US Presidential Election 2016 on RWL

[Firetooth]

Sexism is not always expressed overtly - that's not how it works. One of the main mechanisms through which sexism works is by internalising the values espoused by the media and a society which is still male-dominated, and basically everybody has at least some of these sexist values internalised, whether the like to admit it or not. Those Bernie bros that constantly slag Hilary off as a [dog] might not think that they're subconsciously influenced by media portrayals of ambitious women such as Hilary as fundamentally unpleasant, but they are.

I'm going to call shenanigans here Firefight. I've read a lot of the same pieces you have about how assertive women are bitches, while assertive men are respected. I never really bought any of them though. There are certainly examples given to support that narrative, but just like any well-written persuasion piece, they gloss over the large number of counter-examples that ruin the whole thing. There are any number of movies which depict the ambitious, career-driven man as a total jerk. If he's the protagonist, he comes to realize that family is most important, etc. you know the story. Think "Click" or "Liar Liar", or pretty much any 90's comedy. It's a really old storyline though, at least as old as Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol", if not older. Conversely, if the ambitious, career driven guy is not the protagonist, he is inevitably the main villain who the good, kind, family-oriented hero must defeat or gets his comeuppance in some way.

Ok, when I said media, I think it's interesting you're immediately drawn to cinema and fiction. I'm talking primarily about news and coverage of influential women in many fields, from politics to sports. Yeah fictional portrayals are relevant, but that's not really what I was referring to. It would be worth noting, though, that even ambition is often portrayed as negative for both genders, male characters nevertheless tend to possess far more agency and control over their position, whereas woman are universally either there as an object of affection, or as a plot device - something to be rescued (see: Lois Lane, BvS, 2016). Audiences aren't used to powerful women, and sure enough, when women do possess agency and power, it is seen as by some as feminist propaganda and people moan and complain (TFA, Ghostbusters, Rogue One etc). This includes lots of people who aren't meninists too, btw - try having a discussion down the pub about it. (the supermarket test should be replaced with the pub test)

If you can find a statistical analysis with a decent sample size showing that assertive, career-oriented women are portrayed negatively significantly more often than men, I might believe you, but from where I'm sitting, the same story-lines that Dickens laid out in "A Christmas Carol" seem to be applied pretty equally to men and women.

I'll look one specific to this current contest tomorrow, if I remember - it's 2:20am atm and I'm about to go to sleep. But studies into media portrayals of men vs. women aren't that rare a thing. For now, I've linked an interesting article related to the 08 Democratic contest below, which cites various academic articles you can track down if you want (put a few of the most relevant bits as extracts - the bolded it in particular should sound familiar):

For instance, studies have shown that for women, simply being successful in male sex-typed occupations leads to dislike and negative interpersonal characterizations (Okimoto and Brescoll, 924).

However, "in proving that they are qualified to be leaders, women can easily cross the line and appear to be insufficiently feminine – that is, not 'nice enough" (Carroll, 6). This is precisely where gender bias against Hillary Clinton's was most evident – the media frequently criticized her for not being sufficiently feminine and regularly referenced her "toughness" (Carlin and Winfrey, 337).

Women also encounter more dislike than men do for showing dominance, expressing disagreement, or being highly assertive – all key behaviors of running a political campaign (Carroll, 5)

"Interacting with counterstereotypical women elicits discomfort and negative affective reactions, and may lead to the assignment of negative interpersonal characterizations. Indeed, counterstereotypical women are often depicted as 'bitchy,' 'selfish,' 'ice-queens,' and 'battle-axes'" (Okimoto and Brescoll, 924).

https://genderandsocs13.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/gender-bias-in-the-media-coverage-of-hillary-clintons-2008-presidential-campaign/

I'm not saying our society is entirely free of gender bias, little boys are encouraged to do certain things, little girls encouraged to do others, but this whole "unconscious sexism" thing just rubs me the wrong way. It smacks heavily of thought policing. One can recognize sexist thoughts, I don't buy for a second that its so ingrained in our society that we can't even recognize it. Furthermore, in reality, its quite easy to distinguish between the ambitious, assertive people, and the complete jerks. At 32, I've worked quite a few jobs, and I've had bosses in both categories, they were both male and female. It never took me long to figure out who the jerks were. Being a jerk knows no gender.

