What do Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump have in common? Ideologically they might be diametrically opposed in many ways but these two have something fundamental in common, and it’s this which has allowed them both a very particular kind of political success. The leader of the Labour Party and the President of the United States are both white men of a certain age and, because of this, they’ve been able to cast themselves as outsiders in politics in order to generate support.
Both Corbyn and Trump are privileged to be insiders in what are, ostensibly, patriarchal political systems which allows them to play the card of the outsider in order to win over voters who perceive them as ‘a breath of fresh air’. Women and people from BME backgrounds who remain minorities in those systems cannot afford to play the outsider card because, if they do, put simply: they will lose.
Women in politics, on the other hand, must play it safe, work hard to be perceived as ‘normal’ and walk a traditional and painfully conventional path to power. Hillary Clinton is case and point. There is a consensus that she lost because of sexism. As one of my LA-born and New York-living female friends said to me recently ‘Hillary lost because she was a woman’. This friend recalled the morning after Donald Trump was announced as America’s President-Elect:
‘I woke up and I cried. I rode the subway to work and I cried, I saw other women who were crying too. I got to work and I cried, we couldn’t work. We all watched the news together and we all cried.’
Why were you crying, I asked her? ‘Because we knew why Hillary had lost.’ Why did she loose? ‘She lost because she was a woman and our country is sexist, it cannot elect a woman.’
Clinton played it very safe in her campaign, although unlike our own Prime Minister, she was not afraid to openly declare herself a feminist. The former First Lady and Secretary of State, one of the most qualified and capable women in the entire world, was sold to the American electorate as a carefully calibrated wife, mother and grandmother who would competently govern. She did not show emotion, she rarely got angry, she did not go off script and she did not let that mask slip.
And yet, she was met with intense opposition. What was it people disliked about her so much? Was it her use of a private email server (oh please), was it Benghazi (not great but surely surmountable) or was it her reluctance to speak from the heart about what it really felt like when her husband cheated on her multiple times with younger women (nope)? No, it was not any of the above semi-legitimate criticisms of Clinton that lost her the Presidency, it was the simple, inescapable fact that she is a woman.
This report in The Atlanticsummed up Hillary’s loss through its description of pro-Trump merchandise on sale at the Republican National Convention:
'Black pin reading don’t be a pussy. vote for trump in 2016. Black-and-red pin reading Trump 2016: Finally someone with balls. White T-shirt reading trump that bitch. White T‑shirt reading Hillary sucks but not like Monica. Red pin reading life’s a bitch: don’t vote for one.'
Time and time again, Trump failed to out debate Hillary. Flustered, flapping and failing he fell back on her gender and it worked. The left may have reappropriated his ‘nasty woman’ insult, but for many, it resonated and stuck and reinforced Trump a ‘straight talking man’s, man’.
Which brings us to Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May. Compare their campaigns? It’s 2017 and we have a woman Prime Minister who is campaigning hard to win an election by making herself as ‘boring’, ‘normal’ and ‘strong and stable’ as she possibly can. She shows no personality, no emotion, no character and, certainly, no signs of feminism. The interview she gave, alongside husband Philip, to the BBC’s One Show wrapped this ‘very normal’, nothing to see here I swear, narrative up and plonked a giant vanilla political bow on it. The most radical thing she has even done is...wait for it...'run through a field of wheat'.
And yet, when Theresa May was Minister for Women and Equalities from 2010 to 2012 she wasn’t afraid to work her best feminist angle: ‘some people don’t like the term feminist’ she said in a 2012 interview with Total Politics, ‘because they think it portrays a certain type of woman. To me, it’s about ensuring there’s a level playing field and equal opportunity.’
In the same interviewshe also spoke to a what is (sadly) still a universal truth about women in politics, ‘there’s an added reason for me to try to do my best’ she said, ‘to show that a woman in this position can do my job’. It was then and is now still harder to get elected if you are a woman.
Admittedly, she was hardly ever radical and her record as Home Secretary is not, I would argue, terribly feminist (see Yarlswood) but regardless of what you think of her policies or politics, Theresa May once donned a ‘this is what a feminist looks like t-shirt’, she also founded and fronted an initiative called Women2Win aimed at giving Conservative women support when running for Parliament. She was, de facto, a feminist. However, as Prime Minister, she’s been rather reluctant to fly the feminist flag. Unlike the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, she has not passionately condemned Donald Trump’s overt and objective sexism. Indeed, when asked by Vogue whether she would describe herself as a feminist she tried to duck the question, ‘prevaricating’ and telling Wood: ‘I haven’t thought about that for a very long time!’ before laughing.
