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Melissa: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Now, sometimes we say, "A woman's place is in the house." Well, in 1917, Jeannette Ranken of Montana became the first woman to serve in Congress two years after women in her state won the right to vote, meaning she was in the House. In 1965, Patsy Takemoto Mink, a Japanese-American became the first woman of color to serve in the house.

Just a few years later in 1969, Shirley Chisholm joined the House Of Representatives as the first Black woman member of Congress. Now, in our history, only two Black women have served as US senators, and when Senator Kamala Harris became the vice president in 2021, it left no Black women in the Senate, and only three women of color in the Senate, and that's even though the 2018 midterm elections brought historic wins for women elected to Congress.

Even though as the number of women elected to Congress has grown, there have been more women in the house, unfortunately, so too has our awareness of the ways that political critiques, well, they far too often track along gender stereotypes. At times, they even subject these representatives to forms of verbal and discursive gender violence. Here is representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking on the floor of the house in July 2020, after she was accosted by then representative Ted Yoho on the steps of the Capitol.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I walked back out, and there were reporters in the front of the Capitol, and in front of reporters, representative Yoho called me, and I quote, "A [beep] [beep]." These are the words that representative Yoho levied against a congresswoman, the congresswoman that not only represents New York's 14th congressional district, but every congresswoman and every woman in this country. Because all of us have had to deal with this in some form, some way, some shape, at some point in our lives.

Melissa: AOC was also targeted last month when representative Paul Gosar posted a violent anime video on Twitter depicting him murdering her and attacking president Joe Biden. Democrats in the house censured Gosar and removed him from committee assignments. Just before Thanksgiving, representative Lauren Boebert was filmed twice making racist comments that suggested representative Ilhan Omar might be a terrorist. Now, representative Omar is the first person to wear hijab in the US Congress, and she said that she's received death threats and too many threatening voicemails to count. Here is representative Omar speaking with Joy Reid on MSNBC.

Representative Ilhan Omar: I'm okay. I have survived things like war, and I'm going to be okay. What I'm worried about is my staff, my constituents, and every single member of the Muslim community who's worried about what this means for them, and without condemnation and punishment for this anti-Muslim Islamophobic hate would mean for them and their communities.

Melissa: So far, Boebert hasn't faced any consequences from house leadership for her comments. Representative Ayanna Pressley introduced the resolution last week to strip Boebert of her committee assignments. Joining me now is Kelly Dittmar, an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden and the director of research and a scholar at the Center for American women in politics. Thanks for joining us on The Takeaway, Kelly.

Kelly Dittmar: Thanks so much for having me.

Melissa: Now, let's dig in here just for a moment on the numbers. When you look at the US House Of Representatives and the US Senate, and you look at the numbers of women and women of color, is this a moment to be celebrating how many folks there are, or to be mourning how few there still are?

Kelly Dittmar: I think we can do both. We can celebrate the fact because in the last two elections, particularly in the 2018 election, we saw record numbers of women running and winning elections, and that was across levels. At the same time, women continue to be underrepresented, or you can talk about it as men being continually overrepresented across these levels of office. Then having some real sites of underrepresentation that I think are especially important. I would talk here about governors, statewide executives, and in that, really looking at the diversity that is lacking among women in those positions.

You know we have never had a Black woman governor. We still have really low numbers of women of color in any statewide executive position. While we can celebrate the increase in the candidate pool, and the clear evidence that women win when they run, we have to be sure that we're also lifting women up in positions where they continue to be especially underrepresented.

Melissa: When I talk about these numbers with my students, and they say, "Well, what can we do?" There's a number of structural things, but one of the things I do is say, "Look, you just got to, when you notice brilliant, hardworking, incredibly capable women say to them, "Have you ever thought of running for office?" Something that we know that boys, literally young men hear pretty frequently and that girls don't." Part of what I want to [chuckles] dig into here is when I say that to my students who seem to me like, "Oh, wow, you could someday be great." They look at me and say, "Why would I run for office, Professor? Have you seen how women are treated?"

Kelly Dittmar: Absolutely. The piece of this that sometimes we miss is you can tell women and encourage women and ask them to run all day, but if you don't make a case that the potential costs, the literal costs, right? It costs a lot of money, and the psychological cost, or the cost of leaving a job or activism or things that they feel like they're making a real difference in. If we don't recognize those cost as maybe unweighed to what they see as the benefits, we're not making an effective case to women to even run.