Saying that sexism is largely unconscious doesn't mean you can't recognise these thoughts, but it does mean it's more difficult to. The point is that you need to always challenge yourself, rather than believing just because you don't vote Trump that you therefore are an 100% perfect man with no lingering sexist attitudes whatsoever - not very unlikely considering how dominated society is by men, from the bottom to the top. I agree though that there's probably a fine line with attributing any disagreement of a female politician to sexism - we had that problem with Yvette Cooper in the 2015 Labour leadership contest, and it was rather frustrating.

This is besides the point, though. My point was that just because somebody isn't literally saying "Hilary Clinton is a woman gross she can't be president make me a sandwich" doesn't mean that there aren't any sexist prejudices behind their view. You and I know both know being beaten over the head with the same media narrative for a solid two decades rubs off on people. And I think you and I both know that Trump has capitalised on this with how he has referred to Hilary throughout the campaign, eg. the "schlonged" remarks.

There are many legitimate counter-arguments to the people who deride Hillary Clinton, but the accusation that they are all secretly, unconsciously sexist isn't one of them, as far as I can tell. If you have data that would change my mind, I am of course open to it.

Again, I don't think that's a fair representation of my argument. I said almost all of us have sexist attitudes ingrained into us to some degree (this includes women btw as they internalise certain patriarchal values telling them how they should talk, dress, act etc.), but I didn't say that accounts entirely for Clinton derision. I think it would be naive to dismiss it as a major factor, though.

[Neobaron]

Blanketing all of society with a predisposition in order to invoke that disposition to explain away valid criticisms as symptoms of the disposition seems fishy as a basis for rational thought.

In fact i'm pretty sure its a classical example of a red herring.

[Genevieve]

I'm going to call shenanigans here Firefight. I've read a lot of the same pieces you have about how assertive women are bitches, while assertive men are respected. I never really bought any of them though. There are certainly examples given to support that narrative, but just like any well-written persuasion piece, they gloss over the large number of counter-examples that ruin the whole thing. There are any number of movies which depict the ambitious, career-driven man as a total jerk. If he's the protagonist, he comes to realize that family is most important, etc. you know the story. Think "Click" or "Liar Liar", or pretty much any 90's comedy. It's a really old storyline though, at least as old as Charles lance "A Christmas Carol", if not older. Conversely, if the ambitious, career driven guy is not the protagonist, he is inevitably the main villain who the good, kind, family-oriented hero must defeat or gets his comeuppance in some way. If you can find a statistical analysis with a decent sample size showing that assertive, career-oriented women are portrayed negatively significantly more often than men, I might believe you, but from where I'm sitting, the same story-lines that lance laid out in "A Christmas Carol" seem to be applied pretty equally to men and women.

You can not honestly defend this, Volkov. We're not talking about Christmas movies here, we're talking about the challenges that real women face in professional contexts all over the world. It's called the backlash effect, where women are socially punished for displaying counterstereotypial behaviours. If a woman is not stereotypically "nice" enough, they receive social repercussions and are disliked. If she is feminine and nice (as women should be), she is seen as not competent for leadership roles.

May I also add the example of our own female former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. She faced constant misogyny in the media throughout her leadership, including criticism for being unmarried and childless, while unmarried childless men have ruled many times without being questioned. In fact the marital and parental status of men in leadership hardly comes up at all. And then there was the time Tony Abbott stood in front of signs calling her a [dog] and a witch. Because she was a woman, but not a mother, and had the assertiveness to beat other men to the leadership of the party, she was a [dog] and a witch. 

[Firetooth]

Here in England, too, Andrea Leadsom (remember her, Volk?) implied she would make a better PM than Theresa May, because she had kids and May didn't.

Blanketing all of society with a predisposition in order to invoke that disposition to explain away valid criticisms as symptoms of the disposition seems fishy as a basis for rational thought.

In fact i'm pretty sure its a classical example of a red herring.

And responding to complex points with flippant dismissal is fishy as a basis for a decent debate or discussion. This is about backdrop and context, not "explaining away." Perhaps, too, your unwillingness to admit the possibility of such a predisposition supports my assertion - that much sexism is unconscious, because we don't like to challenge our attitudes. But if you think people calling Hilary a [dog] en masse constitutes valid criticism, or that a climate where the media constantly portrays her in ways very consistent with the backlash effect Gen just mentioned has no bearing on broadly "valid" (YMMV) concerns, then we should probably just agree to disagree.

