US voters say they’re ready for a woman president − but sexist attitudes still go along with opposition to Harris

  Since President Joe Biden exited the presidential race on July 21, 2024 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris’ campaign has generated widespread enthusiasm and attention. She quickly became the official Democratic presidential nominee and erased Donald Trump’s lead over Biden in national and swing-state polling.

  Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have also drawn tens of thousands of supporters to their recent rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada.

How Trump’s appeal to nostalgia deliberately evokes America’s more-racist, more-sexist past

  There’s a reason Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is working hard to evoke nostalgia: People who are nostalgic – meaning, people who long for America’s “good old days” – were more likely to vote for Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, according to research I conducted along with collaborators Kirby Goidel and Paul Kellstedt.

Yes, sexism among Republican voters helped sink Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign

  Following multiple defeats in the Republican presidential primary, including in her home state of South Carolina, Nikki Haley suspended her bid for the Republican presidential nomination on March 6, 2024.

  Barring unforeseen events, Donald Trump will be the GOP candidate in November’s election.

  Haley’s failure to pose a more serious challenge to Trump may be puzzling to some. After all, she was a formidable candidate with notable political experience in both federal and state government. She had outlasted prominent Republican officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, in the GOP primary.

Racist and sexist depictions of human evolution still permeate science, education and popular culture today

  Systemic racism and sexism have permeated civilization since the rise of agriculture when people started living in one place for a long time. Early Western scientists, such as Aristotle in ancient Greece, were indoctrinated with the ethnocentric and misogynistic narratives that permeated their society. More than 2,000 years after Aristotle’s writings, English naturalist Charles Darwin also extrapolated the sexist and racist narratives he heard and read in his youth to the natural world.

Why are there so few women CEOs?

  Women comprise about 47% of the U.S. workforce yet they make up barely a quarter of all senior executives at large U.S. public companies. Even worse, only about 5% of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies have female CEOs.

New abortion laws contribute to sexist environments that harm everyone’s health

  Nine states have passed laws in 2019 alone that restrict abortion at the earliest stages of pregnancy. Those of us who study public health are becoming increasingly concerned about the potential for negative health consequences of these kinds of policies on women.

  That’s because research has shown that laws limiting reproductive rights and services put women’s health and well-being at risk in many ways. This can be from increasing the likelihood of unsafe procedures to causing long-term mental and physical health damage by forcing the continuation of unwanted pregnancies.

Racism and sexism combine to shortchange working Black women

  Black Women’s Equal Pay Day arrives around this time each year, marking the estimated number of extra months—roughly eight months—that a Black woman working full-time year-round in the United States must work into the current year to have earned what her white male counterpart earned during the prior year. This year, Black women will have to work well into the month of August to catch up to the wages that white men earned in 2018 alone. In concrete terms, this means that Black women experience a pay gap every day—and this gap adds up. In 2017, for example, Black women earned 61 cents for every dollar earned by white men, amounting to $23,653 less in earnings over an entire year. In the span of a 40-year career, this translates into an average lifetime earnings gap of $946,120 between Black women and white men.

Kate Bahn: The value of equal pay to the U.S. economy

  This year, Equal Pay Day fell on April 4. This means that the average woman had to work from the start of 2016 through April 4, 2017 to earn as much as an average man did in 2016 alone. Put another way, women currently earn 80 cents for each dollar that men earn.

  As a result of these factors and others, women can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in earnings over the course of their careers. But it isn’t just women’s individual bottom lines that suffer: The gender wage gap is also a drag on the U.S. economy, and closing the gap should be a top priority of any economic policy agenda that seeks to strengthen and grow the economy. In fact, comparing it to the current top priority of the GOP—tax cuts for the wealthy—equal pay would put twice as much income back into our economy as their current proposed tax cuts.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1530: I wonder why it’s so different for a woman than a man

  I could not help but wonder. As I prepared to watch the first 2016 presidential debate, I wondered. As I sat watching the debate, I wondered.  As I talked with others after the debate, I wondered.

  I wondered what would happen if the characters, circumstances, and situations of each of the major presidential candidates were reversed but their genders remained the same. I first wondered to myself. Now I want to wonder with you in this Sketches.

Hank Sanders: An open letter to Donald Trump

Dear Mr. Trump:

  I write out of a piercing pain and a searing sorrow. I write in spite of little hope this letter will make a difference with you. I write because you are the presumptive presidential nominee of a major political party. Most of all, I write because I can do no less as a man, as a father of daughters by birth and foster relationship, and as a grandfather of seven granddaughters by birth and more by foster relationship. I am making this an open letter in the hope that it will make a difference with others as well as with you.  

  Mr. Trump, I respect you even though you show little respect for so many others: women, Hispanics, Muslims, African Americans, the poor, those with handicaps, etc. It is far too much to address all these groups in this one letter. Therefore, I want to focus on women, just one of the many groups for which you demonstrate a profound lack of respect.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1504: Rising above the power and pervasiveness of sexism

  Sexism is pervasive. Sexism is powerful. Sexism comes in mnay forms. Sexism sometimes excludes outright. Sexism sometimes includes but limits. Sexism gives privileges with one hand and takes away with the other hand. Sexism pervades our thoughts, our actions and our language. Sexism comes in men and women, boys and girls. Sexism is so pervasive that I don’t know where to start. However, since March is Women’s History Month, I will explore several things that raised the specter of sexism during the last week of the month.

David L. Hudson, Jr.: Appeals court rules for employer on ‘ministerial exception’

  Employment discrimination laws sometimes take a backseat to the religious-liberty rights of religious institutions.

  In summary, employees of religious institutions simply do not have the same protections from anti-discrimination laws as other employees because of a principle called the “ministerial exception,” rooted in the idea that the government should not interfere with the freedom of religious institutions and how they conduct their internal affairs.

Sally Steenland: Selection of New Pope Underscores a Shortcoming of Church Rules

  Last week I took on the quixotic task of promoting a nun for pope by covering my office door with stickers: “Vote for hope, justice, joy!”, and “Yes, she can!”

  These homemade feisty signs boost the impossible election of Sister Simone Campbell to be head of the Catholic Church worldwide. For those unfamiliar with Sister Simone, she created and led the “Nuns on the Bus” tour last summer, where she and fellow nuns grabbed headlines and drew huge crowds for defending faith-based charities that would’ve been devastated by the harsh cuts proposed in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) House Republican budget. Last September Sister Simone gave a primetime address at the Democratic National Convention and received a standing ovation. For more than 40 years, she has devoted her life to helping those who are poor and disenfranchised, aiming to emulate the gospel message of lifting up “the least of these.”