Can the GOP ever solve its woman problem? Presented by CuriosityStream

RULING THE WEEK

North Carolina’s Republican House primary race this week was widely seen as a test of how serious the GOP was about electing women — and if that’s what it was, the party failed. Joan Perry, a political newcomer backed by the 13 Republican women in the House, as well as Sen. Joni Ernst and a super PAC dedicated to boosting the ranks of GOP women, lost by a wide margin to Greg Murphy, a well-connected state representative backed by North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows and other members of the Freedom Caucus.

There was plenty of hardball politics involved, including attack ads hammering Perry as “another lying Nancy Pelosi liberal” — but the excellent episode of The Daily podcast on the race contained the tantalizing suggestion that voters’ perceptions of women played a role too. Reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis said she’s noticed a tendency among Republican voters to see women as less conservative than men, even when they present themselves as equally conservative.


Is that bias why Perry lost? I called Kathleen Dolan, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who studies voter gender stereotypes and has written about this very phenomenon.

According to Dolan, studies have indeed found that both Republican and Democratic women are perceived as more liberal than they actually are. But those studies, she says, mostly came from the 90s and early 2000s. For years now, she says, voter gender stereotypes have been decreasing. In fact, in 2010, when she conducted a nationally representative survey of voters and their preferences in governor, House and Senate races — based on real candidates, not hypothetical ones — she found that “even among the voters who have gender stereotypes, they don’t come into the vote choice decision almost ever.”

Voter bias, instead, tilts toward candidates backed by their party, and toward incumbents. On the other hand, Dolan was studying general elections; she says there hasn’t been a similar study for primary elections. (She hopes to do that next.) And in North Carolina this week, party support was split: Perry had the backing of high-profile establishment Republicans and the tacit support of party leaders, but the leaders of the GOP’s conservative wing went all-in for Murphy.

GOP leaders say they want to do better with women. But the case of Perry signals that as long as “the establishment” and the Freedom Caucus are at war for authority with conservative voters, that might be a very hard problem to solve. As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said after Perry’s loss, “The biggest challenge ever for women and minorities are always within the primary.”

-- More reading on the NC race: “GOP women call on male colleagues to ‘step up’ after primary loss” by Melanie Zanona POLITICO … “Joan Perry’s Defeat in G.O.P. Primary Points Up Party’s Gender Woes” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis NYT

Welcome back to Women Rule! We took last week off to celebrate the 4th, and while we were out, European Union leaders nominated women for two of the EU’s top jobs. This week, there’s drama in the Capitol after Freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for dismissing and isolating “women of color” in her own caucus. (Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway couldn’t resist weighing in, calling it “a major ‘meow moment,’” a “huge catfight.”)

Thanks to Maya Parthasarathy, who contributed to the newsletter this week. Send us tips at [email protected] Sign up here.

GET HIM A CHAPERONE -- “Robert Foster, GOP governor candidate, denies woman reporter access because of her gender” by Larrison Campbell: A Mississippi state rep running for governor blocked female reporter Larrison Cambell from shadowing him on a campaign trip to avoid accusations of an extra-marital affair; she was told if she wanted to go on the trip, she’d have to bring a male reporter with her.

Cambell wrote about it in Mississippi Today and the tale has since been picked up by media outlets many times over. Meanwhile, Foster seems to be milking the controversy for his campaign, criticizing the “liberal left” for failing to understand “that even in 2019, someone still values their relationship with their wife.”

-- “The ‘Billy Graham rule’ doesn’t honor your wife. It demeans her — and all women” by Monica Hesse WaPo … “Dear Robert Foster and Mike Pence: I have some ideas for how to protect your virtue” by Alyssa Rosenberg and Robert Gebelhoff WaPo Opinion

TIME TO CELEBRATE? -- After The U.S. women’s soccer players won the World Cup in France on Sunday, they’ll be shifting their focus back to fighting for equal pay. BTW: The players will each receive about $250,000 for winning. (The U.S men’s soccer players, had they qualified and won 2018, would have each received about $1.1 million.)

-- In Washington, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced the Athletics Fair Pay Act , a bill to require equal pay and compensation for all Olympic and amateur athletes. And global sports and entertainment agency Wasserman announced the formation of The Collective — a new division focused on raising the visibility of women in sports, entertainment and culture.

