I'll have to get back to this, but what immediate comes to mind is: are men rational voters?
Has she heard of the gender gap? Almost any time a Democrat or a liberal wins, at least in a close race, women decided the election.
pwned by the Doc: I was going to say that I thought the people who voted for the guy they'd like to have a beer with were the irrational ones.
The past couple of electoral results in your country and in mine provide pretty good evidence that they are not ...
I defended Hirshman before in some of the mommy wars threads but this article made me believe she truly thinks women are idiots.
It was pretty clear in the mommy wars threads that you were defending Hirshman simply based on her personality, Becks.
re: 2
In the UK at least, the gender difference used to go the other way. I remember reading* that if only men had voted during the 80s and early 90s, the Tories would only have won one election rather than four in a row.
* but can't find a citation for this alleged 'fact' ...
I was thinking something along the lines of B's 1. Like in the part of the article where all of the women are saying things like "I don't really follow the news -- I listen to what my husband has to say". If I look around at the (non-politically-obsessed segment of the) people I know, I'd say that the women and the men take in about the same amount of news but the men are much more confident about talking out their ass about politics even though they're uninformed. So I immediately have to wonder if the men are really getting more information than the women or are just more willing to act like they are.
"Any campaign that needs women to win would have to break the 88-year record of women failing to produce election results that men oppose."
and
"The second lesson is that elections that turn on the female electorate bear an unfortunate resemblance to a popularity contest."
are the two sentences that I find most aggravating and unsubstantiated.
re: 6
It seems I was right, a 2005 article from the New Statesman says:
However, according to a 2004 poll by the Fawcett Society, female support for the Tories has also fallen off - since 1945, the Conservatives have enjoyed consistently greater approval among women than men. In the 2001 election, the gap was narrow - 33 per cent of women, against 32 per cent of men.
[my emphasis]
The article is making me rethink my current "I'm for Obama because he's a total hottie" position.
Well of course -- Edwards is much dreamier.
This article is kind of maddening. I'm mostly too irritated to have a response yet.
10 - I hear Mormons are genetically predisposed to vote for Bears fans.
Other commenters have said this first, but it sounds like her conclusion (I haven't read the article) is that overall, women vote basically like men do, which is to say, not very seriously. What a shock.
12.--Actually, having an opinion about football is a mark against a man.
The article isn't clear, but she does characterize women as vastly less informed about politics than men.
She also doesn't seem to count listening to NPR as gathering news.
(Mormons, if anything, were disposed to favoring the team of Steve Young.)
re: 16
And that's an empirical question, that could be tested. However, I'm assuming from Becks' post [I've not read the article] that Hirshman doesn't actually go out and do that.
Sadly, I can't find the 2004 article, I think from the Post, in which the author decided to do an interview with an undecided voter. I felt it really spoke to why a huge chunk of the electorate (in this guy's case, a lower-middle class white veteran) feels so disconnected from politics and American political institutions -- he wasn't even aware that he was entitled to go to the VA instead of, in a memorable anecdote, pulling his own tooth. This, on the other hand, is a piece of trash that makes me want to go set the author on fire.
In this passage:
To this day -- as even my D.C. area correspondents seemed to confirm -- women just aren't as interested in politics as men are. The Center for Civic Education recently reported that American women are less likely than men to discuss politics, contribute to campaigns, contact public officials or join a political organization. About 42 percent of men told University of Michigan researchers last year that "they are 'very interested' in government and public affairs, compared with 34 percent of women."
Worse, women consistently score 10 to 20 percentage points lower than men on studies of political knowledge, regardless of their education or income level. Studies dating to 1997 have shown that fewer women than men can name their senator, or know one First Amendment right. They even know less about the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade than men do.
As a 2006 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press put it, American adults live in "A World of His and Hers." Two million more men than women read either Time or Newsweek; more men listen to radio news and talk radio, read the paper and get news online. Only broadcast television news plays to more women than men, and a lot of that is TV news magazines and morning shows. Not only do fewer women read the newspaper, but almost half the women surveyed said they "sometimes do not follow international news because of excessive coverage of wars and violence."
