Trump’s trash talk a step backwards in the battle for equality

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Picture: iStock

It seems incredible now, but when I launched a management magazine in early 2001, I judged that putting a woman on the cover would be the kiss of death, that it would position the publication as a women’s business magazine and no ambitious man – or woman – would take it seriously.

I can’t recall how many issues we published before I had the guts to go with a corporate woman, but it took a while. Perhaps I was wrong; perhaps even 20 years ago enough readers would have given equal weight to the advice of women and not seen leadership through a gendered lens.

I wasn’t ready to take that risk, even though I realised my decision cemented stereotypes about powerful and effective leaders being male.

We live in a different world now, in the corporate sector and beyond – a world where a woman on the cover (even if alongside a man) is the default position and where we take for granted the importance of gender balance in the visuals. We’ve seen a revolution in social attitudes underpinned by legislation, community expectations and the searing recognition of the sexual discrimination and harassment still present in some workplaces. It’s a revolution that has proved too much for some who claim that women are now favoured over men in job interviews or that too many women on boards are not up to scratch. Even those who support the revolution can be surprised, even irritated at times, by the “take no prisoners” attitudes of some women staking their claims. But even if there has been a backlash in some quarters, the changes have been real and permanent.

Or at least one hopes so.

In the weekend before the US presidential election, after a long campaign in which public discourse reached a new low, who can be certain misogyny will not reappear in many and varied ways in the public space, including the office?

Kamala Harris, a black middle-class woman, has chosen to fight on ungendered ground – a remarkable feat given that, if elected, she will be the first woman president of the US.

Taking the candidate’s gender out of the contest should have been good news for everyone – a statement of just how far we have come in breaking the old paradigms of male/female competency, a signal to the Republicans not to play the sexist card.

Yet this campaign has looked at times to be all about gender, not just because women are opting for the side protecting their abortion rights but because of the exaggerated machismo of a 78-year-old white male tapping into stereotypes that workplaces and schools and households have been trying to erase for decades.

Donald Trump is dominating and certain – qualities often perceived as desirable male characteristics, even if never articulated as such. He is forgiven his policy and personal sins by those attracted to his maleness.

Eight years ago, the analysis of his appeal focused on economic factors and the “Hillbilly Elegy” people who had lost houses, money, jobs and the hopes of a future. These forgotten Rust Belt refugees were “seen” by Donald, the non-politician with great political instincts. Cultural factors played a part in 2016 (although “woke” only entered the Oxford Dictionary a year later) but by and large, commentators identified the economy as the fault line. Cost of living and the hollowing out of the American dream are still factors, with Trump and running mate J.D.Vance offering to deport 11 million illegal immigrants to restore jobs and houses and hope. But this time, it really is the culture, stupid. Trump may reel out pie-in-the sky policies but for his supporters, policy is less important than persona and Harris has made it easier for him with (till recently) a lack of policy.

If Kamala loses next week, the question will not be whether the Democrats should have stuck with Joe Biden, but whether a 50-something white man would have had a better shot. We have come a long way in gender equality but “leader equals power equals male” is still the default position for many men and women.

The rules put in place in recent decades to support women at work have had a big impact on public conduct and on household power dynamics. Corporates have been important in the journey to gender equality. The workplace has been a space also in which respectful language has been created around women.

Trump didn’t get that memo, and along with his racial insults, he has called Harris “mentally disabled” and “a very low IQ individual”, for example. One of his supporters at his Madison Square Garden rally went even lower, suggesting Kamala’s “pimp handlers will destroy our country”.  What does this appalling language about women mean for the rest of us? Does the lack of respect make it easier to demean women at work as well as at home? Does Trump’s public disregard for normal courtesies give others permission to revert to sexist and racist language? Trump’s willingness to articulate ideas and views that workplaces have sought to outlaw delights some supporters. That some people, critical of her lack of policy, are happy to call her “empty pants suit Kamala” reveals much about the sexism just below the surface in our society.

It’s right to question Kamala’s competence, just as women need to be judged on their skill and delivery in the workplace rather than their gender, but the rhetoric in the US election campaign has been shocking at times. Trump’s playbook may help him win the US presidency, but it’s not much help at a time when the relationships between men and women – at home as well as at work – are still being sorted.