" including a shameless exploitation of the sniper killings to attack Ehrlich as too pro-gun. She played the card of being Maryland's first woman governor as well. And so she lost.
It is good to contrast Townsend with Governor-Elect Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich. Granholm consciously shed any conventional image of a nurturer, presenting herself as the can-do state Attorney General who would solve the state's budget problems. By and large, she didn't run any different a campaign than if she had been John Granholm. When she did deviate from that formula, such as actively raising money for the primary from various feministic political organizations, she made sure to close that plot thread off right after the primary. She selected State Senator John Cherry, a pro-life NRA member, as her running mate, specifically divorcing herself from that strictly ideological feminist background. She stopped whatever talk she had done during the primary about being Michigan's first woman governor. Some called it duplicitous or diabolical, but nobody ever even thought to call her a bitch. While by all accounts she is just as warm and friendly in private as any stereotypical '50s housewife, in public she projected the image of a businessman, and became only the third Democrat elected governor of Michigan in the last 50 years.
