I'm reluctant to wade into this discussion of what's sexist and what is not but there is a larger point here about gender and politics at this level.
The problem women (of any ethnicity/color) have had, and I suspect it's the same with African American males, with running for office at the presidential level is less media bias than it is fund raising. They simply would not be taken seriously enough to get in the door with large donors and the whole labor force of fund raisers.
Hillary Clinton's campaign will possibly change that but it needs to be remembered that she bypassed that problem because she inherited her husband's machinery. She, quite obviously, had to perform well at the senate level and in all the activities associated with campaigning to get the money and to keep the money coming. But she was able to bypass the startup problem. How far that goes toward solving the problem for future female candidates, we'll just have to wait and see.
In addition, Obama appears to have solved it with his innovative (beyond Howard Dean, see Josh Greene's piece in The Atlantic Monthly) use of the internet, alongside Facebook and MySpace.
For just how much time and energy have to be put in to fund raising for any office at the national level, I suggest reading some of the chapters in John Harwood and Gerald Sieb's new book, Pennsylvania Avenue. amazon.com
It's apparent from that book that some women, quite extraordinary women, are able to do this. But it's not clear that the ordinary woman is able to do so in the ways in which the ordinary male representatives are.
Again, this is a structural problem but one that, obviously, swims in the usual sea of perceptions, attitudes, traditions, you name it. |
