Think back to the US election only several days ago. Who ran for those elections? What names come to mind? Kamala and Trump? How about the 2016 presidential election? Trump vs Hillary? Do you notice any patterns?
For so long, female politicians are referred to by their first name, and many female writers have noticed this. But why is this so? Is it another result of misogyny?…. Probably. Or does the same thing happen to men?
The problems of using first names over surnames when referring to women in power is present in US Politics. I’ll remind you of the cases only mentioned a few paragraphs ago, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. We have a tendency to refer to them and many other female politicians by their first names because of several factors, sometimes it was them being mistaken for their male counterparts or in fear of losing voters if they ever pressed the issue. But to use their first name to differentiate can be quite demeaning, especially when the same treatment isn’t applied to men.
It’s difficult for female politicians to defend this because of their desire to get into power. They need to be liked to get into government. It may explain Kamala Harris’s interaction with a reporter, where she is referred to by her first name exclusively. The reporter apologises, but Kamala insists that she doesn’t mind being referred to by her first name. But when it comes to elections, it’s all facades, politicians need to show how much they hold under pressure. Any feelings bar focused or happy, must be kept to the wayside to show their integrity in ruling an entire country.
I find the name bias slightly similar to the sports problem we have when it comes to gender disparity. When the Euros or the Six Nations are mentioned, your mind instantly goes to the male tournaments rather than the female ones. For us to consider the female league of sports, it always has to be differentiated in the title. But the same standard doesn’t apply to men. Obviously, there’s an argument that we can’t differentiate it otherwise if we remove the female/women/ladies out of everything! But, why can’t we just add something to the title of men’s leagues to help with that differentiation?
“Surely this is only a US thing!” you may be asking yourself. While, yes, some may be able to weakly oppose this theory mentioning names like Thatcher, Merkel, or Von Der Leyen, it doesn’t prove that inequality doesn’t exist. That’s why I conducted a little research of my own.
I did my research on two Irish political leaders – one male (Simon Harris) and one female (Mary-Lou McDonald). Fortunately, this research wasn’t too difficult to do thanks to the prominence of the General Election in the news (Hope you’re all registered to vote!).
The research examined 5 news sources each talking about Mary Lou McDonald and Simon Harris. There were a total of 9 articles examined, with one article sharing stories of both politicians.
Across those 5 sources, Mary Lou McDonald was referred to by the following terms (ordered by how often they were used, starting with the most common): “She”, “Ms McDonald”, “Sinn Féin leader”, “Mary Lou McDonald”, “McDonald”, “party leader” and “Dublin Central TD”. I should also mention the typo of “McDondald”.
For Simon Harris, he was referred to by the following terms: “He”, “Taoiseach”, “Harris”, “Mr Harris”, “Simon Harris”, “Fine Gael Leader”, “Party leader”.
As you can see, She and He were the most common terms found to refer to both politicians, this represented about 30% of references to Mary Lou McDonald and about 26% of references to Simon Harris.
The gender name bias can be seen in the first set of surname-related terms where Mary Lou McDonald is second most commonly referred to as “Ms McDonald” (24%) and Simon Harris is referred to as just “Harris” (20%).
Only 11% of references to Mary Lou McDonald were referring exclusively to her surname, “McDonald” while the usage of “Mr Harris” tallied up to 13% of total attempts to reference Simon Harris.
I have only had a look at News media, and the “objective” look of male and female politicians appears to still contain gender-based name bias. Usage of Ms/Mr added up to 24% and 13% respectively, while usage of only the first name was 11% to 20%, again, respectively.
I will admit, I’m not immune to name bias. I’m not shy of using “Mary Lou” to often refer to the Sinn Féin leader in informal settings. And if I were to take a look at social media, I say these results would have a much larger gap.
Although there have been a small number of news articles reviewed for this piece, it provides a snapshot into the name bias of female politicians and how it’s not exclusive to the US. It’s everywhere.
From a personal stance, I don’t get offended when my first name is used over my surname or vice versa. But then again, I don’t have the responsibility of leading a nation. Hence, I cannot entirely speak for female politicians. No one can. What I suspect though is that they want to be treated with the same respect as the male politicians they work with or against, therefore I cannot deny a call for change on this matter. Before, I had mentioned the issue with the naming of sports leagues and also its solution. For this issue of name bias to be solved, we should put in a larger effort in our awareness of name bias. Arguably, this issue may not even cross a lot of politicians’ minds when they have so many issues to be concerned about. Perhaps, politicians may fear that the voicing of the issue of name bias may show their lack of priorities to voters. It is extremely difficult to say what the main factors are that continue to foster this issue of name bias, and I don’t think we will see this issue leaving society anytime soon unless we spread more awareness about it.
For any students looking for a research topic, I’d highly recommend looking at name bias across social media and news media. I’ve only scratched the surface of what there is to explore here!