We shouldn’t be surprised that Theresa May is painfully playing it safe, it’s not just politics that has a woman problem, our society has a woman problem. A poll conducted by the Fawcett Society last year only seven per cent of Britons would call themselves a feminist; feminism is a toxic term, feminism doesn’t poll well and feminism certainly doesn’t win elections. More than this, a poll by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroftfound that people who voted Leave in last year’s EU referendum are generally much more hostile to concepts like multiculturalism, social liberalism, environmentalism and, yes, feminism.
Jess Blair, a Director of the Electoral Reform Society has previously spoken about a diversity crisis in local politics. 'In terms of women and men being candidates, we're still seeing far fewer women running and obviously being elected into public office. In the recent local elections, particularly in Wales we only had 20% of our councillors being women - so there is a huge problem with diversity when in politics.' When women run for office, Jess explains, they face challenges that men simply just don’t come up against: ‘Emily Owen in Wales has spoken about the sexism she's faced while running, this speaks the extra challenges that women face in politics that men don't’. This, she says, along with countless other examples of how female parliamentary candidates and MPs are treated (see Diane Abbott) only further serves to discourage women from running in the first place. Indeed, May herself has been the subject of sexism. How can we forget the Daily Mail’s abhorrent and absurd ‘Legsit’ front page which, somehow, she dismissed as 'a bit of fun'.
Having a female Prime Minister for the second time in our country’s history has actually done little to change things Jess says, ‘this is a society where women play significant roles and even though we've got a female prime minister it's actually masking the problems underneath the surface in terms of gender diversity and politics.'
If you are an outsider in a system, as women and or anyone from a minority group is in politics you can’t afford not to belong. Playing is the outsider and coming out on top is a privilege that only true insiders like Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn can afford in a patriarchal society.
It’s 2017 and there is, as Mary Beard writes, still no template for what a powerful woman is supposed to look like. ‘Our mental, cultural template for a powerful person’ she writes, ‘remains resolutely male. If we close our eyes and try to conjure up the image of a president or (to move into the knowledge economy) a professor, what most of us see isn’t a woman.’ As Beard sees it, that’s why the likes of Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel wear ‘regulation trouser suits’ because it makes them ‘appear more male’ in order to ‘fit the part of power’.
Theresa May may have anticipated the sexism being levelled at her and tried to turn it in on itself to her own advantage, ‘I’m a bloody difficult woman’ she says. ‘Imagine your wife, your difficult wife, when she forces you to do something you don’t want to do, forcing the European Union to cow tow to England’, that’s what she means. If she calls herself a ‘difficult woman’ nobody else can. It’s Hillary’s ‘nasty woman’ all over again. Beyond this, she cannot afford to take any risks. Let’s assume for a second that she did want to champion policies that would specifically benefit women, her campaign team would deem it ‘too risky’. Let’s imagine, for a moment, she wanted to talk about feminism at every opportunity… ‘the optics are bad’, they’d say. Theresa May, even if she wanted to, could never do a Corbyn who turns up to his job as 100% of his true, authentic self every single day, regardless of whether what he says or thinks might be unpopular. And, because of that, he has begun to poll well as an ‘authentic’, ‘unapologetic’ ‘breath of fresh air’. The same is true for the likes of Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage, they get things wrong, are often unkempt or plagued with scandal but, somehow, it slides off them. More than that, these men even manage to exploit their flaws professionally, turning them to their advantage as part of their own idiosyncratic personal brands. It doesn't matter how many times Boris Johnson gets it wrong in public, people somehow still believe that he must be 'very intelligent'. Diane Abbott, on the other hand, is subjected to abuse from all sides.
Women, a study led by Yale academic Andrea Vial says, are already seen as less legitimate than their male counterparts in politics and so then can’t afford to make as many mistakes. It’s worth pausing to remember that Theresa May did not win a nationwide election to become Prime Minister. As Mary Hawkesworth writes in Political Worlds of Women, ‘women’s rule’ is often ‘associated with the suspension of ‘normal’ or ordinary politics’, this is exactly what saw ‘safe pair of hands’ Theresa put in the shoes of Prime Minister by her party after the boys club ballsed it up. Because of this, she was, as Hawkesworth describes women politicians in such situations, ‘less threatening and thus less of a challenge to masculine norms’. Whether Theresa May would have become Prime Minister if business, as usual, hadn’t been suspended we’ll never know.
Since 2007 the number of women elected to local councils has stagnated, rising from 28% to 33% in 2016. Meanwhile, the number of MPs has increased but women still remain seriously underrepresented in Parliament where only 29% of MPs are women. Until women are equally represented, we will never eradicate sexism in our society. Therein lies the cruel paradox of politics, because until sexism is eradicated women may never be equally represented. Culturally, we’re nowhere near close to subverting, let alone doing away with, traditional narratives of how women are supposed to look, talk and behave which is why even the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom panders to such outdated cultural paradigms. Politics is in desperate need of true outsiders, only when they become the insiders will things truly change.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.