Yes, All Women: diversity is great, but it's not magical

Photo from the Library of Congress, Women's Club of Buffalo

by Julia Azari 

In his last press conference of 2014, Obama made news by calling on eight women reporters - and no men. The choice elicited a positive - and amusing - response from Twitter and other corners of the internet. But Matt Glassman observed on Twitter that this didn't seem to make much substantive difference - the questions were very similar to what we might have expected from a group of male reporters.

This comment taps into a familiar line of thinking about women in traditionally male-dominated arenas. During the government shutdown in fall 2013, news stories popped up about how women in Congress were fixing the mess made by the men with their natural knack for friendship and cooperation. These portrayals don't always rely on stereotypes about women's essential nature. Linda Beail and Rhonda Longworth Kinney note in their study of Sarah Palin that women can easily adopt the label of "political outsiders." The outsider trope can be an important one in American politics. Office-seekers talk constantly about fixing the "mess in Washington," of bringing in fresh thinking, of ending dominance by "insiders" and "elites."

In politics, these ideas turn diverse representation into a subset of anti-party, candidate-centered magical thinking. Such thinking is especially misleading and worthy of scrutiny right now. The next Congress will have a record number of women - including the first black Republican woman. The 2016 presidential election season will be one in which women candidates figure prominently, of course, as might candidates from other historically marginalized groups. This is, on balance, positive and exciting. But expecting these candidates to sweep into leadership and fix things with outsider pixie dust is unrealistic and unproductive, and it misses the point about the benefits of diversity.

As with journalists at the White House, women (and others from historically excluded groups) who succeed at high levels can probably be expected to respond to incentives of their environment, and to conform to its norms. In other words, in many contexts, women politicians will act like male politicians, women journalists will act like male journalists, etc. They will have been professionally socialized in similar environments - top law schools, journalism schools, etc. Although there is some evidence that women have systematically different political behaviors from men when it comes to running for office and casting ballots, there's no reason to place different expectations on women who achieve at the highest levels.

The idea of women, in particular, as reformers links back to the Progressive era (and to the abolition movement before that). The neo-Progressive anti-partyism that informs both the Tea Party and the candidate-centered view of the presidency sets us up to expect - election after election - that a fresh slate of new, inexperienced, reform-minded candidates will fix what ails politics. This rarely, if ever, turns out to be true. And as Seth Masket pointed out a few weeks ago, lack of political expertise can have serious consequences.

Expectations like these distract us from the real advantages of diverse representation. In a 1999 article, Jane Mansbridge outlines the relationship between descriptive representation and substantive representation. She defines descriptive representation as when, "representatives are in their own persons and lives in some sense typical of the larger class of persons whom they represent." Mansbridge points out that the presence of women and African-American legislators has brought valuable new perspectives on issues including sexual harassment law and the use of the Confederate flag in patented symbols. Her general point is that people of different characteristics and backgrounds will sometimes see an issue differently even if their colleagues have been considering it for years. Many of these issues may seem obvious in retrospect. But Mansbridge offers examples of how it's not always possible to predict which questions will look drastically different to a more diverse set of eyes.

Including voices from marginalized groups can keep the discussion from being dominated by a single group or perspective. Descriptive representation can signal inclusion and introduce different ways of looking at a problem. But it's not fair to expect that diversity alone will challenge dominant paradigms or break entrenched patterns of behavior. Women and minorities in positions of power add value by being themselves, not by being "outsiders."