Is Elizabeth Warren a Victim of the Patriarchy?

Written by Mia McGraith Burns, BA (Hons)Politics and International Relations

This is the third in our series of blog posts by students on the Feminism and Politics class, 2019-20. Click here for the previous post, by Lucy McKenzie, offering a very different reading of Warren's withdrawal from the Democratic nomination.

On the 5^th of March 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced her exit from the Democratic Primary race. In a process of grief all too similar to that felt in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat by Donald Trump, Warren’s supporter base grappled with another at least another four years without a woman as President and many began to indict the patriarchy for the downfall of her campaign as well as those of her fellow female candidates Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard.

The US remains one of the very few western countries which have yet to elect a female leader. The impact of sexism in American politics is difficult to measure and the debate which surrounds the topic is extremely nuanced. At a recent press conference, Elizabeth Warren herself expressed the feeling that gender issues present a ‘trap’ for female politicians: “If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’ And if you say, ‘No, there was no sexism,’ about a bazillion women say, ‘What planet do you live on?’”.

My argument is in no way to deny that the experience of women in the political sphere differs drastically from their male counterparts. Worldwide studies show that from the offset, there are societal norms which present significant barriers restricting women’s participation in political contests. Women undoubtedly experience an additional level of scrutiny related to their appearance, manner and overall ‘likability’, and often, experience blatant misogyny in the media. In the lead-up to the most recent general election, the BBC reported that female MPs in the UK felt compelled to stand down from their positions in parliament because of intense abuse from the public, such as threats of sexual violence and death. It is indisputable that a level of discomfort with women in positions of power remains pervasive throughout the world.

However, I believe that the portrayal of powerful white women such as Warren or Clinton as ‘victims’ of the patriarchy is not only counterproductive to the feminist cause; it is simply not reflective of the reality of the American social hierarchy, nor does it fully explain the shortcomings of each woman’s political campaigning.

The original feminist conception of the term patriarchy, coined by Kate Millett in the 1970s described the oppression of women by men, as systematic, society-wide, and pervasive in all aspects of life, both within and beyond formal institutions and in all relationships between the sexes.[1] Millett argued that patriarchal power outweighed all other societal cleavages such as class and race. Since then, Millett’s work has been debated by countless feminist scholars. Some major criticisms suggest that in seeking an overarching term for the oppression of women, Millett’s concept of patriarchy produces oversimplified and monolithic accounts of women’s experiences.[2] Feminist scholar Valerie Bryson concedes that ‘patriarchy’ is a ‘mystifying device’ which in its attempt to universalise women’s experiences, may conceal the oppression of more marginalised people, to the same extent that male perspectives erase the struggles of women, although she nonetheless argues that the term remains somewhat useful.[3]

The pay gap, by sex, race and ethnicity (weekly earnings). Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008 annual averages), credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR,  https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125998232&t=1592409752182 

Millet’s conception of the oppression of women appears to be at odds with American society, in which white women experience relative privilege. Employing the gender pay gap as example, as it is often used as a measure of inequality, we can see that white women in the US are significantly better off, in terms of earnings, than women more generally (see above) and also out-earn a large proportion of non-white men. White women are also only half as likely to be incarcerated in America as their Black counterparts, and significantly less likely to experience health inequalities. These facts support Kimberle Crenshaw’s (1989) argument that it is problematic to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories through a single-axis framework- if we consider only the experiences of white women in feminist movements our concept of oppression will be very limited.

Furthermore, as voters, a slim majority of white women seem content to preserve their privilege at the expense of more marginalised groups: in the 2016 Presidential election, a higher percentage of white women supported Donald Trump than Hilary Clinton, compared to an 82%-16% split in favour of Clinton amongst non-white women. White women were instrumental in ushering in an administration which aims to erode the rights of all women, a threat which is especially pronounced for those who live at the intersection of multiple identities, such as women of colour. In this way, a large number of white women in America are upholding the patriarchal system. As author bell hooks[4] argues we must acknowledge that women can and do act as perpetrators in the politics of domination as well as victims.[5]

Clearly, Warren faced significant sexism throughout her campaign, but we must also acknowledge that as a wealthy white woman she experiences some level of structural privilege. Due to the intersection of gender and race, non-white women not only struggle more to reach position of power in politics, but are also be subject to even greater vilification in the process. In the UK, female MPs are in general subject to more abuse online than, but prominent Black Labour MP, Diane Abbott, personally receives almost half of all the abusive messages sent to female MPs on Twitter. This case provides an especially succinct illustration of the additional struggles faces by women of colour in the political sphere and emphasises the need for feminists to ensure that the concept of the patriarchy is mindful of intersectionality.