Assuming her data's good, I suppose I can't fault her for bringing it up, but it's annoying.
I don't mean her conclusion as she expresses it herself, but more what it implies.
"Neither the former teacher nor the retired television reporter read any newspapers at all.
There are some constants. Most of the women read People and Real Simple magazines."
What's with the emphasis on the reading of newspapers? I do not; news comes from the internets and political magazines. (What the hell is Real Simple? a lifestyle mag, I'd guess.)
In any event, though I haven't read the entirety of the article, it strikes me as just another entry in the backlash against backlash against backlash -- whichever generation of feminism we're allegedly experiencing now. Newsflash: even white, educated women are reading People magazine and taking their cues from husbands and fathers.
The last of which is, as noted, just as likely a function of men being more willing to talk out of their asses, I mean speak authoritatively, than women.
And I'm really only going by the bit excerpted by Becks.
I keep wondering, rumors of teh gay aside, why Steve Young hasn't run for political office. I really thought that was the direction he was headed.
JM's cohort of football haters were clearly the backbone of Stephen Harper's suprise victory.
This isn't exactly on topic, but I feel the need to confess that I have literally never watched one of those Sunday morning political talk shows for more than a minute or two. It's not a time when I tend to be watching TV, and they seem to be so content-free. It makes reading political blogs a little weird, because a lot of posts relate to political TV.
I don't think I've been up early enough on a Sunday morning to watch those shows in a very, very long time.
Another annoying thing about the piece is that Hirshman buys the assumption that voting on character, rather than "issues" is "irrational." In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense, broad policy differences aside (which is to say, for Dem/Rep. voters in the primaries, and independents whenever), to vote for president for the person whose character you find most congenial. Whether to invade Iraq was more or less a policy call, but the fact that it was done so haphazardly and that we aren't now pulling out are all about the president's character.
Were there rumors about Young's being gay? Huh. I could have met him any number of times, except for those hating football and organised Mormon youth events things. What I've heard about him, though, is that he is not the brightest star in the galaxy. (And I deny everything in re: Stephen Harper.)
LB, if you thought it was bad before, at some point recently, all of the Sunday talk shows decided to eliminate chairs.
You, ogged, are what's wrong with America.
It's not that voting on actual character would be a bad thing, but believing you can tell a blessed thing about what someone's character is like from a political campaign is borderline delusional, and a terrifying number of voters do it. Voting on 'character' is the equivalent of going to the largest media conglomerate and just promising to obey whatever they want you to do.
eliminate chairs
I don't even understand this -- guests mill around on their feet?
Snarkout, the Post piece is this one.
I don't even understand this -- guests mill around on their feet?
I'm guessing they're sitting on couches.
believing you can tell a blessed thing about what someone's character is like from a political campaign is borderline delusional
Nah, you can tell plenty if you take researching it as seriously as you do researching "issues." Obviously, their campaign and their opponent's campaign won't be very enlightening, but the totality of coverage, particularly from their hometown press, can tell you a lot.
20
This is not particularly surprising. To many people politics is like sports. You cheer your guys, boo the opposition, rant at the umpires when a call goes against you, abuse supporters of the other team, feel good when your side wins, bad when they lose etc. Since women are less into this sort of thing than men naturally they will follow sports or politics less closely than men.
No, they stand uncomfortably around a kind of bar table. Not the actually important people--they get to sit, when they're not teleported onto screens.
12.--Actually, having an opinion about football is a mark against a man.
There's a chance for me yet!
Echoing 20, I'd argue that a rabid sports-fan-like enthusiasm for politics is not necessary to make an informed decision on who to vote for.
I saw Steve Young at the Palo Alto Whole Foods once. He was on his cell, telling someone, "You need to take a step back and take a look at yourself." Or something very much like that. That's gay, right?
I agree with 33 about character.
That's gay, right?
Shopping at the Palo Alto Whole Foods? Definitely.
33: You mean if you take it much more seriously than you take researching issues. Finding out where a candidate stands on the issues requires listening to their stump speech, maybe reading a couple of newspaper articles. (Finding out where it's a good idea to stand on the issues is more difficult, but you have to do that anyway.) Finding out anything about character from campaign coverage, while you're right that it's not necessarily impossible, requires obsessively and suspiciously reading all the coverage there is, and figuring out which bits are revealing and which bits are bullshit.
