Life is frustrating for the few Republican women in the House. Their numbers are dwindling even as Democrats are electing more women than ever, and rather than seeing this as a problem, the men leading their party are blowing them off.
When it came to who would get the job leading the National Republican Congressional Committee, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made the classic move of choosing a less-qualified man over a woman who’d been doing everything right, a man—Tom Emmer—who has gone on to say that another Republican woman in the House is making a “mistake” by focusing on helping Republican women win primaries and who is in strong denial about what’s going on with his party. Rep. Ann Wagner, the woman passed over to head the NRCC, is still being a good soldier about that decision, saying only that “The leader had a different plan” despite reportedly being upset, as well she should be.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, the woman who Emmer said was making a mistake, wasn’t as submissive. “NEWSFLASH I wasn’t asking for permission,” she tweeted. And Wagner, too, says she’ll move ahead with trying to help elect Republican women, even if she’s not doing it from the official party committee:
“The next election should have started the night of Nov. 7, that’s how passionate and dedicated to it I am in moving toward building a conference that looks more like America — and certainly adding more women and diversity to our numbers,” Wagner said in a recent interview. “And if they get around to doing an autopsy and ‘lessons learned’ discussion, then great. But there are a number of us who are just going to forge ahead.”
Being a Republican woman already must take a lot of swallowing hard, sitting down, and shutting up—or just the passionate belief that wealth and whiteness matter much, much more than being a woman. But today’s Republican men seem determined to really rub it in that women are second-class citizens in their party.