Why are women voting for Tr**p?
Quite honestly, I was curious, because I sure as fuck couldn’t figure it out. Having a woman as president would have been a really amazing accomplishment for the US, but clearly our democratic system had other plans. I was struggling to understand how women could pit themselves against another woman with that type of intentional angst. And if you’re offended already, good. I’m not here to be liked. I’m here to speak my mind.
I have been diving deeper into It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace and I came across this chapter that focused on politics which is incredibly timely. The focus is on gender identification and gender ideology.
Gender Identification
Many of us understand this, but for the sake of this concept, it’s how closely you relate with this gender. Is being recognized as a member of this group important to you? Do you feel closely connected to this group?As a study, they had women answer a series of questions like the above and came to correlate either a high or low gender identification. High gender identification meaning that they felt very close and connected to women as a whole or low gender identification where they did not feel as connected to women as a whole. This is not a static concept.
From my own experience, I know that I used to try to “impress” guys by having low gender identification when I was in high school. I never really felt connected to any of the other girls. I felt more included with the guys in my age group and I differentiated myself by stating I was “one of the guys” that I knew their viewpoints and understood them. Now, I have had many demonstrations of high gender identity of women who have made an impact on my life, so that statement “one of the guys” no longer holds true. However, I speculate that if I still held this belief, I might be inclined to have other viewpoints this election.
Gender Ideology
To rephrase simply: what you believe the societal role of women’s responsibilities to be.
I have never thought it has been my place to be taking care of the house, cooking meals, or raising a family. It’s not a priority for me, but I won’t knock anyone that thinks otherwise. It really comes down to your own deep-rooted values… until it expands beyond your own personal beliefs to influence laws that do not believe the same.
LGBTQ issues, contraceptive use/access, and abortion are just a few major issues that cross lines of traditional feminine ideology. I could see many women voting for Trump because of these very things. They have traditional ideals of what a woman should be and how they should be preserving this ideal. What is interesting is that you can address all three of those concepts on your own, for yourself, and by yourself. If you’re not being proposed to by a lesbian, why do you care? If someone else chooses to use contraceptives while you don’t, why do you care? And if the pregnancy isn’t yours, again, why do you care? Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is that when written into law can be inhibiting for many different women with different socioeconomic circumstances.
I’m sure there are a variety of reasons outside this that women may choose to vote for Trump, but when phrased “As a woman, how can you?” these hit the more relevant points.
Now what does this have to do with the STEM narrative. Career aspirations. Quite simply, this quote from the book is a very interesting view on what this means for each combination of views:
“1. Women who identify strongly with women but not with feminism are likely to highly value traditional female gender roles and to disavow feminist concerns about the social position of women. And if they have a low identification with feminism, they are likely to have low workplace aspirations.
2. Women who highly identify with feminism whether they strongly identify with women or not, are likely to be committed to improving women’s social status.
3. Women who identify strongly with both women and feminism are likely to have high workplace aspirations.”
I will leave you with this, since it’s my favorite election phrase:
“Vote as if…
Your skin is not white
Your parents need medical care
Your friend is a missing indigenous woman
Your spouse is an immigrant
Your land is on fire
Your child is transgender
Your house is flooded
Your sister is a victim of gun violence
Your brother is gay
Your water is unsafe
Your daughter is a sexual assault survivor
…because our privilege has no place in an election.”
