The Wall Street Journal
At the Barricades In the Gender Wars
Clinton's women supporters fear her bid has unleashed a sexist backlash
By JONATHAN KAUFMAN and CAROL HYMOWITZ
March 29, 2008
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(Clinton) campaign has also prompted slurs and inflammatory language that many women thought had been banished from public discourse. Some women worry that regardless of how the election turns out, the resistance to Sen. Clinton may embolden some men to resist women's efforts to share power with them in business, politics and elsewhere... But even some women who don't support Sen. Clinton express unease about the tone of some attacks on her. "Why is it OK to say such horrible things about a woman?" asks Erika Wikkala, who runs a Pittsburgh public-relations firm and supports Sen. Obama. "People feel they can be misogynists, and that's OK. No one says those kinds of things about Obama because they don't want to be seen as racist." The concern among some women about sexism comes amid signs that women's progress in the workplace has stalled or even regressed. In 2007, women earned median weekly wages of 80.2 cents for every dollar earned by men, down from 80.8 cents in 2006 and 81 cents in 2005, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic.
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Katherine Putnam, president of Package Machinery Co., a West Springfield, Mass., equipment manufacturer, recalls that at a lunch she attended recently, a group of male chief executives "started talking about what an awful b---- Hillary was and how they'd never vote for her." She says she kept quiet. "I didn't want to jeopardize my relationship with them," she says. "But their remarks were a clear reminder that although I could sit there eating and drinking with them, and work with them, instinctively their reaction to me isn't positive."
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Many factors, of course, shape how voters view the two candidates: their positions on the issues, Sen. Obama's rhetorical skills and message of change, and Sen. Clinton's personality and record. But the tenor of the campaign is unsettling many women... Heather Arnet, a Clinton supporter who runs a Pittsburgh organization that lobbies for more women on public commissions and corporate boards, recently surveyed the Internet and found more than 50 anti-Hillary Clinton sites on Facebook. One of them, entitled "Hillary Clinton Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich," had more than 38,000 members. "What if one of these 38,000 guys is someone you, as a woman, have to go to and negotiate a raise?" she asks. Here in Pittsburgh and surrounding blue-collar areas, Sen. Clinton's run is stirring discussion among women about sexism in politics and in the workplace. The pay gap between male and female professionals in the Pittsburgh area exceeds the national average across most industries and occupations, according to a new University of Pittsburgh study. Women managers earned just 58.3% of what male managers made, and 89.5% of what women managers around the country made, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. In the political arena, Pennsylvania ranks 45th among states in number of female officeholders.
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Jean Yarnal, who has worked in local government for 41 years, says she was unnerved recently when a man she knew came into her office and asked for help with a zoning issue. When talk turned to politics, she says, he denounced Sen. Clinton as a "lesbian" and used several slurs. Ms. Yarnal says she didn't respond, but thought to herself, "That's the last time I do you a favor." "It's like the feelings against women are getting stronger," says Ms. Yarnal. "It's like men are saying, 'We want to put you women in your place -- watch out, don't go too fast.' ".. Some women in town say they don't bring up politics at work. "The consensus in my office is that women are too emotional and won't make a good president," says Terri George, a paralegal in a law office. Some young women who support Sen. Obama -- sometimes to the chagrin of their pro-Hillary mothers -- say they too are troubled by the gender gap in the workplace. But many say they don't feel comfortable being called "feminists," and that they look to different role models than Sen. Clinton.
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With the Pennsylvania primary looming on April 22, it's unlikely that workplace tensions over Sen. Clinton's candidacy will abate. On March 5, the day after Sen. Clinton won Ohio, Jackie LeViseur, a fund-raiser at Youngstown State University, arrived at her office to find her female colleagues, mostly secretaries, high-fiving each other and cheering in the hall. The men, most of them bosses, remained in their offices, looking, says Ms. LeViseur, like their team had lost the football game. "They might have been a little afraid to speak up," says Ms. LeViseur.
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