[Neobaron]

The fundamental basis of your position and the request you are making of me and anyone else is not to dispel the idea that sexism exists, but to dispel the idea that we do not like Hillary because we hate women. Ergo, you are asking anyone responding to you to assume the role of a secret sexist in order to blow away that notion and to prove that they have a valid reason to criticize Hillary Clinton. You are asking them to assume guilt and then prove innocence. There is no 'agree to disagree' in this instance.

Suggesting that everyone who hates Hillary is secretly a misogynist is no different than suggesting that everyone who is an atheist secretly hates god or that everyone who opposes immigration secretly hates brown people. You are lumping everyone who disagrees with you into an easily manageable lump and then asking them why they are a lump.

---

There are people who hate Hillary Clinton because she is a woman.

There are people who hate Hillary Clinton because she is corrupt and manipulative.

What you are suggesting is that the second group is a superset of the first group. The suggestion is not only blatantly a red herring, but also really offensive to anyone who has valid reasons to criticize Hillary.

I don't know how thoroughly your news is covering the election, but from our perspective Hillary is not a poor woman under attack, but a career politician who is currently fighting off legitimate claims of corruption and negligence.

[Neobaron]

As for why Obama doesn't get a bad rap, he is a sitting president and our media giants (with the exception of Fox news) are very much liberal organisms. Fox News does mention the drone strikes, BUT the people who watch Fox news are, by and large, people who see no issue with the practice. There isn't any widespread outrage (outside of the internet) because it is a 'liberal' president bombing brown people and it would be bad for his liberal supporters to decry the drone strikes because that would only serve to hurt the party and, since there's only really 2 of those, it would mean helping the opposition with swing voters.

Hillary is a candidate - essentially a civilian - so she is open game for criticism. No major outlet or politician is suggesting that Hillary is bad because shes a woman. Mostly because that would be suicide. It seems like straya and England are much more backwards in this regard if politicians and news organizations are actively bringing anatomy and gender roles to light.

[Shadow]

They are, or at least Australia is. Aus has a truly horrendous track record of sexism in politics, which Genevieve alluded to.

For example, this little doozy from Tony Abbott:

"What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up,"

While I largely agree with Neo that Firetooth's approach is not one that will lead to any useful discussion, as long as this article exists, you can't seriously make the claim that systematic sexism does not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_States.

Not that anyone has, yet, but the way this argument is going so far it seems like things are going to get polarized to the point that someone might try, and I want to moderate things a little bit going forward.

[Neobaron]

They are, or at least Australia is. Aus has a truly horrendous track record of sexism in politics, which Genevieve alluded to.

For example, this little doozy from Tony Abbott:

"What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up,"

thats pretty awful

[Firetooth]

The fundamental basis of your position and the request you are making of me and anyone else is not to dispel the idea that sexism exists, but to dispel the idea that we do not like Hillary because we hate women.

Strawman 1. Sexism =/= misogyny. The former can lead to the latter, but they are two distinct phenomena. Of course all of society is not misogynistic - that would be ridiculous. But the bulk of society is dominated by male politicians, male CEOs, male journalists, male editors etc. Patriarchal attitudes diffuse down society, and most people absorb some sexist prejudices - however diffusely. This probably doesn't mean that they become a meninist or misogynist, but it does subtly influence their views - unless they are prepared to try and challenge their prejudice.

I'm not saying this is exclusive to sexism, btw. Part my problem with the traditional idea of patriarchy is that it ignores the kind of men who comprise the patriarchy, who are far from representative of your regular man. Our attitudes towards all sorts of groups and peoples are influenced by the media in this way, with sexism just an example.

So no, the majority of people don't hate Hilary because they hate women, but it definitely does serve to amplify their existing grievances. To put it in another way, people are intellectually dishonest in how they critique Clinton compared to contemporaries like Obama; the double standards are real.

Ergo, you are asking anyone responding to you to assume the role of a secret sexist in order to blow away that notion and to prove that they have a valid reason to criticize Hillary Clinton. You are asking them to assume guilt and then prove innocence. There is no 'agree to disagree' in this instance.