2020 WATCH -- “Elizabeth Warren proposes plan to take on pay and leadership gap for women of color” USA Today ... “Kamala Harris proposes investing $1 billion to end rape kit backlog nationwide” by Jasmine Wright CNN

A CHALLENGE TO MITCH MCONNELL -- Former fighter pilot and Democrat Amy McGrath announced she’d be challenging Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky Senate seat on Tuesday with a launch video accusing the Senate minority leader of not caring about regular Kentuckians. McGrath’s 2018 viral launch video wasn’t quite enough to win her a House seat, but according to Politico Huddle, “McGrath is expected to be a fundraising dynamo who draws outsized attention in an otherwise-safe red seat.” She raised $2.5 million on the day she announced. More here: POLITICO

-- She’s still working on her messaging: “Amy McGrath flip-flops on Kavanaugh vote — in 1 day” by James Arkin: “McGrath … tweeted that she would have opposed Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court several hours after she told a local newspaper she probably would have supported him.” POLITICO

EPSTEIN ARRESTED; ACOSTA OUT -- Less than a week after financier Jeffrey Epstein was arrested over the weekend on new sex-trafficking charges alleging he abused dozens of underage girls as young as 14, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta resigned, under pressure for the lenient plea deal he reached with Epstein as U.S. attorney back in 2008. POLITICO

-- “Stop Calling Epstein’s Victims Young Women. They’re Children.” by Lizzy Francis Fatherly

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: At a parade in New York on Wednesday to celebrate the U.S. women’s national soccer team victory in this summer’s World Cup, shouts of “equal pay” replaced the usual chants of “U-S-A,” as the internationally dominant female athletes continue to fight to be compensated like their less successful male counterparts. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

WHAT RULERS ARE READING

ANOTHER P.O.V. -- VIDEO: “I Advise Students Accused of Sexual Assault. Expelling Them Isn’t the Answer.” by Hannah Stotland: Stotland is an educational consultant who helps students accused of sexual misconduct get into other schools or graduate schools. She wants to eradicate sexual assault on campus, but says that in order to do that society needs to do a better job of “recognizing the gray zone. … Consent is not always simple or clear cut and we should teach students how to navigate confusing moments instead of insisting it’s all black and white.” It’s worth a watch. The examples she gives are not all what you would expect. NYT Opinion (h/t Daniel Lippman)

ARE PURSES HURTING GENDER EQUALITY? -- “Women are not your pack mules” by Jeva Lange: “Whether men are consciously aware of it or not ... they likely rely on the proximity of a purse. Need an Advil? Your partner probably has it in her bag. Want a sip of water to chase it? The bottle’s in her bag too. How about napkins to use as tissues in a pinch? You know who to ask. Such an expectation even extends to men explicitly assuming their things will be carried by a female partner. …

“My complaint isn't just about the physical burden of carrying a husband's/boyfriend's/male friend's/male relative’s things, though. My alarm is that the social acceptability of women being the handbag-bearers further ‘mom-ifies’ them as being the caregivers in their relationships. Children often grow up expecting their mothers to be the ones to have the items to take care of them, from supplies in a diaper bag to snacks, tissues, games, and books in elementary school. By the time those kids become adults, they look at purses the same way: either as potentially containing the remedy to everyday hassles (if they're men), or the means of providing those things to the men in their life (if they're a woman).” The Week

AROUND THE WORLD -- “The best country to be a woman? It's not the US” by Colman Andrews, 24/7 Wall Street: “The best region of the world to be a woman? Scandinavia. The worst? Central Africa. That’s the takeaway from a study just released by Equal Measures 2030, a U.K.-based NGO that collects data on gender equality with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private-sector organizations. … The United States ranks at number 28, tied with Bulgaria with a score of 77.6 – a score that is considered lower than expected for the U.S., considering the country’s income level, according to the report..” USA Today …

-- “President urges Tanzania's women to ‘set ovaries free’, have more babies to boost economy” by Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala Reuters … “Saudis Plan to Ease Travel Restrictions on Women” by Summer Said WSJ … “For Recording Her Boss’s Lewd Call, She, Not He, Will Go to Jail” by Richard C. Paddock and Muktita Suhartono NYT … “Princess Haya, Wife of Dubai’s Ruler, Seeks Refuge in London” by Vivian Yee and David D. Kirkpatrick NYT

CURIO -- “Someone Used a Chain Saw to Make a Melania Trump Statue. Few Were Impressed.” by Palko Karasz: A local folk artist in Slovenia has carved a statue to the first lady, but the work of art has few fans. “‘It’s a disgrace,’ ‘It’s a Smurfette’ are a few of the comments from residents, according to ITV News.” NYT

