Presidential Femininity: Executive Gender Performance and the Social Imaginary

• In Event: Building, Burning Bridges over Troubled Masculine Political Waters: Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin

Abstract

This essay introduces the concepts of presidential femininity and the defining emotional moment, relating each to the campaigns of the women candidates in the 2008 presidential election. The woman candidates exploited defining emotional moments as sites for the deployment of performed presidential femininity. Each candidate successfully performed presidential femininity to gain popularity and tap into the social imaginary of their respective party, but gender biases and double-binds still proved detrimental to their individual campaigns.

Author

• John Sewell, Georgia State University