Suggesting that everyone who hates Hillary is secretly a misogynist is no different than suggesting that everyone who is an atheist secretly hates god or that everyone who opposes immigration secretly hates brown people. You are lumping everyone who disagrees with you into an easily manageable lump and then asking them why they are a lump.

I'd call this strawman 2, but it's really just an extension of strawman 1. Therefore, I don't really have anything to add here. Moving on.

There are people who hate Hillary Clinton because she is a woman.

There are people who hate Hillary Clinton because she is corrupt and manipulative.

What you are suggesting is that the second group is a superset of the first group. The suggestion is not only blatantly a red herring, but also really offensive to anyone who has valid reasons to criticize Hillary.

I don't know how thoroughly your news is covering the election, but from our perspective Hillary is not a poor woman under attack, but a career politician who is currently fighting off legitimate claims of corruption and negligence.

Strawman 2: people who hate Hilary because she is corrupt really hate her because she's a woman. I didn't say this, and I have covered above what my actual position was:

So no, the majority of people don't hate Hilary because they hate women, but it definitely does serve to amplify their existing grievances. To put it in another way, people are intellectually dishonest in how they critique Clinton compared to contemporaries like Obama; the double standards are real.

As for why Obama doesn't get a bad rap, he is a sitting president and our media giants (with the exception of Fox news) are very much liberal organisms. Fox News does mention the drone strikes, BUT the people who watch Fox news are, by and large, people who see no issue with the practice. There isn't any widespread outrage (outside of the internet) because it is a 'liberal' president bombing brown people and it would be bad for his liberal supporters to decry the drone strikes because that would only serve to hurt the party and, since there's only really 2 of those, it would mean helping the opposition with swing voters.

Hillary is a candidate - essentially a civilian - so she is open game for criticism. No major outlet or politician is suggesting that Hillary is bad because shes a woman. Mostly because that would be suicide. It seems like straya and England are much more backwards in this regard if politicians and news organizations are actively bringing anatomy and gender roles to light.

I don't think that's entirely fair, as Obama's approval ratings have fluctuated heavily. Granted, the fact that he's incumbent whilst there are two loathed candidates must help, and I don't dispute the validity of your analysis of the differing ways in which the media treat incumbents vs candidates in election season. I would dispute the extent to which you think this accounts for the disparity in perceptions of the two.

To address both your final point (strawman 3), and indeed your post in summation: you've missed the overt vs. subtle sexism point. You are attacking a position that doesn't exist - or strawmanning, if we're going to be fancy. Of course nobody is going to actively say Hilary is a woman and can't be president! Again, I never said or even implied this; my whole point from the start has been about subtle, unconscious sexism. I don't know how many times I have to make this point; it's not difficult to understand that sexist attitudes can inform opinions. News coverage might not actively connect Hilary's flaws to her gender, but the connections are there. Did you even read the stuff on the backlash effect that me and Gen posted?

I'll freely admit that the media in the UK have problems covering female candidates, but I'm not convinced that we're really more backwards. You're the one who freely admits you're voting for US president a politician who uses sexist language to belittle any woman - Clinton or Kelly or breastfeeding mothers - who speaks out against him. Plus, whilst the U.S. has yet to have a female president, both the UK and Australia have had female PMs, whilst in the 2015 General Election, there were almost as many female party leaders as male party leaders (3 vs 4) in the main televised debates.

edit: corrected a point on UK television debates. As Natalie Bennett would say, I had a brain fade.

[Neobaron]

To suggest that positions are informed by diffuse prejudices perpetrated by real sexists at the top of the food chain is the exact same thing as suggesting that society is sexist. I did not create this argument, you did.

A cogent argument is one that can be boiled down to its constituent parts and analyzed without drawing in too many complications or details to justify or rationalize the constituent parts. This is why third wave feminism has largely been confined to the internet - under public scrutiny and outside of the confines of the echo chambers it does not hold up. The work the second-wavers and first-wavers did is paying dividends, albeit slowly. Its the same with civil rights and other equality initiatives. Society does not change overnight, and continuing to loudly and dismissively marginalize vast portions of society can only serve to incite a backlash against the fundamental principles of the original feminists, those being justice and equality for all.

What your argument boils down to is that society is sexist, thus Hillary is hated.

