Gender, Culture and Power in a Global Context: The 2016 Presidential Election: A Woman in the White House?

In the upcoming 2016 presidential election, America faces a rarity: there are two substantial female contenders, one in each major political party. More importantly, both candidates Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton pose a sizeable threat to their male counterparts in the current race. Huffpost Pollster indicates that Clinton holds a solid 47.6% of Democratic voters and Fiorina commands 5.2% of Republican voters, despite being a part of the enormous Republican candidate pool. In debates, both Clinton and Fiorina have been named as standouts by the New York Times, who praised Clinton for "her experience, command of the issues and strength in communicating ideas" and called Fiorina an "especially tenacious combatant". If ever there was a presidential election swinging in female favor, 2016 seems to be it. However, when put in historical context, Clinton and Fiorina's presidential bids seem prolonged as opposed to progressive. It is incredibly troubling to think that not even one of our nation's 44 presidents has been a woman, and sheds an unflattering light on America as one of the world's leading powers.

For being one of the largest, most influential and progressive countries in the world, the United States is failing to represent its female population in government. To date, a female has never won either a Republican or Democratic primary election, let alone a presidential election. Likewise, the Congress has and continues to be comprised of an overwhelming majority of white males. The Washington Post reported in January that , “the 114th Congress…is one of the most diverse in American history, comprised of nearly 20 percent women and just over 17 percent of which is non-white. Which means, of course, that four out of five members of Congress are white and four out of five are men.” These statistics show an incredible gender and racial imbalance within our political system that oftentimes leaves huge portions of the population underrepresented. Despite the current disparities, the 114th Congress is the most diverse in history in terms of both race and gender. Indeed, diversity within American government has been on an upward trend for the past several years, but not rising quickly enough to fairly represent the American population.

"More than half of the population is female; white non-Hispanics are about 63 percent of the population. Congress is starting to look more like the rest of the country, in other words -- but the 114th Congress won't look much like it at all."

Sadly, international statistics don't seem to be much better than those of the United States. According to a the United Nations Women in Politics 2015 Map, “there are currently 18 female world leaders, including 12 female heads of government and 11 elected female heads of state (some leaders are both, and figurehead monarchs are not included)”. Although this number may seem considerable, when compared with the 177 other countries run primarily by men it becomes less significant. The lack of female political leadership both domestically and internationally leaves us to question why women aren't being elected to office.

The answer to this question is not simple. The popular belief of anti-woman-president voters seems to be categorized based upon the following reasons: women are too emotional, women only care about women's issues, and simply that women can't--and shouldn't be--leaders. Of course, there are several studies disproving the foundation of these claims, but they still seem to have an effect on voters when election season rolls around.