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OPINION | With the 'husbands' comment, Trump sealed his fate with women

2020-10-29T11:20:59.759Z


Your comments do help women understand the president even better. They suggest that he thinks that it is men who belong to the workplace and that all women are or should be married. I suspect that women will respond Tuesday by putting Trump in his rightful place and voting him out of office. | Opinion | CNN


Taylor was the one who exposed Trump's irregularities 2:20

Editor's Note:

Kara Alaimo, Associate Professor of Public Relations at Hofstra University, is the author of "Pitch, Tweet or Engage on the Street: How to Practice Global Public Relations and Strategic Communication."

He was a spokesman for international affairs at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration.

Follow her on Twitter @karaalaimo.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

See more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) -

When President Donald Trump called for the support of suburban women at a Michigan rally Tuesday night (amid a pandemic and an economic crisis that has prompted a mass exodus of women from the force labor), argued that he deserved their votes because "we are going to put their husbands back to work."

The implications here - that he believes all women have or should have husbands and that workplaces are the province of men - are so sexist and outdated that they will likely alarm American women who have long become accustomed to inappropriate treatment. from your commander-in-chief.

Before this rally, women were already on the run from Trump: In CNN's pre-election polls, Biden's support among white women (the ones Trump clearly seeks when he says "suburban") is 18 points higher than Hillary Clinton's. when he ran against Trump four years ago.

But, with these latest comments, the president has probably put the last nail in his own reelection chances among many female voters.

Before Tuesday, it would have been hard to imagine how Trump could have offended women more than he already has.

The president, of course, has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women (accusations he denies) and has been caught on tape presuming that he can get away with sexual assault.

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He has frequently despised and degraded women, including his own daughter, by speaking of their appearances rather than their achievements and by calling them offensive names.

But earlier, when he called prominent women "unpleasant", for example, I argued that he was a misogynist but not necessarily a sexist.

On Tuesday night, Trump made it clear that he is both.

A man who is a misogynist, according to Cornell philosopher Kate Manne, punishes women who do not do what he wants.

Trump's behavior has long made it clear that he fits this bill.

Meanwhile, a sexist, Manne says, believes that men are better than women at things like business or sports.

Before Tuesday's comments, it was not entirely clear that Trump was sexist;

put some women in powerful positions in his administration and in the Trump Organization.

But in appealing to suburban women to support him because he is helping their husbands, Trump suggested that he believes the workplace is the domain of men.

This is the sexism of textbooks.

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Of course, Trump's assumption that all women have, or should have, husbands is also terribly backward and offensive, and will almost certainly be off-putting to single women (among others).

Single women make up more than a quarter of the nation's population, according to the Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund.

His sexism is not even the most astonishing of the implications of these offensive comments;

that's reserved for how divorced they are from the reality that American women are actually going through.

Trump says he's caring for husbands, but it's the women who need help getting back to work: More than 800,000 of the 1.1 million people who left the workforce between August and September were women, according to the National Center for Laws of Women.

This is not surprising, as job losses have been especially concentrated in sectors where there are more women, according to the International Monetary Fund, while mothers have also been disproportionately shouldering the impossible burden of trying to juggle with work, childcare, and homeschooling while your children have been at home during the pandemic.

Of course, these resume gaps will be devastating for the careers of women who have lost or quit their jobs.

According to a 2020 study, Americans with the most job gaps earn wages that are 40% lower in the future.

But the exodus of so many women from the workplace will also be dire for the country as a whole, because it will deprive many organizations of the well-established benefits of women's leadership and influence.

Companies with more women and cultural diversity have significantly better financial results, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

But generally it is not enough to have just one or two women.

Studies consistently find that women must make up at least 20-30% of an institution before they can actually shape results.

The massive departure of women could deprive organizations of this critical mass, making it even more difficult for our economy to recover.

It is amazing that a president who claims to be a successful businessman does not recognize this.

Yet while Trump may not understand that the way he helps struggling women, and his unsuccessful campaign, doesn't focus on men, his comments do help women understand the president even better.

They suggest that he thinks that it is men who belong to the workplace and that all women are or should be married.

I suspect that women will respond Tuesday by putting Trump in his rightful place and voting him out of office.

Donald TrumpWomen

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-10-29

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