You are trying to dodge that fact by painting it as accidental, that somehow people who hate Hillary just didn't know any better than to hate her, but that does not change the constituent parts of the argument. It simply obfuscates them with a barrier of plausible deniability.

There is also the problem of the direct contradictions:

So no, the majority of people don't hate Hilary because they hate women, but it definitely does serve to amplify their existing grievances.

overt vs. subtle sexism

So are they sexist or aren't they?
If you suggest that they aren't, then the foundation of the entire argument crumbles.
If you suggest that they are then I am right.
If you suggest that there is a grey area, then that opens your argument up to the the same accusations of gender-based criticism - people support Hillary only because she is a woman.

See you aren't participating in some crusade against MUH PATRIARCHY, you are actively perpetuating a dead-end line of thinking that only serves to incite with no tangible end-game. You will never eliminate sexism, racism, other -isms, or indeed any other societal ill by painting all of society with a large brush and then complaining about the paint job.

---

You're the one who freely who admits you're voting for US president a politician who uses sexist language to belittle his female candidates.

And this is the perfect example of the point I am making. I've made probably nearly 6,000 words worth of explanations for why I will be voting for Trump including sources and rationalizations for that action. And with the exception of the last blurb in my first post on the UMD thread, the gender of the candidates has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Yet my support for a candidate who said something offensive - a quirk I have not shied away from calling him names for - is all your point boils down to.

That is your argument in a nutshell, and why it is objectively wrong.

[The Lady Shael]

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you and Volkov here, Neo, but it sounds like you don't think people are capable of unconscious gender bias.

This is one of my favorite studies in unconscious gender bias: http://www.leadershippsychologyinstitute.com/women-the-leadership-labyrinth-howard-vs-heidi/

Professor Frank Flynn, presented half his class with the case study with Heidi's name on it and gave half the class the same case study with her name changed to "Howard".The students rated "Howard" and Heidi, equally competent, but they liked Howard, but not Heidi.

Specifically, students felt Heidi was significantly less likable and worthy of being hired than Howard and perceived her as more "selfish" than Howard. Deborah Gruenfeld, of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, cited the same study, adding that "the more assertive a student found the female venture capitalist to be, the more they rejected her." The essence is that research has demonstrated a negative correlation for women between power and success.

[Neobaron]

do you have a link to the actual study?

[Firetooth]

Sorry, Neo, but you're just wrong here.

There is also the problem of the direct contradictions:

So no, the majority of people don't hate Hilary because they hate women, but it definitely does serve to amplify their existing grievances.

overt vs. subtle sexism

So are they sexist or aren't they?
If you suggest that they aren't, then the foundation of the entire argument crumbles.
If you suggest that they are then I am right.
If you suggest that there is a grey area, then that opens your argument up to the the same accusations of gender-based criticism - people support Hillary only because she is a woman.

sexism
ˈsɛksɪz(ə)m/Submit
noun
prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

misogyny
mɪˈsɒdʒ(ə)ni/Submit
noun
dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

So holding a sexist prejudice doesn't mean you hate women. Far from it, many fathers are overly protective of their daughters for this reason. That doesn't mean they hate women. So misogyny and sexism are two distinct things, an herein lies the problem: I am talking about sexism, but you are critiquing me as if I'm talking about misogyny.

Again, it's a strawman argument. I won't cover this again, as I don't feel it's productive to continue a debate where your position is continually misrepresented for whatever reasons. Regardless, it is not my argument that crumbles here, it is yours, as if you are attacking a position I do not hold, your argument therefore cannot refute mine.

See you aren't participating in some crusade against MUH PATRIARCHY, you are actively perpetuating a dead-end line of thinking that only serves to incite with no tangible end-game. You will never eliminate sexism, racism, other -isms, or indeed any other societal ill by painting all of society with a large brush and then complaining about the paint job.

You won't eliminate sexism, racism, other -isms, or any other societal ill by burying your head in the sand and refusing to engage with the unpleasant reality that you probably do hold some unpleasant prejudices buried deep down, either. Prejudice is defeat when it is confronted, and that is what I am saying we need to do. I'm not trying to put this firmly into and us and them situation, either - all of us need to challenge ourselves as well as others, and that includes me. But I do think the influence and extent of these prejudices is notably more pronounced from the anti-Hilary camp.