That story that went around in 2000 about Bush as a kid blowing up frogs by shoving firecrackers up their asses looks informative now, but in 2000, all it said was that at least one person would publish horrible things about him.
36.--Christ, I knew I should have put a qualifier on that.
31 - Thankee. Gene Weingarten is a humor writer and was writing that to be funny, but he still churned out a better and more interesting piece than Hirshman's pile. I mean, writing, Yet I couldn't escape the fact that they took in little of politics, especially compared with their husbands, that their decision-making seemed impulsive and that their response to Clinton's candidacy was driven to an amazing extent by personality after six years of a Bush administration is just staggering to me. Why is it that these middle- and upper-class women who want to be informed have so little to go on? What does that say about politics and media in America? They're not disconnected the way tooth-pulling Ted Prus is, so what's the scenario? Is it, in fact, the way that media coverage (on TV and on the series of tubes) turns everything into SportsCenter? Is JM soon to decamp for the land of the beaver and poutine? Does rumored gay man Steve Young have a thing for Ogged? And given that Hirshman seems uninterested in discussing any of this, why has no one yet set her on fire?
re: 33 and 43.
But it is not clear how much more you learn from a basic stump speech about what someone will do when elected than you learn about their character from listening to the stories about them and their character. Perhaps this exhibits boundless cynicism on my part, but I do not have much more faith in a stump speech as an indicator of political actions that will be taken than I have in a photo montage at a nominating convention as an indicator of a person's character. Indeed, ultimately, I suppose I am much like the women Hirschman is describing in that what I think about a person as a person is very important. To me, it's at least as good an indicator of what someone will do in office as whatever their stump speech is.
I should point out that one of the reasons I voted third-party in 2000 was because of a viscerally skeeved out reaction I got from Joe Lieberman. But I'm a guy -- just like beefy Tim Russert or manly-man Chris Matthews -- so pandering to me doesn't get sneeringly dismissed by Post hacks.
"Hello, today I'm interviewing a typical woman, Michelle Bachman, who's going to tell me about the juicy hot throbbing reasons why she voted for for George W. Bush".
Ogged, you have to move on. For Steve Young, you're over with.
43
"... (Finding out where it's a good idea to stand on the issues is more difficult, but you have to do that anyway.) ..."
Why? That sounds like a lot of work. Just pick a good man and let him worry about the details.
"I think there are some interesting things that could be uncovered about the difference between the way men and women make political decisions but this article isn't it"
I don't. End of contribution. Aren't you glad?
I would call myself "very interested in politics" to a pollster, and I don't think I've ever heard an entire stump speech (not having ever lived in New Hampshire or Iowa).
I see snippets of them, yes, often remixed in annoying ways on TV news show. I read snippets of them when they make their way into newspaper stories or magazine profiles. I'll hear bits of them remixed in the debates.
But an actual stump speech? Sorry, Joe Drymala. That form is still indispensable, but it's for the few.
the totality of coverage, particularly from their hometown press, can tell you a lot.
This, definitely.
I do not have much more faith in a stump speech as an indicator of political actions that will be taken than I have in a photo montage at a nominating convention as an indicator of a person's character
Right. What you learn from a stump speech is that someone is "for education" and believes in "a strong America."
Head banged against wall.
Not too much to add. I don't think Hirshman's shrill (just getting that out of the way.) But given the 'would have a beer with him', 'oh he's unelectable', 'our Leader' strands running through American politics lately (maybe ever?), I'll eat my hat if this is trend that doesn't also apply to men, but they'll couch it in language of 'straight shooter', 'honest', 'knows where he stands.'
Like ogged & Idealist, I'm not inclined to see this as a bad thing. I can't get a sense of a candidate's views on every possible issue or predict the future; knowing something like 'listens carefully to debate' or 'is generally hot-tempered' or 'is xenophobic' is potentially more useful than 'is for a phased redeployment, unless something comes up.' Unlike ogged & Idealist, though, I'm very wary that I can get a good sense of someone's character in the media-saturated modern political arena.
