Women candidates going public: the 30-second format.

• Author: Kern, Montague
• Position: Special Issue: Condensed Mediated Argument

What happens when women become political candidates? Although more women ran for public office and won in 1990 and 1992 than ever before, entering the public realm that previously has been inhabited only by men is still a relatively new undertaking for women. The public/private paradigm (Garlick, Dixon and Allen, 1992) tells us that the public arena is the realm of men (politicians and businessmen), while the private sphere is the domain of women. When women show signs of possessing power and seek entry into the province of politics or business, they are often criticized for abandoning their traditional family roles. How then, does a woman successfully compete with the political opponent depicted by Theodore Roosevelt as "the man who is actually in the arena?" In particular, how do women develop arguments using the fast and furious format of the 30-second political ad, and does their use of this format perpetuate, modify or serve to disprove preexisting stereotypes about women?

Women's roles in the political system have been the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Showalter suggests that women are a muted group interacting within a dominant group of men and that such dominant groups "control the forms or structures in which consciousness can be articulated. Thus, muted groups must mediate their beliefs through the allowable forms of dominant structures" (Showalter, 1983, p. 200). According to Spitzack and Carter "[a] small percentage of women gain access to dominant leadership studies. Membership is composed of privileged women who are acceptable by male standards, women whose leadership skills match those of their male counterparts" (1987, p. 416). They point out, however, that the extraordinary female is identified as well with her muted counterparts and her behavior is accordingly interpreted by gender criteria. In addition, to the extent that woman is defined as an other, "male definitions of competent leadership are adopted and female leadership styles are compared to them". As a rule, the muted group is compared to the dominant group and is found to be deficient. Thus, women leaders are considered less effective and less competent than male leaders. However, women who do exemplify competence in leadership roles are often viewed as "pushy, bitchy, hostile, overly-ambitious".

We posit that the 30-second political advertisement is a male-dominant structure through which women must mediate their political "voice" and leadership credentials in order to reach their constituencies. Within this format, women must present both private and public credentials, which results in a fragmented narrative. This narrative form is what Flax describes, in referring to the postmodern writings of Derrida and Foucault, as "a series of 'positions' and a heterogeneous polyphony of voices" (Flax, 1990, p. 32). The individual narratives within the 30-second format are frequently broken and incoherent. Little more than media representations tie them all together.

Throughout history, women have been portrayed as other, a comparison that empowers men and sustains a political economy based on gender. Women have been relegated to the private domain and labeled as dangerous and unnatural if insufficiently submissive. Today, private women who enter political life cannot match the sanctioned public power of men and are often criticized for abandoning their private lives. The woman exhibiting power is frequently belittled as incompetent or portrayed as threatening - a "witch" or "dragon lady" (Garlick, Dixon, & Allen, 1992).

More men, as well as women, are beginning to accept the idea of a leadership role for women. Socialization patterns and the fact that women continue to have primary child-care responsibility, however, limit the degree to which women are able to enter public office. Women delay their entry into the public world, do not follow the traditional business or legal route into politics, and are disproportionately found in state legislative bodies which are close to their homes (Darcy, Welch and Clark, 1994, p. 90). Further, questions are raised when women, rather than men, run for office. As Virginia Sapiro noted in 1992, for a woman candidate the question inevitably is asked "What does it mean that she is doing this?" If, however, "we ask in 1992 'What does it mean that John Major is Prime Minister of Britain or that Yitzhak Rabin is Prime Minister of Israel?' these questions might refer to many specific elements of meaning, but it is unlikely that anyone, in asking or answering these questions, would expend much cognitive effort to consider what difference it makes that these are men" (Sapiro, 1993, p. 145). For all of the talk about change in American electoral politics, women's chance of achieving higher elective office is greatest in electoral systems which are not based on single-member districts such as those which exist in the United States, but rather the party list systems which are widespread throughout Europe (Norris, 1994). Candidate centered campaigning involving public presentations by women may well be a part of the problem.