Then we have to handle the fact that when they do run, they face disproportionate types and levels of harassment and abuse. Then, unfortunately, as we've seen recently, we're also seeing that abuse continue once they get into office. Obviously, this isn't new, but we're seeing it and hearing about it more explicitly now partly because of social media, and partly thanks to the women who are in, who are willing to speak out and call it out as inappropriate. The downside of course is, how do you make the case to other women to run for office when they see this type of abuse?

Melissa: Let's talk about that language, and you're describing this as abuse. Talk about what we're seeing in terms of, let's call it discursive violence, over and against particularly women in the House Of Representatives who are at the intersections of also being progressive and women of color.

Kelly Dittmar: Yes. I think it's so important to make that distinction, and I'm glad you did. Ever since, especially in the 2018 election, we saw conservatives, particularly Republicans running for office who singled out these women, again, at this intersection as personifications of threats. The abuse, the characterizations of them as socialists, extremists, radicals, again, threats to communities, or they would use words like extreme.

This is not a coincidence that they are doing this with women in communities, racial and ethnic, religious, and even generational communities that have been marginalized from power and characterized as, at the least unfit, and at the worst dangerous for being in political power. We saw this as a campaign tactic. It continued on, both from members of the public, and unfortunately candidates and officeholders. Then we see once these women get in office, they continue to be targets because it's used to rile a base that has now been told that this is exactly what you need to campaign against. Again, inseparable from the fact that we're dealing within institutions, campaigns, and elected institutions that are rooted in misogyny and racism.

Melissa: Now, Kelly, we asked some of our listeners if they thought there's a difference between how the news media treats women versus men in elected office. Let's take a listen.

Shannon: Hi, this is Shannon from Welches Oregon, and I think there is absolutely a difference in how the media portrays female and male candidates. I think the most prime example is discussing a female candidate's obligation to home, things that they're wearing, how they do their hair, discussions about their body type, or superficial things. You don't hear these things generally mentioned about male candidates.

It's more about their work related history, the things that they've been successful at. It's never about how they aren't raising their children, what kind of suit they're wearing, what their hair looks like. Just that alone sets the tone so much differently for female candidates. There's an extra hurdle that they have to jump over just to be able to be in the same field as male politicians.

Joseph Ulrich: My name is Joseph Ulrich. I'm calling from Vancouver Washington. I'm a 67-year-old white male. I have seen the increase in mistreatment and unequal treatment, downright disparaging and degrading treatment by other politicians which the news media does not cover, specifically women of color, women of different religions other than Christianity, what have you. It is despicable. There is no modicum of respect for the fact that these women fought hard to get to these places and the news media is not doing a good enough job of covering or calling out even the mildest of these infractions.

Terry: Terry, Jackson Heights. Yes, I do think the media covers women differently than it covers men, because I think we still live in a sexist society, and women are treated differently in all industries. We don't talk about the age of men. We don't talk about how they look or how they style their hair or what they wore. These things are insignificant, and I think there's always this underlying current in when they make these statements that somehow women are less than, or they're not fully qualified for the positions that they're in. That is total sexism.

Donna: Hi, I'm Donna from Philadelphia, and is there a difference with the way the media treat men versus women in elected office? All you have to do is ask Hillary Rodham Clinton about that, the way that she was treated during the 2016 presidential election was deplorable. Even now, what's going on with Vice President Harris, the littlest things are blown up into big stories that she uses Le Creuset pots. She doesn't like wireless ear pods. Supposedly there's a report where some former staffers have said working for her is hellish because of what you have to go through. Why didn't anybody talk about the toxic work environment of Mike Pence?

Melissa: Kelly, let's jump in right there. When we look at media depictions, the stories that mainstream mass media decides to tell about women who hold office, do we in fact tell mean girl stories or focus on aspects of women who are officeholders in ways that we don't for men?

Kelly Dittmar: Yes and no. The evidence in terms of academic studies and others who have looked at this certainly finds that there have been differences in both the quantity and quality of coverage, and that quality of coverage is exactly what you're talking about. Focusing on different and arguably sexist themes, racist themes, biases, et cetera, because media knows that it'll get clicked, so you might be more interested in a Boebert versus Omar theme because of that catfight narrative, than you would of two men who have been going back and forth like Adam Kinzinger and another more conservative member of Congress.

There's also a piece of this that we have to, I think, push beyond just it's sexist or it's not, and think about the nuance in ways in which gender and race infuse the media coverage, and really have a conversation about the implications of coverage. What I mean here is, it's okay potentially to talk about Hillary Clinton's emails, or to talk about somebody's clothing if it's used as a way of communicating a message, but you have to understand the nuance of how that coverage might be received by an audience in ways that are different because of the audience's own biases.