On the Obamacrush: NPR's quiz show had a segment last week where they described a group listening to Obama and having no idea what he stood for because the reporters were too busy writing "Mrs. Barack Obama" over and over again in their notebooks.
[/hides notebook....]
OK, now I've read the piece.
In every election, there's a chance that women will be the decisive force that will elect someone who embraces their views.
Wow, 150 million women in this country, and only one set of views. Who knew?
With Clinton's candidacy on the horizon, I decided to test my theory by asking a few white, married women -- the key demographic -- what they are up to this time.
The key demographic...according to the Washington Post marketing department? Seriously, what on earth?
women just aren't as interested in politics as men are. The Center for Civic Education recently reported that American women are less likely than men to discuss politics, contribute to campaigns, contact public officials or join a political organization.
Interesting definition of "interested in politics." Not terrible, but a bit limited. I wonder if the gender gap is as big when you adjust for caregiving responsibilities and other time-eating activities.
Not only do fewer women read the newspaper, but almost half the women surveyed said they "sometimes do not follow international news because of excessive coverage of wars and violence."
Once again, this has to do with political interest how, exactly? Because voting with your feet on the media's bias toward conflict means you're not political?
Blech.
56.--Yeah, that last one, "excessive coverage of wars and violence," sounds familiar. I've had female relatives complain to me that watching graphic footage of faraway wars upsets them to no comprehensable purpose. The news coverage doesn't help them understand anything or place it in any broader context that "many people in other places suffer horribly." These are women who enjoy geography documentaries; they're not uninterested in learning about faraway peoples and places. The news media just aren't doing their jobs very well (surprise, surprise).
I sent the article to Becks because I found it so shocking. That was as contempt-filled an article as I can remember reading. Off the top of my head, I bet the negative numbers she's getting track with people who work full time, and therefore surrounded by adults and adult conversation, and people who are at home full time. There are any number of other explanations that are available, many mentioned above. And all you have to do to find them is start with the assumption that women are rational.
Maybe I'm just stuck on defending Hirshman from the last go-round, but I read it more as her being an asshole for its own sake than having contempt for women particularly. While I have a strong impulse to kick her in the shins, she cites data for her claims about men's and women's differential exposure to political information, and she doesn't essentialize it -- there's nothing about women's innate needs to focus on the domestic or some other explanation of how, on the veldt, men became fascinated by political news while being chased by leopards. This article left me thinking she's a jerk who's trying to piss people off, but I bet in a different context she'd write equally lousy things about men.
I may be cutting her too much slack, but I'm reading misanthrope rather than misogynist or misandrist.
Speaking of media, which I realize we really haven't been:
KHARTOUM (AFP) - Sudan's two main television stations went off the air for three minutes in solidarity with Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese cameraman detained since 2002 at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay.
It's remarkable how impossible it is to imagine this happening in the U.S. if the circumstances were reversed.
This article left me thinking she's a jerk who's trying to piss people off, but I bet in a different context she'd write equally lousy things about men.
Let her prove it. I thought the earlier article made a lot of sense. Now I just find her grotesque.
59: But I'm not all that strongly attached to my position here. I really do want to kick her in the shins repeatedly.
61: Yeah, the earlier article may have been a lousy person with a good point. Pat Buchanan isn't wrong about everything.
Stopped clocks write good articles twice daily.
It's remarkable how impossible it is to imagine this happening in the U.S. if the circumstances were reversed.
Really? It's hard for me to imagine the circumstances being reversed; but if they were, it seems pretty plausible that there would be major demonstrations of solidarity from media outlets -- I could totally see some major news program going dark for a few minutes with a message beforehand about their marking the 100th or whatever day of captivity of such and such a reporter.
Why is it hard to imagine the circumstances being reversed? Journalists get taken prisoner in Iraq from time to time, and if the US were to invade Sudan (not an entirely outlandish hypothetical) there would be plenty of opportunity for such things to happen there as well.
