Why Do We Think All Women Think Alike?
What are those women thinking? The ones in Mississippi who cheered President Donald J. Trump’s mockery of Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Brett M. Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers. The ones who tweeted #HimToo in support of their sons, who might one day be, in their eyes, unfairly accused of assault.
On the left, they’re being reviled as gender traitors, depicted as betraying the sisterhood and acting against their own best interests. The Democrats’ hopes in the November elections rests on female voters coming out to register their displeasure with the president’s party. But women don’t automatically ally with other women, as Senator Susan Collins’s vote to confirm Mr. Kavanaugh demonstrated. Sisterhood doesn’t override partisanship or deeply held moral views. Victims of sexual harassment didn’t all believe Dr. Blasey. Women don’t act as one.
The question is why so many people are still surprised. Po - l itical scientists have found that some attacks that were supposed to alienate all women in 2016 — such as Mr. Trump’s jab that Hillary Clinton was playing the “woman card” — instead made a segment of women more enthusiastic about him, and more hostile to her. Some women hold traditional views about women’s place, prerogatives and power. And in 2018, some women appear receptive to Mr. Trump’s strategy of attacking the #MeToo movement, even if it angers some college- educated and independent women who Republicans fear they may have lost anyway.
“Why is it that it’s hard for us to think of women as being sexist?” said Erin C. Cassese, a political scientist at the University of Delaware who assessed women’s attitudes by sifting through new data on the 2016 elections.
No one is saying that being a Republican woman means being a sexist. But for some, political power rightly lies with men. Krysta Fitch, a
Gender isn’t a unifying force, yet we expect it to be for politics.
34-year- old stay-at-home mother in Mississippi, said she voted for Mr. Trump and joined his recent rally. She said that women have no business running for president. “In the Bible it says that a man is responsible for leading his household,” she said, adding: “Women are just too emotional. I feel like it would be dangerous to have a woman in a position to potentially start a war.”
But Mrs. Fitch is an outlier among most Republican women. Studies suggest that they are receptive to both female and male candidates.
Cleta Mitchell, a Republican activist, said conservative women have been at the receiving end of sexism. But she embraces the idea of innate differences between men and women and does not look to government to press for equality.
So why don’t women who share the experience of being demeaned by men find that a source of solidarity? It depends on which identities — woman, wife, mother, race, political or religious affiliation — are more central for which woman.
Psychologists measure whether women display “hostile sexism,” which sees any gains by women coming at the expense of male power. Professor Cassese found that Republicans tended to express higher levels of hostile sexism than Democrats or independents.
Mr. Trump’s branding of #MeToo as unfair to men resonated with women protective of their sons or husbands.
Mr. Trump’s appeal to economic, racial and gender resentment won over a segment of women, a study by Professor Cassese and Tiffany D. Barnes of the University of Kentucky showed. Many of these women scored high on the “hostile sexism” scale and also clung to the advantage of being white as compensation for the disadvantage of being a woman.
A nationally representative survey by the Public Religion Research Institute conducted at the end of the summer found 25 percent of Republican women considered sexual harassment in the workplace a critical issue, compared with 51 percent of Democratic women. And 48 percent of Republican women would consider voting for a candidate accused of sexual harassment; 14 percent of Democratic women would.
“We’re supposed to believe any girl who says something happened,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “I just don’t believe everything they say. They can’t remember. They were drunk.”
Several conservative women who recounted searing experiences with sexual harassment or abuse prided themselves on a certain stoicism and grit, implying that unlike elite women, they could not afford to dwell on their experiences years later.
“I don’t understand why women are afraid to get the help they need,” said Crystal Walls, a 60-year- old waitress, who said she had fended off abuse. “I can’t comprehend that. I’m maybe stronger.”
Mrs. Fitch said her stepfather abused her, beginning when she was about 9 and ending with his arrest when she was 13. “I just have a hard time believing that someone would wait that long to say something,” she said of Dr. Blasey.
American politics was upended in 2016 because conventional candidates did not understand people like Mrs. Fitch and Ms. Walls.
Mirya R. Holman, a co-author of the study about Mr. Trump’s election attacks on women, said, “This sort of national dialogue of ‘All women should hate Donald Trump’ ” is alienating.
But the Republican embrace of Mr. Trump’s gender-baiting has already alienated independent women as well as Republican college- educated and suburban women, polls suggest.
Marybeth Glenn, a Wisconsin resident who opposed abortion and was an avid supporter of Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential bid in 2016, said many of her relatives were upset when she denounced Mr. Trump as sexist in a viral tweetstorm in 2016.
“The culture in the conservative movement places women at such a low priority,” Ms. Glenn said. “You start to feel less of yourself. That’s the only way you can say that tax cuts are more important than the treatment of women.”