Furthermore, if we truly consider patriarchal forces responsible for Warren’s defeat, then we remove responsibility from her campaign and allow her identity to become a more important factor than her ideas. New York Magazine writer, Sarah Jones, argues that if a woman’s gender is considered the most important aspect of her campaign, then we must also believe that all male campaigners are interchangeable. The latter can hardly be true when Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden represent such different ends of the political spectrum. Therefore, the product of trying to universalise the experience of all women in the political sphere to fit into the expectations we have of the patriarchal system, is that we fail to focus on their individual experiences, merits and also shortcomings.

There is no finite number of reasons which can be blamed for the failure of any political campaign. When it comes to Elizabeth Warren, some have suggested that Democratic voters simply prioritised beating Trump over ambitions to elect the first female president. With Biden running to her right, with significantly greater connections to the Democratic establishment, and Sanders to her left as an outsider with a more progressive agenda, perhaps Warren’s position in the campaign was not as clear as her competitors. Framing Warren’s defeat as a causality of a sexist society oversimplifies her campaign. Fewer than a quarter of female voters supported Warren in her home state Massachusetts primary - does implying that the patriarchy is responsible for this outcome suggest that American women are suddenly plagued with internalised misogyny which ultimately undermines their wider concerns? And where does this argument stand when we consider the fact that Hilary Clinton won this same primary in both 2008 and 2016?

As for the 2016 Presidential election, it is difficult not to account Clinton’s loss to the patriarchal forces at surface level, when she was beaten by such an underqualified, and flagrantly sexist Republican rival. As a presidential candidate, Clinton was actually in a unique position which generally benefits female candidates - studies have found that women with familial connections to powerful men are more likely to come to power, as an exception to the rarity of female leaders[6] - and still this did not guarantee her success. Clinton ran a less progressive campaign than Warren and is also markedly more established in US politics, so to suggest that both women lost for the same reason seems ill-informed, particularly when it is noted that each woman reached a different stage of the presidential race. Importantly, it must be remembered that Clinton did win the popular vote, so in fact, it is not particularly apt to blame her loss solely on misogyny on the part of the American public.

Ultimately, both women have very different political backgrounds, ran campaigns with very different agendas, and achieved different degrees of success, so suggesting that the outcomes of both Warren and Clinton’s campaigns can be attributed wholly to the patriarchy erases the nuances of political representation. Perhaps the American public are simply not ready for their first female President, or perhaps there are more significant forces at play in contemporary politics. It is understandably frustrating for American women to see another qualified female presidential candidate fail to succeed in her campaign. However, presenting powerful white women as mere victims of the patriarchy surely undermines the struggles of marginalised women in the US and the progress made by the women of the past. A renewed focus on policy over identity should be employed by American feminists.

Notes

[1] Bryson, V. (2003) Feminist Political Theory, 2^nd ed, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, p. 166

[2] Patil, V. (2013), ‘From Patriarchy to Intersectionality: A Transnational Feminist Assessment of How Far We've Really Come’, Signs, 38(4), p. 847

[3] Bryson, V. (2003), p. 171

[4] Cited in Lloyd, M. (2013), ‘Power, Politics, Domination, and Oppression’ in Waylen, G., Cells, K., Kantola, J. and Weldon, S. L. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 123

[5] This is also at odds with the radical feminist notion that power wielding by women is ‘matriarchal’ in nature and concerned with cooperation, care and utilised for the benefit of others (Lisa Leghorn and Katherine Parker, in Lloyd, 2013, p. 121).

[6] Jalalzi, F. (2010), ‘Madam President: Gender, Power, and the Comparative Presidency’, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 31(2), pp. 132- 165.