{"id":14118,"date":"2018-10-27T00:11:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T00:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14118"},"modified":"2018-10-28T00:14:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T00:14:13","slug":"republican-women-are-just-fine-thank-you-with-being-republican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/republican-women-are-just-fine-thank-you-with-being-republican\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican women are just fine, thank you, with being Republican"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christine A. Kray<\/a>, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em>; Hinda Mandell<\/a>, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em>, and Tamar Carroll<\/a>, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Republican women have faced a conundrum repeatedly in the last two years. <\/p>\n

In the cases of Donald Trump, Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh, the question facing them has been whether to support a male Republican leader accused of sexual assault \u2013 or to press for male accountability. <\/p>\n

That was evident most recently when Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, spoke for 45 minutes on the Senate floor earlier this month. Collins explained why she voted to confirm<\/a> Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite multiple allegations of sexual assault against him. <\/p>\n

The length and detail of her speech reflected her quandary. If she voted no, she would disappoint her fellow Republicans. If she voted yes, women might see her as a gender traitor, one who did not, as a popular hashtag describes, #BelieveSurvivors. <\/p>\n

The rapid succession of such cases has likely led some to question whether someone can both be Republican and insist upon women\u2019s rights. Columnist A. B. Stoddard even asked, \u201cHow many women does the GOP want to lose<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Research for our book, \u201cNasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election,\u201d<\/a> leads us to believe, however, that many Republican women aren\u2019t asking whether they should leave the party. <\/p>\n

Republican and strong<\/h2>\n

The number of women who identify as Republican has declined over the last two years<\/a> from 27 percent in 2016 to 25 percent in 2017. But we believe it would be wrong to expect, in this political moment, a mass exodus of women from the GOP.<\/p>\n

In fact, 52 percent of white women<\/a> in 2016 cast their vote for Donald Trump. That was despite the 22 allegations of sexual misconduct<\/a> against him. Roy Moore got 63 percent of the white women\u2019s vote<\/a> in the 2017 Alabama Senate race, despite the sexual misconduct allegations against him. And Republican women were the only demographic that increased its support<\/a> for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during the hearings of sexual assault allegations during his confirmation process in October. <\/p>\n

Our research led us to conclude that Republican women will mainly stand firm in their party affiliation. They are loyal to the party, even if political moderates and those who identify as the progressive Left have concluded that the GOP does not respect women\u2019s voices and bodies. <\/p>\n

But does this mean that Republican women consciously accept second-class status when they stand up for their party?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Republicans do not tend to identify as \u201cfeminists.\u201d A Pew Research Center poll conducted in September and October found that only 14 percent of Republicans<\/a> said that the term \u201cfeminist\u201d describes them well, compared to 60 percent of Democrats. <\/p>\n

However, we have found that Republicanism encompasses different visions of womanhood that allow women to feel that they can be Republican and also strong women. <\/p>\n

Follow the leader<\/h2>\n

Women of all backgrounds tend to vote in concert with their husbands. Here\u2019s how that plays out for Republican women: <\/p>\n

1) \u201cWomen consistently earn less money and hold less power, which fosters women\u2019s economic dependency on men,\u201d according to a 2017 study published in Political Research Quarterly<\/a>. \u201cThus, it is within married women\u2019s interests to support policies and politicians who protect their husbands and improve their status.\u201d <\/p>\n

White men lean heavily Republican<\/a> and white women are more likely to be married than black and Latino women and still most often marry white men<\/a>. This in part accounts for white women\u2019s greater likelihood to vote Republican<\/a>. <\/p>\n

2) For these white women Republicans, their concern for their husbands\u2019 and sons\u2019 welfare may lead them to stay with a party whose leaders prioritize the economic interests of those men. <\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s campaign promised good-paying jobs in traditionally male sectors of the economy \u2013 mining, manufacturing, policing and the military. That promise would have appealed both to men and to the women who love and support them. <\/p>\n

3) Longstanding cultural models have encouraged women to establish their self-worth through care for their family. The notion of benevolent patriarchy<\/a> allows conservative women to feel that if they submit to their husband\u2019s wills, they can benefit through their husband\u2019s protection and economic care. This may influence their political choices as well.<\/p>\n

