Taking Our Female Leaders Seriously

A video recently going around Facebook on www.upworthy.com called “A Glimpse at How the Media Treated Women This Year is a Look At Way Too Many Cringe-Worthy Moments” got me thinking about the representation of females with government positions. The video starts with this year’s positive representations and included films like Gravity and The Hunger Games, TV shows like Orange is The New Black, and GoDaddy’s commitment to avoid sexual imagery and focus on humor in their two new Super Bowl commercials. The video then changes gears to the “cringe-worthy moments” such as axe body spray commercials, Miley Cyrus’s VMA performance and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” music video. What was even more unsettling to me then the negative choices made by entertainers and advertisers was the representation of our female leaders. We are all aware of the alarmingly low number of our country’s female representatives (women make up 51% of the population in the United States but only make up 17% of Congress). Because of this reality, it seems to me that those female representatives should be admired by the media and respected. They, despite the odds of being a female leader in our predominantly white-male run society, have had to successfully prove their abilities, perhaps more than most men in government have had to. Despite all of this, our female leaders are continuously bashed. The video includes photos of articles such as “Fringe Factor: Wendy Davis Is Too Stupid to Be Governor”, “Fox News Commentator Calls Wendy Davis An ‘Abortion Barbie’” and “Somebody Spot Janet Yellen Some New Threads”. When Ashley Judd was considering running for Senate against Mitch McConell, the McConell aid who led a meeting said, “She’s clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it’s been documented”. A newspaper cover featuring a giant photo of Hilary Clinton in the middle of a passionate debate was headlined “No Wonder Bill’s Afraid; Hilary explodes with rage at Benghazi hearing”. Talk radio host Bryan Fischer said about Hilary “I just do not think the American public is ready to elect and old women to the oval office”. A female Fox News report described Hilary as looking “haggard” and “what, ninety-two years old?” on the air. In a Fox News interview with Sarah Palin, Palin was asked if she has gotten breast implants. These are just a number of examples of the ways in which people and the media assess women differently than men, pointing to “PMS” and “mood swings” as reasons why they can not be taken seriously. These examples have an overwhelming amount of name calling, focus on appearance, focus on their relationships with men, and perpetuate the idea that women are emotionally unstable. What makes this so alarming is that the media is so derogatory even toward the most powerful women in the country. If the media and society treat the country’s most powerful women this way, what does it say for how seriously any women can be taken?