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Contesting Representations in the Gendered Space of Politics: Hillary Clinton’S Representations in Living History, a Woman in Charge, and Her Way

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Contesting Representations in the Gendered Space of Politics: Hillary Clinton’S Representations in Living History, a Woman in Charge, and Her Way Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds) © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5 Contesting representations in the gendered space of politics: Hillary Clinton’s representations in Living History, A Woman in Charge, and Her Way D. Hapsarani & M. Budianta Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, Indonesia ABSTRACT: The aim of this research is to show the contesting representations of Hillary Clinton in her autobiography Living History (2003) and two biographies (2007): A Woman in Charge by Carl Bernstein and Her Way by Jeff Gerth and Don van Natta. The results of the analysis on Living History reveals that Hillary negotiates with the gendered writing conven- tion of political autobiography and the double binds traps in building her image as a credible and capable world leader. Meanwhile, the study on the two biographies brings to light the consistent strategies to frame Hillary with gender stereotypes, double binds, as well as a nega- tive and disturbing personality. 1 INTRODUCTION The fact that political elections in the United States are deeply gendered has sparked a great deal of research on women studies to figure out the reasons why it is so difficult to convince the American people to vote for a woman’s leadership. Falk (2010) confirms her assumption that the way media treated women candidates has not changed after a thorough study on the nine presidential campaigns involving women candidates in the United States from 1872 up to 2008. Waylen, et al. (2013) put politics both as practices and a study within a wider social context in which gender plays a very determining role, and they are convinced that in order to change the current, political science it should start to embrace gender perspective in their study. With all this mushrooming research on gender and politics at the background, gender, once again, became a hot button issue in the 2016 political election as Hillary Clinton man- aged to win the presidential nomination from the Democratic Party. Josh Marshall (2016), a respected political journalist and blogger, dubbed the election as “the ultimate gendered elec- tion,” while Bartash (2016) from The Market Watch predicted that the election will lead to “the biggest battle of the sexes in American political history” since Hillary has to face Trump, the embodiment of extreme masculinity. It is not surprising that Hillary is still experiencing offensive onslaught as in the 2008 election. Offensive onslaught and negative representations are not new for Hillary who has started to become the target of attack ever since she assumed an active role in the administration of her husband’s presidency back in 1993–2001. The following pictures display some nega- tive stereotypes that are consistently and continuously attached to Hillary in the virtual media in 2008 and 2016. Hillary has been portrayed as the embodiment of a threat to the society. 345 Figure 1. Negative stereotypes of Hillary Clinton found in 2008 and in 2016. With negative representations in the media and strong association between presidency and masculinity, Hillary is compelled to manoeuvre in this gendered space in representing herself as a woman candidate for president. Following the campaign tradition, Hillary chose to construct her self-representation by writing an autobiography, Living History, years before her candidacy. Writing a political or campaign autobiography is problematic in itself as the writing convention of the genre brings forth masculine characteristics. Long (1999) identi- fies four elements of masculinity in the writing convention of autobiography: a linear plot which emphasizes success, a call or destiny in the public domain, a solitary hero displaying independence and self reliance, and avoiding emotional exploration by repressing the emo- tional experiences. These elements reflect the gendered space of politics and political elec- tions which is dominated by masculinity and masculine stereotyping references. Therefore, it is interesting to see how Hillary makes use of references available in the gendered society to convince the readers of her capabilities and leadership. Another interesting phenomenon was the publication of two unauthorized biographies on Hillary in 2007, six months prior to the election. A Woman in Charge was written by Carl Bernstein, a Washington Post veteran journalist famous for his investigative report (with Bob Woodward) on the Watergate scandal resulting in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton was written by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, two Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists from New York Times. Considering the background of the writers and the publication of the biographies, it can be assumed that the purpose of their publication was to challenge Hillary’s self-representations in her autobiography. Both books relied and also commented on Hillary’s story in Living History. This paper aims to show the contesting representations of Hillary Clinton and the barricades that a woman presidential candidate has to break through to gain the voters’ confidence. The strategy of representations in the three life narratives will be examined by investigating the framing used in telling Hillary’s life story. Framing is “selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues and making connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution” (Entman, 2004, p. 5). The practice of framing commonly used in media studies is applicable in studying life narratives. Life itself has no structure and no meaning. It is the writer who selects and highlights a particular aspect of the subject’s life in order to unify the unrelated incidents and to interpret life experiences to make them meaningful and to give a sense of purpose. Framing can be identified by examining key words, metaphors, myths, concepts, symbols, visuals, ideas, and actions that are consistently and repeatedly used within the text. 346 This study uses a feminist framework to investigate Hillary’s strategies in navigating her life story through the maze of gender stereotypes, gender bias, double binds, and double standards to build her leadership image. At the same time, by analyzing the two biographies, the study examines the strategies of the three biographers in re-establishing the conventional gender stereotypes and gender bias and in reinforcing the use of double binds and double standards in telling their story about Hillary. 2 LITERATURE REVIEW Research on gender and politics has been growing abundantly in the U.S., as researchers and scholars attempt to discover the barriers that prevent women from winning the presidential election. The results of these studies indicated a progress. The earlier research confirmed the negative effects of gender stereotypes on women candidates (Huddy and Terkildsen, 1993; Kahn & Goldenberg, 1991), while the latest research found evidence showing that gender stereotypes do not negatively affect the electability of women candidates, for there is a com- plex interaction involving several elements, among others the gender of the candidate, the can- didate’s party affiliation, the gender of the voters, and the gendered perception of the political party in nominating their candidates (Sullivan, 2007; Shaver, 2013; Dolan, 2013; Bauer, 2014; Hayes and Lawless, 2015). Also large in number is the research on gender stereotypes in the media aiming to reveal the extent of media bias against women candidates. Kahn’s analysis of newspaper coverage of senatorial and gubernatorial candidates in the 1980s (Kahn, 1991) shows gender bias in the media, as women candidates received less coverage and more nega- tive coverage than their male counterparts. Though women candidates nowadays receive more coverage than before, they are still defined by the media through their gender. A great deal of research focuses on Hillary’s strategy in dealing with these barriers. In eval- uating Hillary’s failure in the presidential election of 2008, Lawrence and Rose (2010) iden- tify three interlocking variables to analyse female presidential candidates: gender stereotypes, media routine, and candidate and her context. By evaluating Hillary’s campaign strategy in navigating her path around and through the use of gender stereotypes, Lawrence and Rose draw conclusions on factors to consider for future woman presidential candidate in devel- oping her campaign strategy. This research covers an extensive range of campaign media from campaign speeches, website, advertisement, to media coverage (blogs, newspapers, and television stations). However, the research does not cover Hillary’s preliminary campaign strategy using memoir or autobiography. Kaufner and Perry-Giles (2007), seeing a political memoir as a campaign medium to build arguments for future office, analyse the contrasting narrative style in Living History and Hard Choices and identify Hillary’s assumed political identities to position herself as a political leader. One interesting phenomenon with Hillary’s candidacy that has been overlooked by the previous research is the contestation of represen- tations within the genres of life narratives. This paper will focus on the contestation between Hillary’s self-representation and other representations that challenges her representations. 2.1 Hillary’s representation in Living History Hillary’s autobiography, Living History, shows that Hillary gives careful thoughts on how to present herself
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