Kamala Harris was running a different race
Opinion
The US election underlines that, when racism and sexism combine, women in leadership simply cannot win.
“He gets to be lawless. She has to be flawless.”
The words of CNN senior political commentator Van Jones show that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were never running the same race. Double standards don’t do justice to the disparity between the two candidates’ experience.
Harris had the potential to be the first female president in the US’s 248-year history. Yet, as NBC exit polls revealed, 59% of white men and 52% of white women voted for Trump. Meanwhile, 92% of black women voted for Harris, compared with about 80% of black men. Of course, being a woman does not mean you would automatically vote for another woman. Yet, equally, being a woman does not give you a free pass to perpetuate racism and misogyny.
In an election where women’s bodies were at stake, these statistics are bleak. The idea that daughters will have fewer rights than their mothers is unfathomably cruel. Trump’s repeated false claims about trans people and anti-trans messaging have rocked communities — and their fear is justified. A person’s right to exist should not be a topic for debate or a media punchline in a civilised society.
Change the narrative
Yet media commentators still focus on marketing tactics, adspend and where Harris went wrong.
Without facing the truth that in the media ecosystem the “angry black woman” stereotype is still prevalent, it is impossible to truly understand what has happened.
In leadership, we still hold women to impossible standards. We force them into stereotypes from a different era. They must not age. They can’t speak their mind. And even when their ownership of their own bodies is at stake, they cannot ever, ever be angry. The apathy in the media industry when it comes to addressing the basic truth is bordering on barbaric.
While LinkedIn swelled with the words of “thought leaders” who have apparently never thought about racism and misogyny, the words of Lola Bakare, a leading inclusive marketing strategist, nailed this disconnect. As she explained: “Today is especially hard for every single overqualified woman of colour who has ever been passed over for a role she deserved only to see it filled by the least qualified white dude imaginable for no apparent reason.”
Yet in much media analysis of the campaign, misogyny and racism are barely mentioned. Or, worse still, in an industry that trumpets its role in creating culture, the election has been sidestepped altogether. It’s just too difficult. Anyone for another Christmas ad?
For women, there is no escaping the consequences of this historic election. There is no safe space. Online misogyny has soared.
“Your body, my choice. Forever” — the words of white supremacist Nicholas Fuentes lit a flame that quickly became a forest fire. Trump’s victory sparked a spike of online misogyny so dark that perhaps even the 4% of marketers in Kantar’s Media Reactions 2024 report who still think ads on X provide brand safety might wake up to the Musk effect.
Hope and hate
“The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination.”
The words of author and activist Soraya Chemaly have never felt more apt.
This bruising election cycle has placed into focus the myth of meritocracy for women in leadership. Instead, we see the sharp edges of impossible double standards and the sharp words of other women who continue to pay forward a toxic cycle of institutional racism and misogyny.
We all have an individual responsibility to level this toxic playing field. The US election must be an inflection point for a media industry that has created a narrative of leadership in which women simply cannot win.
Lianre Robinson, incoming CEO at The Marketing Academy Foundation and campaigning committee chair at Wacl, said the election is a wake-up call. She explained: “We urgently need to acknowledge and change our perception of what leaders should look like and how we expect them to talk, and that’s something we can only do from the inside out, starting with the organisations we work with. As we’ve seen here, the failure to do so can put women’s health, independence and career progression at risk for years to come.”
The inequity at the heart of the most polarising election cycle in living memory is a bitter pill to swallow. But to collectively put our heads in the sand is unforgivable. We will never do better if we fail to acknowledge that black women are held to impossible standards.
Women are exhausted. Yet they never give up. Every day, they set a new standard, defying the weight of suffocating expectations to show us what leadership should look like. These women give us hope. As Harris said in her concession: “Now is not the time to throw up our hands. This is the time to roll up our sleeves.”
We can’t simply keep telling women to run their own race if that race has no finish line.
Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in the media. She is now editorial director of Creativebrief. She writes for The Media Leader each month.
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