During a recent conversation with a BYU professor, I casually expressed my admiration for presidential candidate Kamala Harris. This professor politely listened and nodded. Then my professor said something that has haunted me ever since: “I just don’t like her. She is not a very likable person.” This statement, coming from a woman, about another woman, took me by complete surprise, especially when I consider the profound unlikability of Kamala’s Republican opponent. In fact, a majority of Trump voters seem to feel that his extreme “unlikability” is a feature, and not a bug. Other Trump voters, who find their party nominee morally or personally repugnant, claim that he is better qualified and therefore “hold their noses” as they vote in his favor. So, what exactly was my professor referring to when she described Kamala Harris as “unlikable”, and why should that matter in the slightest? Is it possible that “likability” only matters because Kamala Harris is a woman?
I personally do not think it is necessary to argue about whether likability is required of a president, or any other politician for that matter. When it comes to men in leadership roles, likability may be a factor for serious consideration, but it is rarely the central feature of criticism. In fact, I have never heard of a man being criticized for laughing too much or for wearing expensive apparel or jewelry. I often hear men, and women for that matter, appealing to the supposed qualifications and perceived skills that men possess, not the way in which they laugh or even their glaring absence of a moral center, in one very notable case. So why, then, does it matter if Kamala Harris is or isn’t “likable” if it is not expected of her male opponent? The absurdity of this dubious flaw becomes even more apparent when we examine the legislative effectiveness of women in virtually all levels of government.
In study after study, female legislators have proven themselves to be more successful at building consensus across party lines where their male counterparts fail to do so. A study done by the National Women’s Law Center found that female legislators have a stronger likelihood of getting their bills enacted, generally. In fact, their male counterparts pass more bills when there is a higher proportion of women in their legislative body.
According to a study done by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and another by the National Bureau of Economic Research, when it comes to issues that are unique to women and children, bills written and passed by men fail to meet the needs of their constituents more often than if those same bills were written and passed with the help of female legislators. Moreover, on issues that are not unique to women and children, legislation is more likely to benefit a wider spectrum of the public when women have a say in the process.
Lastly, the Vanderbilt Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions found that women in minority parties wrote legislation that survived longer in the legislative process than legislation written by men in minority parties, indicating that bills written by women seem to have broader appeal and are less likely to be extremely divisive or polarizing.
It is evident, from the data collected in numerous studies from around the world, that women are more skilled at bringing people together and writing legislation that serves the interests of a wider spectrum of their constituents—which happens to be precisely what the United States of America needs today.
As if to demonstrate this exact behavior, at a Harris-Walz rally in Ripon, Wisconsin, Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney, a Republican, rallied together in a bipartisan denunciation of Donald Trump. Harris said: “The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or party partisanship or self-interest. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised.” In this statement, Harris typifies a degree of selflessness commonly found among the women in the studies referenced earlier. Those same studies imply that men are prone to defining success as “winning” even when it creates a larger number of losers and that women are more prone to draft legislation that has fewer overall losers in general. The implication being that, for women in government, consensus and compromise are also seen as success. Indeed, “the greatest idea humanity ever devised” was never intended to be a winner-take-all blood sport.
Sadly, some men in government can become blinded by the need to “win” and democracy itself can become the very thing we cannot tolerate. Take this example offered by none other than Utah Senator Mike Lee: “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that,” he wrote. Perhaps, in the mind of a man, when we fail to convince our sisters and brothers of the merits of our political position, bipartisanship, cooperation, and democracy itself become “optional.” Instead of questioning their abilities as leaders, or their skills as legislators, men seem more likely to dispense with democracy altogether. It has been my experience that women are much more pragmatic in this regard.
When faced with defeat, the studies show that women are more likely to work within the government, in spite of themselves, than to declare the whole experiment a failure simply because it doesn’t serve them as well as they would like. This democratic flexibility and magnanimity, typical among women, is frequently mistaken for weakness by their male counterparts. Therefore, I argue that it is women we need in government at this critical juncture because it is they who are simply better at using democracy the way it was intended. I fear that the inflexibility and rigid ideologies of men are now straining American democracy to the breaking point.
