Kate Manne is assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University and author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.

If 2018 was supposed to be the Year of the Woman, when women were elected to Congress in record numbers, what is 2019?

So far, at least in politics, it’s proving to be the Year of the White Guy.


Two white male presidential candidates—Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders—have led the Democratic field from the start, and two others—Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg—have basked in glowing coverage. Meanwhile, experienced female rivals—Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren—haven’t generated nearly the same media buzz, or led any recent polls.

What’s going on here? The evidence is mounting that these patterns are the work of sexism and misogyny—albeit often unconscious, unwitting and the result of implicit bias.

Even before the 2016 election, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party in American history, amid deafening campaign-trail chants of “Lock Her Up,” there were plenty of signs that female presidential candidates face unique obstacles.

In their 2008 article, “Subtle Sexism? Examining Vote Preferences When Women Run Against Men for the Presidency,” authors David Paul and Jessi L. Smith showed that gender is a powerful force in inducing voters to defect across party lines. Specifically, when men and women were pitted against each other in head-to-head match-ups for the presidency, a substantial proportion of Democratic voters (12.3 percent) defected to a male Republican, John McCain, rather than vote for a female candidate from their own party, Hillary Clinton.

Similarly, and arguably somewhat less surprisingly, a sizeable proportion of Republican voters (15.5 percent) defected to a male Democrat, John Edwards, rather than vote for a female candidate from their own party, Elizabeth Dole. (This tendency was true for both male and, notably, female voters, and was not balanced out by any comparable pattern of defection toward female presidential hopefuls.) Female candidates were also held to be less qualified than male candidates with similar credentials. Moreover, male candidates beat female candidates in every single match-up.

One of the reasons why this study was so suggestive is that it polled likely voters from Ohio about real-life presidential hopefuls, rather than merely hypothetical candidates: John McCain, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton. It therefore provided an ominous clue as to what fate might befall women who ran for president.

An inevitable limitation of the study, however, was that it looked at only a small range of politicians, which limited the analyses of primary match-ups in particular (to John Edwards vs. Hillary Clinton, and Rudy Giuliani vs. Elizabeth Dole). All of the politicians in the study were also white, it should be noted (at the time the poll was taken, in 2006, future president Barack Obama had no real national following).

There’s also the fraught question of whether Hillary Clinton was an inherently problematic candidate and therefore not the ideal test case for how gender bias affects voters. As she faced surprising losses in the 2008 presidential primary campaign and the 2016 presidential election, reasonable people may disagree about the extent to which this was due to unique features of her profile, policies and history.

With an all-male cast of Democratic candidates soaking up most of the oxygen and posting better polling numbers, there is now more evidence to suggest that gender bias is a real problem for female candidates.

At the same time, other evidence suggests that female candidates may not be at a significant disadvantage in lower-level races. Indeed, Smith and Paul didn’t find significant evidence of gender bias in operation even in primary match-ups (though this result is highly limited, given they compared only the two aforementioned pairings). This finding coheres with the hopeful results we saw in the 2018 election, when an unprecedented number of female members of Congress were elected. But it also leaves open the question of how well women will fare when it comes to the highest profile race of all: the presidential election.

Why might presidential races be different? One plausible theory is that in seeking the Oval Office women are competing less for a service position and more for a position of perceived power and authority—indeed, virtually the most masculine-coded authority position imaginable.

Many voters may implicitly regard the presidency as men’s birthright, something to which they are entitled. That could go doubly for white men—witness Cory Booker’s lackluster polling and fundraising numbers (given the case for thinking of Barack Obama as a uniquely charismatic figure, and something of an anomaly). So a woman might be at a particular disadvantage when running for the presidency as compared with her white male counterparts. And men, at least white men, may gain an illicit boost from running against women.

This hypothesis is borne out by a 2004 study by Madeline Heilman et al, “Penalties for Success: Reactions to Women Who Succeed at Male Gender-Typed Tasks.” The researchers had participants evaluate a hypothetical male versus female employee, who held the same position (Assistant Vice President) at an aircraft company. The participants received exactly the same information about each of the employees, on average, by alternating the names “James” and “Andrea” on each of their two personnel files. The results? When information about their competence was equivocal, Andrea was found to be less competent than James by 86 percent of people—but the two were found to be equally likable, on average. When given unequivocal information that they were equally competent, however, Andrea was held to be less likable than James, by 83 percent of participants. So people (male and female alike) effectively tended to subject the woman to a powerful “double bind”—holding her to be comparatively incompetent, until proven otherwise, and then rejecting a demonstrably competent version of her as unlikable. Researchers described this effect as “dramatic.” We may be seeing a similar pattern borne out, in the wild, when it comes to presidential races.

There’s an apparently rival hypothesis well worth considering: Voters are wary of female candidates because Hillary Clinton lost in two presidential races (first in the primary, then in the general). And indeed, Smith and Paul note evidence in their discussion of what appears to be a common sentiment: “I’d vote for a woman! I’m just not sure America is ready for one—so I won’t.” In other words, I’m not biased, but they might be, so I ought to vote for a man. (Smith and Paul wrote that, at the time: “Although some polls indicate that 81 percent of Americans would personally vote for a qualified woman candidate from their party, other [2005] polls imply that nearly one‐third of Americans believe their ‘neighbors‘ are unwilling to vote for a woman.”)

This hypothesis assumes the prevalence of a certain kind of voter: Someone convinced that sexism and misogyny play a large role in elections, yet who responds not by doubling down on their efforts to support and bolster female candidates, but by voting for a male rival. Picture someone who responds with pragmatic defeatism to injustice before the race is even well underway. How common is this person, really?

It is difficult to know. But there is a simpler explanation that both explains the patterns we see and coheres with what we know about human psychology: People who might be explicitly committed to egalitarianism still have gender biases in certain contexts, including presidential races. And they are unwitting experts at concocting post hoc rationalizations for foregone, irrational conclusions.

The idea that you aren’t voting for a woman not because you don’t want to, but because America just isn’t ready for a female candidate smacks to me of that kind of thinking. Perhaps America isn’t ready because you’re one of the many who prefers male to female candidates, and who unconsciously reaches for excuses to rationalize your preference. This country will never be ready for a woman president, to our detriment, if this continues.