Women in 30-second Spots

Women's campaign advertisements have been empirically analyzed using content analysis methods. We have learned about the issues included in women's ads (Kahn, 1994a; Kahn, 1993; Kahn & Goldenberg, 1991a, 1991b) and about a variety of problems that women candidates have had, including their difficulties in connecting with traditional values and undertaking negative advertising campaigns due to cultural stereotypes (Trout & Sabourin, 1989, 1993; Trent & Friedenberg, 1991). In the campaigns of 1992, however, women increasingly sought to "go public" by bringing their private lives into the open in an effort to compete with male candidates. In so doing they sought, like men, to draw on traditional roles to portray themselves advantageously. Can women structure consistent arguments which state their issue concerns and qualifications for office using the abbreviated formats which still predominate on the statewide and local electoral levels? Using this format, men have long portrayed themselves as strong and competent, as well as empathetic family men who can similarly be depended upon in public office. The effort by women to insert their private lives into the public world by means of the 30-second format raises broad questions about the format itself which are examined here.

A videotape entitled "The Best Campaign Commercials: The Year of the Woman," a collection of 41 30-second political ads of 22 women candidates, was reviewed for this study.(1) In analyzing these ads, Coleman (1994) found that maternal images give the candidates a "distinctive opportunity to appeal to voters . . . a forum in which to test and transform thinking about gender roles". She also found, however, that only 19 out of the 41 ads had the women candidates actually speaking to their audiences. The majority of the ads employed male voice-overs, with only five of them using female voice-overs. Coleman suggests that while these male voices give credibility to the women candidates, they also make the women seem "disempowered to speak for themselves, relying on the pronouncements of a husband/father/masculine authority". With many candidates literally lacking a voice of their own, the problem of fragmented multiple voices becomes evident.

Foucault, regarding contemporary Western culture as an ongoing struggle "between heterogeneous elements that cannot be assimilated" (Flax, 1990, p. 205), stresses the role of conflict and violence. He conceives of discourse "as a violence that we do to things, or, at all events, as a practice we impose upon them; it is in this practice that the events of discourse find the principle of their regularity" (Foucault, 1976, p. 229). Foucault's description of the violence of discourse may be said to anticipate the cacophony of fragmented narratives that assault the senses within the 30-second political ad format.

Women attempt to adopt the political advertising format, as their own, in order to convey their political arguments. We examined the 1992 ads in the context of theory concerning condensed argument, and past political advertising discourse, as televised in a number of 1986 statewide Senate and gubernatorial races.(2) This analysis also draws from interviews with some of the major consultants who have since the mid-eighties created ads and conducted polls for ad campaigns by women.

The 30-second Format

Candidate messages directed to the living room voter focus on tapping a responsive chord through symbols and narratives that connect with cultural cues. The 30-second format does not describe complicated issues. Instead, visual, aural, and verbal cues connect with stereotypes, narratives, and affect in the mind of the viewers. Theory suggests that these enable the viewer to see him/herself through the eyes of the candidate and to believe that the candidate shares the viewers' own concerns about issues and feelings and aspirations (Schwartz, 1967; Gronbeck, 1984; Jamieson, 1988; Fisher, 1989) More broadly, political spots fit into the context of mediated arguments, constructed through news stories, advertisements, and entertainment programming.

Thirty-second political spots employ compressed argumentation devices. One is dovetailing (Kern, 1989, 1993; Kern and Just, 1994) which involves the development of a character and policy issue message combined through visual and issue components in one ad. The significance of issues used in such ads is generally self-evident to the voter. Furthermore, recorded votes on policy issues, for example, serve the purpose of defining character. Involved in advertising argumentation is a narrative about a main character, either the candidate or the opponent (Louden, 1991).

Condensational or referential symbols are used to carry arguments. Positive or negative emotions, are associated with such symbols and attempts...