The Sex Speech

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT

One of the missed opportunities of the primary season was that Hillary Clinton never gave a speech about gender comparable to Barack Obama’s speech about race.

That was understandable: She didn’t want to be reduced to the “woman candidate.” But such a speech might have triggered a useful national conversation about women in leadership, and so, Mr. Obama, now it’s up to you: Why don’t you give that speech? I’m helpfully offering some talking points:

Racism is deeper, but sexism may be wider in America today. In polls, more Americans say they would be willing to vote for a black candidate for president than for a female candidate, and sexist put-downs are heard more publicly than racial ones.

Presumably in part because of sexism (and also because of self-selection), women today are still hugely underrepresented in the political arena. Women constitute about 23 percent of legislators in the 50 states, a proportion that has risen only slightly in the last decade. In addition, the political commentariat is overwhelmingly male, which is one reason that Mrs. Clinton’s supporters felt unfairly battered.

We aren’t always aware of our own biases. Some of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are sure that she was defeated by misogyny, while those who voted against her invariably are dismissive: The reason I didn’t vote for her isn’t that she’s a woman. It’s that she’s a dynastic opportunist who voted for the Iraq war and ...

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