If you're questioning a woman's honesty, the audience who is prone to think women are more honest than men might have a more negative reaction to that. There's a more nuanced responsibility of media that might be a lot to ask of them to say, "You have to think about how this particular story is going to read for this particular woman and be responsible to the biases that are already in the ecosystem in which you're communicating this type of story." You think about that with likability as well, emotion, things that might be taken differently, unfortunately, because there are these biases at the root.

Melissa: I think that's such an interesting and an important reframe of that. Not saying, "Oh, you just can't talk about this with a woman," but instead, trying to have some awareness around, again, not only a woman candidate, but a woman who may be at the intersections of these other identities. I want to take a listen to another call for a moment because you brought up the issue of media coverage of how women who hold elected office dress. Let's take a moment.

Angela: Women in elected office are treated much more strictly in regards to their appearance and their dress than they are to their ideas and issues that they are bringing to the forefront. This is Angela from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Melissa: How can we as media talk about the way that women dress in politics in a way that is actually useful? Because some of what is happening is candidates and officeholders are purposely using clothing and fashion to make a statement and you don't want to ignore it because, well, there's just a rule against talking about that.

Kelly Dittmar: [chuckles] Exactly, it's more productive, at least in my opinion, to get at the root about when and why appearance discussion can be biased. When it's used to discount substance and qualifications, or distract from a message that women are trying to communicate or to sexualize women in ways that trivialize their power. There are all these ways in which focusing on appearance can undermine the power that a woman has in a public space.

Those often are pretty obvious, when you see those types of uses, but if a woman is using image or her appearance, her dress to communicate a message, ignoring that can also hurt her because she's doing that purposefully. When the women wear white to communicate or harken back to women's suffrage, they are trying to communicate a message of solidarity and power. Covering that is not sexist.

In the case of, I know there's been a lot of attention to Senator Kirsten Cinema. There is an argument that some of the ways in which she has used appearance is to distract from the fact that she is not willing to talk about substance. She's not willing to talk about her votes. That's a critique that is arguably fair, as long as you're clear about what you think her appearance choices are being used for.

Again, I think it's a conversation that can be had if you can raise the nuance of it. In other words, saying, "Yes, appearances coverage has sometimes worked to disempower or critique women in power, but we also can talk about the ways in which women themselves use it, and here are some possibilities." Of course, Dr. [unintelligible 00:16:47] in The New York Times has done that and started this conversation. I think there's a continued conversation to have there.

Melissa: Now, we've talked in terms of like specific cases here, we've most mostly talked about women on the Democratic side of the aisle, but I just want to point out that, and I think it's easier for people to see gender bias when it also is directed at women who are in the political party or aligned with the ideological perspective that they have. By way of example, I was regularly appalled at how Kelly Anne Conway was discussed and talked about during her years as an advisor for President Trump. There may have been plenty of substantive critiques to have, but I was stunned at how frequently the language was deployed in ways that were sexist, that, again, used dispersive gender violence. I'm wondering about like our ability to see and hear that bias when that person is maybe not in our political party or not aligned with our ideology.

Kelly Dittmar: Yes. I think you're right to point out that it's not as fairly or evenly critiqued, and especially in the current environment where there is such polarization, there is a tendency to stick with your team no matter on what topic. I think organizations like ours, work that you're doing is to say, we do have to, if we really want to eradicate this type of violence, it has to be across the board, and it also means that the women who are engaged in that type of violence have to recognize it and also push back against it.

Of course, we've seen that, we have to be very careful to say that women can engage in it against other women and be sure to say that nobody, unfortunately, is immune from what is really systemic. This is at the root of these institutions. I recall when Iyana Presley, after the abuse of AOC from her colleague, Ted Yoho said, "Patriarchy is at home in the hall of these institutions," and she's right. Patriarchy, misogyny, racism is really at home unfortunately in our political institutions and simply having new voices and new bodies is something we advocate for. It's really important in disrupting those institutions and the things that root them, but it doesn't happen overnight. These institutions are stubborn and so it's going to take calling it out in all forms and against all women.

Melissa: Kelly Dittmar, from the Center for American Women and Politics, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-Camden. She does direct research at the Center for American women in politics. Thank you for joining us here on The Takeaway, Kelly,

Kelly Dittmar: Thank you again for having me.

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