Valuing Women’s Wins on the Court, Field, and Campaign Trail
In April 2015, the Barbara Lee Family Foundation (BLFF) and the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) launched Presidential Gender Watch 2016, a project to track, analyze, and illuminate gender dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. With the help of expert scholars and practitioners, Presidential Gender Watch worked for 21 months to further public understanding of how gender influences candidate strategy, voter engagement and expectations, media coverage, and electoral outcomes in campaigns for the nation’s highest executive office. The blog below was written for Presidential Gender Watch 2016, as part of our collective effort to raise questions, suggest answers, and complicate popular discussions about gender’s role in the presidential race.
“Our country doesn’t win anymore. We used to win, we don’t win anymore.” Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly characterized the United States as falling short of success across sectors, painting a picture of American decline in the modern age. But don’t tell that to the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team, among the winningest teams ever in college basketball. Entering this weekend’s NCAA Final Four tournament, the UConn women have won 73 consecutive games and are highly favored to win their 11th national championship in just over two decades. The US women’s national soccer team might also reject Trump’s exaggerated claim that the US doesn’t win anymore on the international stage. Last summer, the US women won the World Cup, just three years after winning the gold medal at the 2012 Olympic games (their fourth gold medal in five Olympics).
Sure, the recent victories of US women athletes are not the only cases that disprove Trump’s thesis, but they are likely among the most overlooked. As Andrew Zimbalist wrote for the New York Times recently, the dominance of UConn women’s basketball – much stronger than any men’s team today – has been largely ignored by news media and, thus, the American public. The US women’s national team has fared somewhat better in earning much-deserved attention, especially after their World Cup championship match became the most-watched soccer match in US history.
Still, both women’s teams have been incredibly undervalued. Zimbalist notes the disparate math of college basketball, where an NCAA victory for a men’s team brings about $1.56 million to its conference over 6 years and a woman’s team victory brings absolutely no earnings. The earnings disparity among the nation’s top soccer players hit the headlines again this week when five women’s team champions filed a wage discrimination suit against US Soccer, citing the fact that women’s earnings are as little as forty percent of their male counterparts’ take, despite the women’s superior performance in both record and revenue.
But it’s not just the fiscal worth of women’s athletic teams that has been undervalued. Too often, we fail to appreciate the historic significance and symbolic value of women’s success. One need only attend a USWNT soccer match or UConn game to see the crowds of young women wowed by the women playing in front of them. These women are not only winners, but are also path breakers and role models – for girls and boys – of what women can accomplish. They remind girls, in particular, that it is not only okay, but also important, to compete, whether on the playing field or off.
Athletic competition might translate into a political candidacy, according to a recent survey of young women. According to Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, young women (18-25) who played sports were about 25 percent more likely than those who did not to express political ambition. In a political system where women remain significantly underrepresented, this willingness to run is an important first step toward greater parity.
Of course, the success of women in politics can more directly spur more women’s electoral engagement. Nancy Burns, Kay Schlozman and Sidney Verba conclude, “The more it looks as if politics is not simply a man’s game, the more psychologically involved with politics women are.” Lonna Rae Atkeson identified a similar effect in a 2003 study, finding a bump in women’s political engagement in states with competitive and visible female candidates who shared their party identification. Mack Mariani, Bryan W. Marshall, and A. Lanathea Matthews-Schultz found role-modeling effects of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 candidacy among young, Democratic women specifically. In 2016, her potential for success may have an even more profound effect in combatting doubts – among women or men – that women are suited for political leadership.
This year, Hillary Clinton has the potential to prove that women are suited for the top job in American politics. In 2008, she became the first woman to win major party presidential primaries or caucuses in 23 states and territories, and she’s broken the same barrier in ten more states already this year. She is favored to become the first woman major party presidential nominee ever, giving her the chance to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling in American politics. The historic significance of Clinton’s success is frequently overlooked and often undervalued, as enthusiasm for making history is derided as an insufficient reason to vote for a woman candidate.
But recognizing – and even celebrating – Clinton’s accomplishments as a woman does not equate to an endorsement of her candidacy, just as my celebrating UConn’s accomplishments will not stop me from rooting for anybody but UConn in Indianapolis this week. Instead, valuing the worth of women’s wins means understanding that they have navigated terrain trod by no women before them, often confronting the constraints of being women in what have long been men’s worlds. In politics, it means being able to respect a candidate for breaking barriers while challenging her on the issues most influential to your vote. Finally, it means recognizing the value of diversifying political leadership, not only along gender lines or in the White House, but at all levels of American politics.
Overlooking and undervaluing women’s accomplishments is nothing new. Women across many sectors of American society have long fought for equal recognition and worth. As the UConn women take the court, the USWNT goes to court, and Hillary Clinton continues to court voters in uncharted territory, let’s take a moment to recognize and value their wins as reflective of women’s progress and important for altering societal expectations of where women can and should lead.
