Why Are We So Hard on Hillary?
Why Are We So Hard on Hillary?
The 2016 presidential election one of the most blatant (and consequential) examples of the double standards applied in the evaluation of women and men—a phenomenon that has been well-documented by social psychologists after decades of research.
Gage Skidmore> / Creative Commons
Women who try to take leadership roles are more subject to harsh judgements, disapproval and dislike than their male counterparts. Women who are viewed as ambitious, assertive and self-promoting make people uncomfortable in ways that ambitious, assertive, self-promoting men do not. That discomfort often plays out in negative judgements of and reactions to the woman in question. Those reactions have defined this election.
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Across all groups, observers hidden behind two-way mirrors noted that the nonverbal reactions directed toward female leaders and male leaders were different. Women trying to assert leadership received more frowns and fewer smiles and nods to their initiatives than men did—even though both women and men were using the very same leadership scripts. Furthermore, the more the would-be male leaders talked, the more positive reactions they received, but this was not true for female leaders. Group members rated female leaders as more bossy and dominating than male leaders exhibiting the same behaviors and male leaders as having more ability, skill and intelligence than female leaders making the very same scripted statements. All this despite the fact that group members disavowed any gender-based bias and were unaware that they were projecting negative reactions toward the female leaders.
Over the past two decades, a slew of studies by university researchers such as Madeline Heilman, Alice Eagly, Laurie Rudman and Peter Glick have shown that women are judged harshly when they are seen as self-promoting, as exerting assertive leadership or as succeeding in situations deemed masculine. In these studies, women described as independent, assertive, successful and oriented toward taking charge are labeled negatively by respondents—high in interpersonal hostility, low in likeability, low in social skills and viewed as undesirable supervisors.
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Hillary Clinton’s popularity was at its highest when she was not running for office. Now that she has to convince Americans that she is eminently qualified to be President, she is fighting an uphill battle against our almost automatic—and largely unacknowledged—dislike and suspicion of assertive, ambitious women. Her every failure to be completely transparent thus mushrooms into something that the public easily and uncritically interprets as a serious blot on her trustworthiness. Donald Trump’s allegations about a rigged system notwithstanding, the real “rigging” lies in our well-learned biases about women and leadership.
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2016/09/07/why-are-we-so-hard-on-hillary/
