gender-politics

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Political Ambition After the 2016 Election

rndamante
Tue, 13 Dec 2016 02:31:14 GMT

Considering this class as a whole, I can’t help but think about the implications of the last Presidential election for gender and political science. Though we talked a lot about Clinton’s role in the 2008 primaries, I can’t help but think that this election had a larger impact, both because Clinton made it farther than the primaries and since she lost to Donald Trump, who has no previous political experience. More specifically, similar to 2008, I think that the media played a large role in how people viewed Hillary Clinton, and I wonder what kind of implications that will have when it comes to the political ambition of young females. Political ambition is defined as a person’s dreams or aspirations to run for office someday. According to Lawless and Fox, there is a gap between men and women when it comes to political ambition due to various factors such as socialization, political information, encouragement, and feelings that they are qualified. Much of this comes from the descriptive representation of women in office. As Mansbridge points out, sometimes having women i n office creates a social understanding that women have the ability to rule. With that in mind, it can be predicted that with more female politicians, women’s political ambition will increase, as there are more female role models in the government for them to look up to. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and the election of 2016 make me wonder: what has happened to political ambition of women in the last year? It’s hard to know whether more females will want to run for office given Hillary’s national prominence or if females will be discouraged from running since Clinton lost to such an unqualified candidate. I think a lot of this may have to do with media coverage, and I hope that the field of gender studies and political science does more studies on the media’s implication on political ambition. My prediction is that since the media made such a big deal about Clinton’s trust with the inclusion of her email scandal is almost every news broadcast, this might discourage women from running for President, as it reinforces the double standard that women are faced with when it comes to campaigning: anything female candidates do wrong is considered more problematic since politics as an institution is gendered in favor of men. For instance, Trump seems to have been forgiven by the media for many of his missteps, while the media continued to complain about Hillary’s emails. With that in mind, I’d be curious as to whether Hillary’s campaign increased or decreased political ambition in young females. Let’s hope for the former!