As a contributor to our book, Mark Ward,<\/a> writes, evangelical Christian churches have long encouraged wives to embrace the role of helpmate and mother within a patriarchal household. Ward notes that Hillary Clinton forever found herself on the wrong side of evangelical Christian voters after her 1992 remarks in which she explained that, \u201cI suppose I could have stayed at home and baked cookies,\u201d but she chose to pursue her profession instead. These comments were interpreted as dismissive of the traditional role of the housewife and mother.<\/p>\n

New versions of femininity<\/h2>\n

A lot has changed for women since Clinton\u2019s 1992 cookie gaffe, and not just the fact that the federal government reported that in 2017, \u201c70 percent of mothers with children under 18 participate in the labor force<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popular culture has generated a spate of strong female characters who defend themselves and others. Fewer women, it seems, want to identify themselves as genteel cookie bakers. <\/p>\n

As more women have been elected to office, they have evolved new images of femininity that could encompass motherhood and also female leadership in the traditionally male realm of politics. These new images of femininity are another avenue through which Republican women like Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, New York Rep. Claudia Tenney, former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Hewlett-Packard CEO and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina can stay true to their party while asserting their own power.<\/p>\n

For instance, in 2008, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin set the example of the strong Republican woman who could raise five children, maintain a professional career, and hold her own in the combative world of politics. She called herself a \u201chockey mom\u201d<\/a> and \u201cMama Grizzly\u201d<\/a> who would protect her cubs at any cost. <\/p>\n

During the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Donald Trump provided a culturally acceptable \u201cout\u201d along these lines for conservative women who wanted to support the Republican judge but worried that doing so might be seen as a betrayal of female survivors of sexual assault. <\/p>\n

Despite the fact that studies conducted in the past 12 years indicate that false reporting for sexual crimes is rare<\/a>, Trump constructed an imaginary choice, urging Americans to protect their sons against \u201cfalse accusations\u201d by women. Pretending to be a wrongly accused son about to lose his job, he said, plaintively, \u201cMom, what do I do? What do I do?\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

Republican women who wanted to support Kavanaugh could stand firm in their roles as mothers and, just like Palin\u2019s \u201cMama Grizzly,\u201d fiercely protect their cubs (sons), in this case against \u201cfalse accusations.\u201d <\/p>\n

This line of argument spread quickly. In a Washington Post-Schar School poll<\/a> conducted this month, 76 percent of Republicans \u2013 compared to 34 percent of Democrats \u2013 expressed fear that men close to them \u201cmight be unfairly accused of sexual assault.\u201d <\/p>\n

Consider what happened in North Dakota. Although Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota is the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for re-election in 2018, she voted \u201cno\u201d on Kavanaugh, which was likely to cost her in a state that had voted for Trump<\/a> in 2016. <\/p>\n

Heitkamp\u2019s opponent, Kevin Cramer, said he would have voted for Kavanaugh and tried to use his position to his advantage with women, saying that his wife and daughters decry #MeToo as a \u201cmovement toward victimization.\u201d <\/p>\n

And #MeToo activists \u2013 according to Cramer\u2019s family \u2013 are not as \u201ctough\u201d as the North Dakotan \u201cpioneers of the prairie.\u201d<\/a> This language implies that, even if women are sexually assaulted, they should bear up under it. <\/p>\n

In the upcoming midterm elections, Republican women who want to see themselves as strong, while supporting a party that has excused male sexual assault, can add the \u201cPrairie Woman\u201d vision of feminism to the \u201cMama Grizzly\u201d identity of strong women. <\/p>\n

In so doing, Republican women are constructing their own version of womanhood that does not eclipse \u2013 or hold to account \u2013 the dominant position of men in their lives. <\/p>\n

In this vision, women can hold their own \u2013 against feminists on the Left as well as male sexual predators. This model of \u201cprairie woman\u201d femininity shows there is diversity in how strong women act. At the same time, it precludes gender-based solidarity by rejecting any possible alignment with feminists on the Left who hold offending men to account, and who demand change within a culture that devalues women\u2019s experiences overall.\"The<\/p>\n

Christine A. Kray<\/a>, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em>; Hinda Mandell<\/a>, Associate Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em>, and Tamar Carroll<\/a>, Associate Professor of History, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christine A. Kray, Rochester Institute of Technology; Hinda Mandell, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Tamar Carroll, Rochester Institute of Technology Republican women have faced a conundrum repeatedly in the last two years. In the cases of Donald Trump, Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh, the question facing them has been whether to support a male Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":14114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[3473,5153,5357,479,1180,699,5355,5356,530,3695,3332,1976,1441],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14119,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14118\/revisions\/14119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}