65: First off, it's hard for me to imagine that degree of coordination. And secondly, it's very hard to imagine it except in the case of a politically safe protest -- i.e., is one that is not truly political in any real sense of the word. Sixty seconds of silence for Aung San Suu Kyi is not 60 seconds for Jose Padilla.*
*Neither of whom are American political prisoners in a foreign country, I'm aware.
Journalists get taken prisoner in Iraq from time to time
Right -- and Daniel Pearl was murdered -- what I am having trouble imagining is the journalists being kept prisoner (and held by a government) for a period of a few years. I would think a journalist taken captive would be either dead or free in at most a couple of weeks time. And his/her captors would most likely be free agents.
I suspect if an American journalist were, say, captured and held prisoner in Iran right about now the networks would have no trouble coming up with some moments of silence.
I would think a journalist taken captive would be either dead or free in at most a couple of weeks time. And his/her captors would most likely be free agents.
Not necessarily; most of the people who are inclined to do this sort of thing right now are jihadists and other free agents, but there are some national governments out there that might think it worth their while to capture Americans and hold them.
Were there moments of silence for that young Christian Science Monitor journalist kidnapped in Iraq?
Could be. In any case your 69(!) says quite well what I was trying to get at in 65.
72 -> 70. I don't know about 71.
Sixty seconds of silence for Aung San Suu Kyi is not 60 seconds for Jose Padilla.
Not from an American perspective, but Myanmar would probably have the opposite opinion.
Re 71, Jill Carroll was held for nearly 3 months, giving the lie to my speculation in 68.
SCMT in 58 is hitting on the right point. Hirshman's negative portrayal of women's political savvy is linked to her focus on stay at home moms. This can explain both her evidence and her ire.
Her statistical evidence is hard to parse. She doesn't give us any details about the U of M study which allegedly showed that men know more about Roe v. Wade than women, but it would be interesting to see if that study controlled for employment.
What is more interesting is her anecdotal evidence and the way she handles it. The Wednesday Morning group that she uses as an example is a group that arranges "speakers and programs" from SAHMs. (What are these programs? Do the speakers come to your house? What is going on here?) My impression here is that she went straight for the demographic she despises most: wealthy women who do not work. She then proceeds to portray them as idiots. Unsurprising, really.
It also doesn't surprise me that wealthy women who do not work are not politically engaged. These are people who live well and don't see any danger that their lifestyle might be threatened.
I would have been happier if Hershman's article was explicitly focused on the thesis "wealthy women who do not work are stupid" rather than simply implying that "women are stupid." She's more committed to the former thesis anyway.
I just added an update. She also had a blog post today where she said:
My hypothesis is that American women, believing that politics has no ultimate meaning, raised on a steady diet of the authenticity of private feeling and in retreat from communal ties to the single family dwelling, were the actually incarnation of, pardon the gendered language, Nietzsche's last man.
That's some agenda.
76: To some extent, authors who know how weak anecdotal evidence really is are compelled to include it in this sort of article so that it's publishable. But I suspect that Hirshman might have been happy to include it anyway.
Second, while I think you're right about those women not worrying about their lifestyle, it's interesting that they're not actually any safer than their politically engaged husbands, it's just that since they don't *have* to think about the financial or political security of their life, they don't. It's a bias, in other words.
She doesn't give us any details about the U of M study which allegedly showed that men know more about Roe v. Wade than women
It is my firm belief that more men than women are anti-Roe v. Wade cranks.
pdf: I agree that the women of the Wed. Morning group are no where near as safe as they think they are. In fact, they are one divorce away from a lifestyle they may have no understanding of whatsoever. It would behoove them to pay attention to divorce law and the politics thereof, which would be a nice bridge to the rest of feminism.
79: Yeah, one might expect opponents of a popular (i.e. generally supported) piece of law would know more about it than supporters, on average.
77: From Wiki: One of Nietzsche's greatest fears was creeping mediocrity. If the "Übermensch" represented his ideal -- the ideal of a being strong enough to create his own values, strong enough to live without the consolation of traditional morality -- then Nietzsche's so called 'last man' is the exact opposite.
