Among the speakers at this year’s Oxford University’s Radical Forum was Deborah Cameron, a professor of linguistics at Worcester College whose research interests include language, gender, the media and the interactions between them. She is also the author of The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages? which succeeds in deconstructing the arguments put forward by the likes of John Gray and was called “delightfully spiky book” by The Times.
Throughout the talk held at Wadham College on March 6, Professor Cameron exposed some of the common generalizations we make regarding supposed differences between the sexes and the way in which these generalizations can hide a much too real gender gap in terms of power and status.
We thank her for agreeing to answer this short Q&A for WAFP on the U.S. presidential elections, whether or not women govern differently than men and the overall resilience of sexism.
WAFP: What role do you think gender played in the outcome of the U.S. presidential race?
DC: I’m assuming you mean the Democratic nomination race, since both presidential candidates were men. I don’t believe Sarah Palin’s being a woman was a major factor—she was so many other things that complemented McCain’s persona (e.g. religious, Alaskan, young), and anyway it’s hard to believe that anyone’s VP choice is really decisive in an election.
On the Democrats, I think the most important thing was probably the stark contrast between someone who was perceived as “new” and someone who was associated with a former administration—one that didn’t end very gloriously. That complicates the gender issue. But the way Clinton was perceived by many voters, and especially the way she was discussed in the media, illustrated just how much very basic sexism there still is around.
Female candidates have to negotiate the issue of femininity—a contradictory one for them, since what they’re trying to prove is their leadership ability, which is seen as an unfeminine quality in a way male candidates do not have to negotiate the issue of their gender.
I think the British commentator who said that Americans are now more sexist or misogynist than racist may well have been right.
WAFP: What is your general evaluation of how Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have been portrayed in the U.S. and international media?
DC: As women first and people/politicians second. And in both cases, but especially Palin’s, “woman” in essence meant “wife and mother.”
WAFP: In the politically correct world, why is sexism still acceptable as a form of discrimination and exclusion?
DC: My answer as a radical feminist would be because so many people (that is, the entire class of men, half the population) benefit from it. Sexism is also very easy to portray as “only natural,” i.e. there are differences rooted in people’s basic biological make-up which mean that women are just no good at this or that, like being commander in chief. It’s acceptable to “make” a difference, or in other words discriminate or exclude because it’s common sense that there really “is” a difference.
However, let’s not forget that all kinds of practices we now utterly repudiate (most obviously the enslavement of black people) were once justified in the same way. The “natural” thing is an ideology: what people often don’t look at is the material base for it, which is the exploitation of women.
WAFP: Do you think women govern differently than men? Could we expect to see any major changes if women were as represented as men at all levels of government?
DC: No, I don’t think women govern differently. People are always saying that more women will change the culture of parliament or government or whatever, they’ll be less confrontational and more into consensus politics, but of course that’s not necessarily the case.
First, women aren’t all the same as each other, we aren’t all consensus lovers (hello? anyone remember Margaret Thatcher?) Second, as an incoming minority—often not a very welcome one—they have every reason to try to accommodate to the prevailing culture to prove they are worthy of their admission to it. So, women most often change nothing about a political institution unless they specifically organize to change it, not simply because they are women but because they believe for political reasons it should change.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they should not be represented equally. But if they were I think we would see pretty much the same spectrum of views and approaches we see now.
WAFP: Can affirmative action policies close this gap in representation or could this come only as a result of a gradual transformation of society’s values?
DC: Affirmative action certainly could put more women in our legislatures, which might be a good liberal goal; but from my radical feminist perspective it is not a panacea, because it doesn’t say anything about their politics, only that they have two X chromosomes.
