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Election 2020—


Toxic masculinity takes center stage at the first presidential debate
 

Americans who have spent much of this year living between chaos and crisis came to Tuesday night’s debate looking for clarity, but were met with calamity and uncertainty. 

During the 90-minute event, President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden crowded out talk of policy with personality and ego. 

“We saw very little content about gender or marginalized people and a lot of masculine posturing,” said Occidental College political scientist Jennifer Piscopo. “It was very schoolyard and mostly from the side of the president, but they were both goading each other with performative masculinity.”

When they weren’t interrupting each other or name-calling, Biden and Trump largely hewed to their campaign trail talking points, though there were few complete answers from either candidate. Neither substantively discussed:
  • Plans to address issues like a recession that disproportionately impact Black women and Latinas
  • Parents’ concerns about child care or education
  • How the elderly can safely and confidently cast their ballots
  • The epidemic of violence against transgender women
  • The dual pandemics of systemic racism and COVID-19, both of which are taking an uneven and deadly toll on women and communities of color.
Instead, voters heard Biden telling Trump to shut up and the president levying attacks against the former vice president’s sons, Hunter and Beau. Trump questioned Biden’s intellect, and boasted about the size of his rallies while claiming that Biden couldn’t draw similar crowds, even in the middle of a pandemic. Moderator and Fox News host Chris Wallace could do little to maintain the bombast, often looking exasperated as he tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to regain control of the conversation.

Read the full story by Errin Haines here.
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— At the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic, representation of women in corporate America was slowly improving. 

— Between 2015 and 2020, the share of women in senior management grew from 23 to 28 percent in senior vice president roles. It went from 17 to 21 percent in the C-suite. 

— Now almost 2 million women are considering taking a leave of absence or leaving the workforce altogether due to challenges created by the pandemic. 

— For the first time in six years, women are leaving the workforce at a higher rate than men.

Read the full report here. 

Live with The 19th—

 

Join The 19th’s Kate Sosin on Monday, Oct. 5, at 1 p.m. ET for a conversation on how the pandemic, protests and rising anti-trans violence will impact queer voters in the 2020 election.  

 
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What we’re reading—

Curated by Alexis Lanza. Have something you think we should recommend? Tell us or tweet at us using #19thShares.
For Black working women, COVID-19 has been a heavy burden. The pandemic’s fallout has made them much more likely than others to consider stepping away from their careers. (The Wall Street Journal, September 30)
New report shows it could take 12 years to reach equal representation of women in tech. Women technologists make up 28.8 percent of the tech workforce today. (CNBC, September 29)
Biden opens 23-point lead over Trump among women in Pennsylvania. A Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday shows the president trailing Biden among female voters by 23 percentage points, an almost insurmountable gender gap for the president as he struggles to win the battleground state. (U.S. News and World Report, September 29)
The armed women at the center of the Louisville protests. A self-proclaimed security team helps keep the demonstrations going without letting them go too far. (Politico, September 29)
A message from this week's sponsor, the Amended Podcast
Amended, a six-part podcast hosted by historian Laura Free that highlights the diversity of the suffrage movement. Available now!
What we’re streaming—
🎧 Listen: In The Thick: The end of Roe. Dr. Michele Goodwin and Mary Ziegler unpack the history of reproductive justice for women of color and immigrants. (In The Thick, September 29)
📺 Watch: How the United States keeps poor people from accessing abortion. Today, abortion access largely depends on the politics of the state you live in. Because of the Hyde Amendment, it also depends on how much money you have. (Vox, September 24)
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