One-Third of RNC Announced Speakers are Women

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.

 

The Republican National Committee released a list of 62 speakers for its convention next week and we reviewed it for gender diversity. Of the 62 speakers listed, 20 are women. They include two women senators (Joni Ernst-IA & Shelley Moore Capito-WV), two attorneys general (Leslie Rutledge-AR & Pam Bondi-FL), Governor Mary Fallin (OK), and U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (TN). RNC Co-Chair Sharon Day and Alex Smith, the National Chair of the College Republicans, will also speak.

Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command a NASA space shuttle, is a named speaker. Marine veteran Kathryn Gates-Skipper will also speak. Multiple businesswomen will speak, including Trump Winery General Manager Kerry Woolard, Lynne Patton – Vice President at the Eric Trump Foundation, and Michelle Van Etten – a member of Women in Business for Trump. Kimberlin Brown, a former soap opera actress and current businessowner, is also listed as a speaker. LPGA golfer Natalie Gulbis is also among women speaking at the Republican National Convention, as well as Lisa Shin – a member of the Trump campaign’s National Diversity Coalition.

Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in Benghazi, and Karen Vaughn, the mother of Navy SEAL Aaron Carson Vaughn of SEAL Team VI, will both speak at the RNC.

Finally, Donald Trump’s wife Melania and daughters – Ivanka and Tiffany – are included in the current list of RNC speakers.

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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