At first glance, the president and vice president might seem like polar opposites in their relationship to women. Donald Trump is a libertine who has described his sexual promiscuity as his “personal Vietnam” and boasted that the privileges of celebrity allowed him to grab women by their genitals, while Mike Pence is a committed evangelical who, like others of his faith, abides by strict rules of sexual propriety. As a much-discussed Washington Post profile last week noted, “In 2002, Mike Pence told The Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.”

As different as their behavior toward the opposite sex might be, Trump and Pence are two sides of the same coin of patriarchy. Pence wears the traditional mask of chivalry while Trump is undisguised by any pretense of loftier motives. Yet Pence’s own actions, though governed by religious rules, are hardly an improvement for women in terms of consequence.

Even if we leave aside the political impact of Pence’s hardline opposition to reproductive freedom, there’s also the fact that his rules for personal conduct are incompatible with gender equality. As Emma Gray observed in the Huffington Post, Pence’s ability to limit his contact with women is a privilege he enjoys as a powerful man in a male-dominated world. His female counterparts don’t have that luxury. “The ability to refuse to be alone with someone who is not the same gender as you and still climb the professional ladder is a privilege that is simply not afforded to women,” Gray observes. “Imagine if Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris or Nancy Pelosi refused to attend political functions where alcohol was served without their husbands in tow to supervise them.”

Expanding on this theme, The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman argued that Pence’s rules might have a personal motive but they have a clear “discriminatory” public impact. “Over his career, [Pence] has had many colleagues and employees,” Waldman argues. “With the men, he can have complex relationships that traverse work and social contexts, build trust, and eventually help their careers. A woman who hoped Pence would be a mentor to her, on the other hand, wouldn’t be able to avail herself of those opportunities, since he can’t even have lunch with her.”

To put it another way, Trump’s genital-grabbing and Pence’s gender-segregation share a common opposition to gender equality.

