First Lists of DNC Speakers: 38% women, 62% men

Kelly Dittmar

presidential gender watch 2016In April 2015, the Barbara Lee Family Foundation (BLFF) and the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) launched Presidential Gender Watch 2016, a project to track, analyze, and illuminate gender dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. With the help of expert scholars and practitioners, Presidential Gender Watch worked for 21 months to further public understanding of how gender influences candidate strategy, voter engagement and expectations, media coverage, and electoral outcomes in campaigns for the nation’s highest executive office. The blog below was written for Presidential Gender Watch 2016, as part of our collective effort to raise questions, suggest answers, and complicate popular discussions about gender’s role in the presidential race.

 

Over the past week, the Democratic National Committee has released three different lists of convention speakers. Combining all of them, they include 46 women and 75 men. Women are three-quarters of headliners, when all seven “Mothers of the Movement” – speaking on Tuesday night –are included in the count.

The convention also released a schedule of “everyday Americans” to speak on each night of the convention. Fourteen are women and eight are men.

Finally, the DNC yesterday released a list of 84 elected and formerly elected officials that will stand at the convention podium. One-third (21) are women and 63 are men.

We will keep track of who speaks and for how long throughout the Democratic National Convention. For comparison, see our recent post and infographic on gender differences in number of speakers and speaking time at the Republican National Convention.

UPDATE: According to posts on Twitter, another 9 women and 4 men – famous actors, musicians, and athletes – will be speakers at the DNC. That brings the running total to 55 women (41%) and 79 men (59%).

Kelly Dittmar headshot

Kelly Dittmar

Kelly Dittmar is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers–Camden and Director of Research and Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. She is the co-author of A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen’s Perspectives on Why Their Representation Matters (Oxford University Press, 2018) (with Kira Sanbonmatsu and Susan J. Carroll) and author of Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns (Temple University Press, 2015).

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