SUMMER WATCHING -- “They Became the First All-Women Crew to Conquer the Ocean Race. Then the Maiden Came Home” by Rachel Handler: “Alex Holmes’s documentary, a combination of archival footage and interviews, follows the incredible true story of Tracy Edwards, a young British woman with a dark past who decides that the only thing she wants to do is captain the first all-female team to sail around the world. …

“Specifically, Edwards set her sights on the Whitbread Round the World Race (now known as the Ocean Race), a grueling yachting competition established in 1973 that takes place over nine months and more than 30,000 miles. Beyond being wildly dangerous, the Ocean Race was (and is) expensive. Boats alone cost upwards of $1 million. And until Edwards and her crew stepped in to shake things up, the race was exclusively populated by men, the sorts who wear crisp khaki shorts to brunch. But even in the face of major financial difficulties and a deep-seated, industrywide sexism, a 26-year-old Edwards managed to find over a dozen willing women to join her, and one king (Hussein of Jordan) to sponsor it all. It’s hard to believe it until you watch the footage, but in 1989, Edwards set out to conquer the Whitbread — on a boat aptly dubbed Maiden.” Vulture

LONGREAD -- “Behold, the Millennial Nuns” by Eve Fairbanks: “After 50 years of decline, the number of young women … going through the long process of becoming a Catholic sister—is substantially increasing. … And the aspiring sisters aren’t like the old ones. They’re more diverse: Ninety percent of American nuns in 2009 identified as white; last year, fewer than 60 percent of new entrants to convents did. They’re also younger: The average age for taking the final step into the religious life a decade ago was 40. Today, it’s 24. …

“You’ll find these 20-somethings, like other 20-somethings, all over Instagram and YouTube. Some investigate which religious order to join on a website called VocationMatch.com, basically a dating app for nuns. You get the sense that these young women get a kick out of demonstrating their enduring link to ‘basic bitch’ concerns like food Instagramming, college sports or Benedict Cumberbatch’s facial hair—and then pulling a fast one on the rest of us with flinty tweets like ‘You die unprepared without the sacraments.’ These young women have one last surprise: They tend to be far more doctrinally conservative than their predecessors.” HuffPo Highline

WOMEN RULERS

SPOTTED at a gathering of female House members from the Midwest at Monocle on Thursday: Reps. Debbie Dingell, Marcy Kaptur, Cheri Bustos, Betty McCollum, Rashida Tlaib, Jan Schakowsky, Lauren Underwood, Cindy Axne, Haley Stevens, Angie Craig, Joyce Beatty. (h/t Daniel Lippman)

WISDOM OF THE WEEK -- Laura Schwab, president, Aston Martin US: “My career turnaround came after I’d said, “Give me 90 days in the job; if I bomb, demote me.” In over my head, and obsessed with proving everyone wrong, I studied like mad. Eventually, impostor syndrome gave way to legitimate expertise. Only then did I feel comfortable in my own skin. I stopped sitting in the back row, mimicking the mostly male leadership’s presentation style, down to the notebooks and pens. Once I realized meetings couldn’t happen without my contribution, I rolled in with my sparkly notebook and flowery dress, and felt confident leading and communicating in my own way.” Connect with Laura here

IMPACT PARTNER CONTENT -- In February, Anthea M. Hartig took over as the Elizabeth MacMillan director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Since the museum opened in 1964, she is the first woman to hold the role. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to think about making history accessible, especially as we move toward the centennial of women’s suffrage,” Hartig said. Hartig will oversee three new exhibitions related to the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative #BecauseOfHerStory; “All Work, No Pay: A History of Women’s Invisible Labor,” “Creating Icons: How We Remember Women’s Suffrage,” and “Girlhood! (It’s Complicated).” Learn more about Anthea here

MARKETPLACE -- Each month we highlight a female founder by sharing her company’s story. This July, we’re featuring Bethany Yellowtail, founder and CEO of B.Yellowtail, a Native American owned fashion brand.

“I worked for years in corporate fashion and every season I saw ‘Native American’ inspired clothing hit retailers and runways from the perspectives of non-native designers. I come from a rich culture and beautiful people (the Apsaalooke and Northern Cheyenne) and I was raised with an understanding that our designs are integral to our tribal identities. I wanted to create a brand that I actually saw myself in, a brand that our indigenous communities could see themselves celebrated in and a brand that could share that beauty with the rest of the world from an authentic view.” Use code WOMENRULE to get 10% off your order.

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