I think the kindest explanation available is that she has too much time on her hands and has retreated into the creation of little play worlds.
Oh good god, put down the Nietzsche, you're not going to do anything except look the fool, Hirshman.
LB, I'd be inclined to treat Hirshman's thesis charitably if she were more careful, but she picks six wealthy SAHMs, finds they're not politically engaged, and while she doesn't generalize to the entire leopard-chasing veldt explanation, it is maddening, and telling, that the entire rhetoric of 'honest guy you could have a beer with', or 'good hearted man', which has dominated a lot of American discourse doesn't even register. Maybe it's not misogyny, but it's sure looking like it, because I can't think of another way an ostensibly intelligent woman manages to miss that and think that it's only a feature of women she doesn't hold a lot of respect for.
83 - Normativity is my friend! I'm a married straight white professional -- politicians pandering to me don't even blip as pandering in Hirshman-land!
Re: Obamacrushing: last week I waited behind a 50-ish, working-class, white woman while she patiently explained to the checkout clerk that while she would never vote for a dangerous radical like Hillary Clinton (who she seemed to think was bent on One-Worldism), she would vote for Obama because he seemed "smart" and "nice."
Re: Hirshman: I've heard too many guys talk nonsense about politics to ever believe that women are uniquely ill-informed on that subject.
83: Oh, I agree that this piece is maddening, and it certainly seems to be written in a deliberately hostile fashion.
Reading a few magazines and listening to NPR doesn't sound liek the behavior of a slouch. LB reads a lot faster than I do, so she reads more newspapers than I do. I'd have to devote 4 or 5 hours a day to get the reading done that she does. I could do it, if I didn't have to work and had a full-time domestic staff, but I don't and I can't.
I'm never sure how to decide issues based on policy positions. I do look at policy proposals. My main issues are health care and civil liberties. Joe Lieberman actually had a decent health care proposal, but there was no way that I was going to vote for him. All of the Democrats say that they support universal healthcare --eventually--and there are some important differences in their proposals. HRC's pushing for a more incrementalist approach, but beyond that it's hard to distinguish between their platforms in the primaries. (General elections reflect a much starker choice.) What I really want to know is what sort of healthcare proposal will this person be able to pass, and for that I need to know something about a person's management experience and the sort of people they tend to hire etc.
The small percent of wealthy, white, married women somehow represent all women voters?
I know that the media counts political representation in terms of advertising dollars and market shares, but since the finding that 51% of American women are unmarried, which appeared last week or so and should still be in short-term political memory, this is ridiculous of Hirschman.
Surely there is some poll bias similar to those polls that show that 90 percent of Americans believe in angels. Working women won't answer the phone to talk to journalists; women working at home (e.g. writing) won't answer the phone because they are busy; maybe women listening to NPR won't answer the phone.
On the Sudanese cameraman thing: Sami al-Haj is a cause celebre in the Arab media - having Al Jazeera on-side will do that for you. AJ has done a full-length (53 minute) documentary about him, mentions his various anniversaries pretty frequently, etc etc. Plus, five years. Not hard to see the US media picking up a guy who'd been held for five years by a foreign power (nation or insurgent) as a cause.
Wasn't there a study published several months ago that showed most people make complex decisions via their "gut", a sort of reflex when confronted with terribly complex matters, and that this was a fairly typical way of decision making?
I'm female, and started following politics in 1980. 26 years later, its all starting to sound the same. Same issues, different people. I kinda feel like I've heard everything there is to say! So I don't read as much anymore (guess that puts me on her shit list). Ms. Hirshman always seems to gloss right over the obvious - maybe women are fed up with the way the media is going, are tired of the extreme partisan ship - you name it.
One last thing - her POV regarding gender issues seems entirely based on the soft sciences- and they are called soft for a reason. I don't see how you can ignore/deny the entire body of knowledge that the hard sciences produce regarding gender and behavior. I don't know if any biologist or other scientist would so easily dismiss a mammal's drive to reproduce, survive, and ensure the continuation of its genetic pool (you know, like human MOTHERS), and then insult those efforts to boot!
Garance Franke-Ruta at tapped mentions an issue where Hirshman may have point: