Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement 
7B
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 // The Statement
7B

When will America be ready for her?

BY ELI RALLO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

I

n 2016, I voted for President of the United States 
for the first time. I remember walking to my poll-
ing place in Ann Arbor, Michigan as a freshman 

in college, and waiting in line with a feeling of thrill in 
my chest. As I walked toward the booth I felt a bit of 
hesitance — almost as though I didn’t have the agency 
to cast my own vote, and thought back to the times my 
brothers and I would file in after my mother to watch her 
vote in the town hall in our hometown of Fair Haven, 
New Jersey. I thought back further to the women who 
fought for me to have this privilege today, how it wasn’t 
always given at the age of 18. I looked down at the ballot 
for the highest office in American politics, old enough to 
make my own vote, all alone, and had the privilege to see 
a woman’s name printed clearly on the ballot alongside 
then-nominee and current Republican President Donald 
Trump. 

In plain writing, there it was: history.
Seeing a woman represented on a major political bal-

lot shouldn’t have to feel surprising, exciting or exhaust-
ing, but it does — it did. Former Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton, who faced harassment and targeted 
gender attacks throughout her campaign, beat Trump 
in the national popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, 
but ultimately lost the presidency by 77 votes in the Elec-
toral College. Clinton had numerous qualifications for 
the presidency, such as her Senate seat, position as U.S. 
Secretary of State and her work as First Lady, but in the 
aftermath of the election, many argued that despite her 
popular vote win, America wasn’t ready for Hillary — or 
any female president. 

Perhaps it seems like a no-brainer that most women 

gravitated toward Hillary Clinton as their choice in 2016, 
but this was not the case. According to an Edison Nation-
al Election Poll run in 2016, just over 50 percent of white 
women with a college degree voted for Clinton in 2016 — 
not really an overwhelming win. This is in large part due 
to white women, as 61 percent of non-college educated 
white women and 44 percent of college-educated white 
women voted for Trump. 

Among women of color, only 3 percent of non-college 

educated African American women and 25 percent of 
non-college educated Hispanic women voted for him. 77 
percent of nonwhite percent of college-educated women 
of color voted for Hillary Clinton — much more than col-
lege-educated white women. 

The support for Trump from white women has 

been analyzed as arising from the white woman’s his-
toric loyalty to the right, their privilege in being able to 
support a male, Republican president, and the power 
their whiteness has. Moreover, and among women and 
men alike, there was the underlying anxiety of trusting 
a woman in power, regardless of her qualifications. For 
some women, electing a female president is secondary to 
winning the election — beating Trump comes first. Oth-
ers simply cannot see a woman in such a high position of 
power. In 2016, studies showed that Clinton’s gender had 
a huge impact on her loss, with people going so far as to 
say “she doesn’t have a presidential look.”

Structural gender bias and the Clinton campaign’s 

steady uphill battle against gender discrimination and 
sexism made it ridiculously difficult for a victorious elec-
tion. By way of analyzing slogans like “Trump that Bitch,” 
the criticism Hillary faced for not smiling (or smiling 
too much) and a fear of the subordination of Trump by a 
woman, it is clear that Hillary’s gender was used against 
her throughout the 2016 election, and Trump’s was not. 
This led to a stark double standard. Clinton was berated 
for matters that Trump was not: While people criticized 
Clinton’s use of private emails, they barely questioned 
Trump’s involvement in utilizing a private email for work 
himself. The bias deficit made it immensely more difficult 
for Hillary, or any woman, to be elected over a straight 
man. 

Despite all the possibilities to Clinton’s 2016 loss, there 

befalls a valid and important question, arguably the most 
telling one: Would those who voted for Donald Trump 
have been more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton if she 
were a man?

Following the election, there was a deflated feeling 

among Clinton’s supporters and those who hoped for the 
first female president to dismantle the historical norm 

and superior electability of male presidents. Despite the 
hope for many that a woman would make her way into the 
White House in 2020, All in Together’s 2019 poll found 
that both Democratic and Republican voters predicted a 
male Democratic nominee — not a female one — would 
win against Trump in 2020. They saw hope in the pros-
pect of a male Democratic candidate and feared another 
apparent expected loss by a Democratic woman. Now, 
with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, as the last woman in 
the race and polling extremely low, it’s apparent the next 
President will indeed be a man.

As America readjusted in the weeks after Trump’s 

election and subsequent inauguration, I wondered when 
Americans would vote a woman into office — with both a 
popular vote and overwhelming support of the Electoral 
College — if Hillary Clinton, a woman with accolades and 
throngs of experience, who many thought was a shoo-in, 
didn’t beat Donald Trump. I wondered if the fact that 
Hillary Clinton almost reached the Oval Office would 
ignite a fire in Americans to truly strive for a female 
presidency, or introduce a lackadaisical attitude about 
promoting a female president, coming off of the sting of 
Clinton’s loss. 

Despite the fact that the Democratic Party saw many 

women campaign throughout the 2020 Democratic pri-
mary election cycle, they also saw these women slowly 
drop out, due to lack of support or exhaustion of expenses. 
With the stakes high for the Democratic Party to defeat 
Trump in 2020, the mainstream conversation in the 
media has become less about breaking the White House’s 
glass ceiling, and more about getting a Democrat — any 
Democrat — in the Oval Office. The priority for Demo-
crats is turning the White House blue again, and both 
Democrats and Republicans alike have commented they 
don’t think a woman is the person for the job.

***
As Americans watched all six women face defeat, they 

have begun to analyze how these politicians’ shared 
identity as American women affected their likeability 
and campaign success during the primaries.

I wondered how college-aged, left-leaning women con-

sider their gender identity when selecting a candidate to 
vote for. And more specifically, how the candidate’s poli-
cies on women’s issues affect how young women voters 
consider them as viable options when voting. 

In the weeks prior to Super Tuesday, I spent time 

interviewing college-aged, left-leaning women from 
the University of Michigan. What I found, in talking to 
them, is that the rhetoric of candidates and their stances 
surrounding women and minorities is overwhelmingly 
important when selecting a politician to vote for — issues 
like a woman’s agency over her body, equal pay and 
foundational human rights. Voting, for these women, is 
extremely subjective based on their needs and preferenc-
es, yet all of them had astute opinions on Warren — the 
strongest female contender — her struggle for the nomi-
nation, and how her gender stood in her way. 

Theatre & Dance junior Emerson Smith voted for Ber-

nie Sanders on March 10, and leans strongly on policy 
when making a decision about who to vote for. I asked 
her what communities she identifies with within society, 
and how these groups affect her voting choices.

ILLUSTRATION BY DORY TUNG

Read more at 
 
MichiganDaily.com

