How stereotypes of women as weak push female politicians to be hawkish

By Will Englund October 28

Will Englund is an editor on The Washington Post’s foreign desk and the author of the forthcoming book “March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution,” which will be published in early 2017.

Donald Trump and his allies have spent the fall depicting Hillary Clinton as too much of a hawk and too much of a dove, as too reckless with American power and too weak at the same time. She voted for the war in Iraq. She wanted to go into Libya with guns blazing. No, wait: She quailed at confronting the Islamic State. She failed to override Iraqi objections to keeping American soldiers on the banks of the Euphrates.

From the left, she is criticized for being too eager to project American power abroad, often favoring military force when President Obama was resistant. Even within this critique, though, there is sometimes a suggestion that she is weak — “susceptible” to guidance from neoconservatives.

It’s a bind that’s familiar to other women in prominent government roles, especially in the realm of national security: They have to deal with skepticism that they’re tough enough to protect American interests and American citizens. Can a woman be “as strong as a man”? That puts them in a position of having to prove their toughness, which in turn puts them at risk of being declared overly aggressive.

Few have understood these pressures better than Jeannette Rankin. She was the first woman elected to Congress, exactly 100 years ago. She ran because she wanted to be a voice for women and children, to advocate for safer food, better health care and, most important, national women’s suffrage. But on the day she took her seat, April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went to the Capitol to ask for a declaration of war against Germany.

Rankin had come to Washington amid a buzz of excitement. “The Lady from Montana” (one of only 11 states that had given women the vote) was a progressive Republican who campaigned against big corporations and the class known back then as the “2 percent.” She was 36 and loved fast cars. Back East, it had been rumored that she was a man-hater and that she had flaming red hair, neither of which was true.

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