You're the one who freely who admits you're voting for US president a politician who uses sexist language to belittle his female candidates.

And this is the perfect example of the point I am making. I've made probably nearly 6,000 words worth of explanations for why I will be voting for Trump including sources and rationalizations for that action. And with the exception of the last blurb in my first post on the UMD thread, the gender of the candidates has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Yet my support for a candidate who said something offensive - a quirk I have not shied away from calling him names for - is all your point boils down to.

That is your argument in a nutshell, and why it is objectively wrong.

You've misread what I meant there, but it's my fault. My point re Trump is that the presidential candidate for the GOP is openly sexist - thus refuting this:

No major outlet or politician is suggesting that Hillary is bad because shes a woman. Mostly because that would be suicide. It seems like straya and England are much more backwards in this regard if politicians and news organizations are actively bringing anatomy and gender roles to light.

So my point was a very major politician - the GOP presidential candidate, has more or less done that. But I do apologise for my wording. The flaw here was firmly my own, for I worded what I was saying very poorly on re-reading. It was not my intent to call you a raging sexist Trump fanboy - please believe me when I say that.

[Firetooth]

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you and Volkov here, Neo, but it sounds like you don't think people are capable of unconscious gender bias.

This is one of my favorite studies in unconscious gender bias: http://www.leadershippsychologyinstitute.com/women-the-leadership-labyrinth-howard-vs-heidi/

Professor Frank Flynn, presented half his class with the case study with Heidi's name on it and gave half the class the same case study with her name changed to "Howard".The students rated "Howard" and Heidi, equally competent, but they liked Howard, but not Heidi.

Specifically, students felt Heidi was significantly less likable and worthy of being hired than Howard and perceived her as more "selfish" than Howard. Deborah Gruenfeld, of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, cited the same study, adding that "the more assertive a student found the female venture capitalist to be, the more they rejected her." The essence is that research has demonstrated a negative correlation for women between power and success.

Unrelated to the sexist sphere of this, but in terms of unconscious prejudices, there's also an interesting study where an array of employers were went the exact same CVs, except for one main difference. The first sample had names such as Patel, whilst the second sample had names such as Smith - no prizes for guessing which batch of CVs fared better in terms of responses and interviews.

[windhound]

It can go the other way as well Firefight... 
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said young women had a duty to vote for Clinton -- "And just remember there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other."

I don't think the average person today has a problem with strong female leads in media. 
Superman is a product of the 30's, if they're keeping to canon Lois Lane is a damsel in distress.  That just sorta is what it is, a product of history.  You can argue that they shouldn't make anymore Superman movies, or change canon, but that's something different. 
Also BvS got awful reviews. 
Star Wars The Force Awakens got great reviews from critics and the audience.  The Hunger Games series did too. There's actually quite a few movies with strong female roles and audiences appear to have no problem with them. 

Hell, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is all about four strong willed girl ponies and its' gotten inexplicable attention...  a large portion of which is made up of male 'Bronies'. 

Depends what crowds you're hanging out with I guess? 

The gender pay gap is a bit of a myth btw. 
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
"ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: If you take women who don't have caregiving obligations, they're almost equal with men. It's somewhere in the 95 percent range. But when women then have children, or again are caring for their own parents or other sick family members who need care, then they need to work differently. They need to work flexibly, and often go part-time. They often get less-good assignments because their bosses think that they're not going to want work that allows them to travel, or they're not going to be able to stay up all night, or whatever it is. And so then you start — if you're working part-time, you don't get the same raises. And if you're working flexibly your boss very typically thinks that you're not that committed to your career, so you don't get promoted."

Apples to apples women earn about the same amount.

I'm not saying there aren't issues.  There are. 
It's just how much of an issue. 
In this case, how much of an issue to women who want to participate in politics in the US. 

Are you going to tell me people disliked Carly Fiorina because she's a women?  Or is it something else?  Like maybe dealing the finishing blow to one of the largest tech powerhouses in US history.. 
Nah. 
How about Sarah Palin? 

In Clinton's case I think it's safe to say the vast majority of people aren't looking at her gender as much as her career accomplishments (good and bad). 

......also, many fathers are more protective of their daughters because the world is a more dangerous place for young women than it is for young men? 

(you guys are posting quick today, dang..)