Women have experienced harm since the beginning of humankind. The French feminist movement began in the late 1790s and one of its key arguments has always been that language has been used to prejudice women as long as orality has been used. The language of the late 20th and early 21st century has become the language of the press, and more relevantly the language of online sources. These online sources are able to reach to the far edges of the world and few cultures are safe from these opinions, words and languages the promote prejudice against women.
This paper looks at how Donald Trump’s media statements about women are harming women around the world. Media plays a vital role in how the world sees humankind, and someone as influential as Trump has a responsibility to understand what he says makes a difference. Since he began his campaign to become president of the United States, media has had a field day with his viewpoints on women. In this essay, four different online newspaper articles will be used to prove the stance the Independent article (2016) takes that women do have good reasons to believe that their gender will hurt their careers. Finally, Trump’s own daughter Ivanka’s quitting her job for her dad’s and husband’s career promotions will be considered as an example of proof that the Independent article is correct in its viewpoint.
According to Zlata Rodionova’s Independent’s 2016 article, ‘Gender equality: More than half of women fear their gender will hurt their career,’42% of women in comparison to 72% of men “are confident that their gender will have no influence on their pay and their career progression.” In addition, 43% of women in comparison to 73% of men “express the view that gender will have not future bearing on their pay or reward” (Rodinonova, 2016). Interestingly, it is notable that these same men who are not worried gender will impact them getting a job, are also not worried about pay raises in the future. What this says is this three-quarters of working men have no reason to worry about what is happening with women because they are ahead of the game in being able to obtain jobs they want, keep these jobs and be promoted in positions and pay. What this means is that women have less to be optimistic about when it comes to work and job prospects. Melanie Richards, vice chairman of KPMK UK, argues that business leaders need to pay attention to this for “we know better commercial performance comes from the innovation that happens between different people wider range of backgrounds and array of viewpoints on client matters” (Rodinonova, 2016). Of course, to point out the irony here, she is a woman saying this. This article raises some valid and disturbing points when it comes to the harm women experience and believe will happen to them when it comes to being in or trying to get into the workforce. The women’s movement’s expression of “we have come a long way baby” doesn’t really ring true when consider what Rodinonova has to say. And then there is Trump
When running for the U.S. presidency, Ivanka Trump said her father supported “equal pay, paid family leave and childcare” and yet, his website left those important items off of it (Alter, 2016). On abortion he suggested women should have some sort of “punishment” even if they did it to themselves (Alter, 2016). On paid family leave, he called it “an inconvenience to business” (Alter, 2016). On equal pay, he repeatedly said “same pay for same job,” but notably inserted the adjective “good” meaning women had to be able to do as good of a job as men to be considered for equal pay (Alter, 2016). The words “punishment,” “inconvenience,” and “good” (in comparison to men) speak to the very nature of Trump’s belief that women are not equal, let alone of any value. This rhetoric has been increasing harmful to women around the world, as attested by the millions upon millions of women worldwide who marched in protest against Trump on January 21, 2017.
Now let us hear from the more sane people. Olga Khazan suggests that the debates between Trump and Clinton were laden with his attitude of distain for women. By calling Clinton a “nasty woman” and making light of his treatment of women, both verbally and physically, as if these were “jokes” we should all get, i.e., grouping women, Trump successfully shouted to the world that this language was not only okay to use in the media, but that it was highly acceptable for any man in power to say these words and thoughts aloud at any time and any place he wants (Khazan, 2016). David Wright raised the issue that in 1994, Trump said, “putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing” (Wright, 2016). Trump’s reasoning was that his marriage to his wife Ivana failed because he put his wife to work. He thought that when Ivana went from a wife to an executive that it ruined her as a wife. In his mind he believes a woman cannot do both jobs at the same time; it appears women are poor at multitasking. Trump sounding like a chauvinist was quoted as saying, “I have days where I think it’s great [women working]. And I have days where, if I come home –and I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist --- but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof” (Wright, 2016). Of course in Trump’s chauvinist mind, women are a) responsible for men’s well-being; b) are happy to be looked after by a man; and c) have no aspirations of anything other than being a women bound by the patriarchal rules of what a family is.
Now to flip the coin, because men do count in stopping harm from being foisted on women, here is Jacqueline Rose’s take on modern masculinities responsibility to the Trumps of the world. One of the biggest wins for modern feminism has been to get men to ask more about what masculinity is; to not just take the aged patriarchal version as the “right” version of manliness, but instead “to ask themselves what they in fact have to gain from a way of being a man in the world that harms women” (Rose, 2016). Rose raises the following question suggesting we should all be asking it after hearing Trump -- “How do men and women relate to one another and how do men relate to other men, if the man who gets the biggest prize of all regards women as subhuman?” (2016). Trump’s public language has given license to “the obscenity of the unconscious” and to “the murderous rhetoric of hatred” toward women (Rose, 2016).
And who better represents an example of the results of his system of beliefs than his daughter Ivanka for she has stepped down from her managerial and operational roles at the Trump Organization for a “formal role at the White House” (Bellstrom, 2017). Interestingly, her husband also stepped down from his business roles, but in contrast to Ivanka was immediately handed a very the influential role of “official advisor.” Ivanka, on the other hand, has not been given an “official” role. Bellstrom suggests that Ivanka is going to do her best work by whispering in the ears of her husband and father. Can we read “chattel” here. Again more irony considering her about to be released book is called, Women Who Work, not Women Who Whisper in the Ears of Powerful Men. The new book and its author seem to be a full-blown oxymoron in the making.
So the moral of this story is that women are indeed harmed by gendered attitudes in our societies. The recent media frenzy with the American election has shown us that male patriarchal attitudes toward women’s roles remain that women should keep to the kitchen and be barefoot and pregnant if the very survival of humankind is to succeed. The reality is, we have not come a long way baby because if a country as internationally influential as the United States has been taken over by men who want to keep women out of the workforce and without a voice, women should live in fear that soon voting will be out and so will freewill. The future is indeed dark.
References
Alter, C. 2016. Here’s what Donald Trump thinks about women’s issues. Time. [online] 5 August. Available at: < http://time.com/4441052/donald-trump-women-issues/> [Accessed 22 January 2017].
Bellstrom, K. (2017). Is Ivanka Trump’s decision to leave her business good for working women? Fortune. [online] (Last updated 4:44 PM on 11th January 2017). Available at: <http://fortune.com/2017/01/11/ivanka-trump-white-house-role/> [Accessed 22 January 2017].
Khazan, O. 2016. The lasting harm of Trump-style sexism. The Atlantic, [online] 4 November. Available at: <https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/how-trump-style-words-hurt/506456/> [Accessed 22 January 2017].
Rodionova, Z. 2016. Gender equality: More than half of women fear their gender will hurt their career. Independent. [online] 21 April. Available at: <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-equality-more-than-half-of-women-fear-their-gender-will-hurt-their-career-a6993956.html> [Accessed 22 January 2017].
Rose, J. 2016. Donald Trump’s victory is a disaster for modern masculinity. The Guardian, [online] 15 November. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/15/trump-disaster-modern-masculinity-sexual-nostalgian-oppressive-men-women> [Accessed 22 January 2017].
Wright, D. 2016. Trump in 1994: ‘Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing.’ CNN, [online] (Last updated 2:21 PM on 2nd June 2016). Available at: <http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/politics/trump-wife-comments-abc-interview/> [Accessed 22 January 2017].
