In August of 2024, Donald Trump reposted an explicit comment referring to Kamala Harris on his social media platform, Truth Social. The post included pictures of Harris along with former First Lady, Secretary of State and 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and suggested that events of their careers were due to previous relationships, or in Clinton’s case, her husband’s previous relationships.
Harris’s past relationship with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, has come under fire recently. When Brown was the California Assembly Speaker, he had a relationship with Harris, who worked as deputy district attorney of Alameda County at the time. Trump isn’t the only Republican who has commented on this relationship. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly claimed that Harris “slept her way into politics” in an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show earlier this year. Republicans implying that Harris has used relationships with powerful men to advance her career is a clear example of misogynistic stereotypes within the Republican party, though these stereotypes extend far beyond the world of politics.
Republican misogyny isn’t limited to insinuations about Harris’s relationships. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, went viral this summer for his childless cat lady comments. In a 2021 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson (who himself is known for his right wing conspiracy theories), Vance claimed that Democratic “childless cat ladies” were running the country, name dropping powerful Democratic women such as Harris and United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Vance has made his stance on childless Americans very clear. In the past, he has suggested raising taxes for childless Americans to punish them. He has even gone so far as to suggest that Americans without children should not have the same voting rights as parents.
“If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice,” Vance said in a 2021 speech to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
The idea that Americans without children aren’t invested in their country and therefore undeserving of an equal voice to parents undermines the very foundation of our democracy. It is possible to love one’s country and care about its future while also choosing to not have children. Following backlash, Vance backtracked on both the voting rights statement and his childless cat lady comments.
By suggesting that powerful women used relationships to achieve what they have achieved and portraying childless women as cantankerous and miserable compared to mothers, Republicans have spread stereotypes that are also present in corporate America.
In today’s world, women are increasingly choosing to forgo having children for a variety of reasons. While some are unable to have children for medical reasons, many want to make time for their careers or are simply uninterested in having kids. The percentage of women who have chosen not to have children has risen over the years. A 2010 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly 20% of women between the ages of 40-44 did not have kids. Data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that as of 2019, about 45% of women under the age of 50 are childless.
Melissa Daimler is the Chief Learning Officer at Udemy and the author of ReCulturing, a book about how organizations can make their office culture more inclusive. She is also a childless woman herself. In an article published in Forbes, Daimler discusses her experiences in the workplace and what needs to be done to change biases she has faced. According to Daimler, employees without children may be seen as “less reliable, less committed, and less deserving of promotions.” This sentiment is reminiscent of Vance’s suggestion that individuals without children are less committed to their country.
Trump and Kelly’s remarks on how Harris achieved her success are also reflective of a concerning stereotype in the workplace. By suggesting that Harris used a relationship to achieve success, they are implying that Harris is undeserving of what she’s achieved, and would have been incapable of achieving her success otherwise. Women’s success is sometimes chalked up to luck. Attributing a woman’s success to luck instead of to her own merit sends the same message as Trump’s and Kelly’s comments.
Whether they are portrayed as cold and uncaring or sad and unsatisfied with life, stereotypes about childless women promote ideologies that belong in the past, when childbearing was the sole purpose of a woman’s life. Even if it was sarcasm, as Vance claimed, saying that Democrats without children are “childless cat ladies” implies that women cannot be fulfilled in life unless they have kids, a shocking suggestion that has no place in the modern world.
It’s important for women of all ages to combat these stereotypes by calling out those who tell them what they should do with their lives. In early October, Harris did this during an interview with Alex Cooper on the podcast Call Her Daddy.
“I just think it’s mean and mean-spirited. And I think that most Americans want leaders who understand that the measure of their strength is not based on who you beat down. The real measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up,” Harris said, referring to Vance’s childless cat lady comments.
Like Harris said, leaders should be working to combat harmful stereotypes, not further ingraining them in society through their political rhetoric. Leaders should especially be working to ensure that future female leaders feel supported and get an equal voice in society.
