WhirledView: The Narrow Door

By Jinx McCombs, Guest Contributor

It has become deeply unfashionable (again!) to talk about gender issues. I came of age in the 1960s, in what is often called the "beginning of the women's movement" (a discourtesy to the many earlier generations of women who worked for equality).

If someone had told the women of my college graduating class that by the turn of the 21st century there still would have been no woman American president or vice-president, that women would still be far in the minority among Senators, among CEOs of major companies, among judges --- that still, the further up the ranks you went in almost any organization, the fewer women you would find --- we'd have laughed and said "Wait and see!"

Now, almost a decade into the 21st Century, what do we see? The mood of today seems broadly similar to that of the early 1960s: a strong bias against rocking the boat, sub voca admonishments to count our gains and not risk making ourselves look petty by "playing the gender card."

Unquestionably there have been gains, slow and steady. Many barriers have eroded or fallen. Many women are holding positions of responsibility and authority in business, government, and politics. For decades now, increasing majorities of men as well as women say that in choosing a person for promotion or a candidate to vote for, their decision is guided by the abilities of the individual, not gender or race. I think few are hypocritical in saying this; they mean it.

Why the discrepancies?

So why does the real-life situation look so far from the 50-50 gender population distribution? And why are minorities also still represented at far below their demographic numbers?

My thesis, developed over decades of observation, is this: in a choice between a white male and any other, the "other" will be held to much stricter limits of personal characteristics, qualifications, and behavior. This is the Narrow Door.

The Narrow Door operates in two ways. First, the range of "acceptable" behavior is narrowed, usually at both ends of a scale. For example, a personal style which is seen positively in a white male as strong and authoritative is likely to be seen negatively in a woman as bossy and controlling. A man's "good support and coaching of staff" may be seen in a woman as "coddling and micro-managing."

Second, the Narrow Door often means that negative charges against a candidate --- especially if they fit previous stereotypes --- are accepted as true with little examination or evidence.

The Narrow Door works outside conscious awareness. (Common usage would be "subconsciously" but the term "outside conscious awareness" emphasizes that we can become aware of the influence and mitigate it.) But in highly competitive arenas such as national politics, some will exploit Narrow Door assumptions to damage opponents.

Cultural stereotypes vs cultural realities

The cultural stereotypes about women are especially in conflict with the cultural expectations about people in authority, and this has made the Narrow Door particularly stubborn for women. A woman who is seen as fitting the stereotype for a leader is likely to be dismissed from consideration because she is too jarring, too unpleasant, too odd --- too far from the cultural stereotype of a woman. "People just aren't comfortable with her," and "she is too controversial a figure."

Leaders are supposed to be authoritative, decisive, knowledgeable, able to empathise but without losing the ability to lead. Women are (still --- despite public embrace of generalized rhetoric to the contrary) expected to be gently empathetic, consulting rather than deciding independently, modest in their knowledge to avoid any hint of arrogance.

So a woman who puts attention on the traditional womanly strengths will be labelled (usually with some condescension) as a nice person, but not really strong enough to be a leader. And if she exercises her skills as a strong leader, the deeply felt cognitive dissonance of her not "acting like a woman" will raise vague but powerful personal aversion. She will need to balance actions on one side of the divide with actions on the other (and then is likely to be called manipulative).

The woman who is able to find a workable balance and become accepted as a woman leader is a tightrope walker of rare genius. Unfortunately, the balance that may work at lower levels of authority may not be acceptable as she moves higher, and the current atmosphere of presidential electoral politics, with all its partisanship and harsh media attention, remains probably the narrowest door of all.

A myriad of issues constitute the Narrow Door for a woman presidential candidate. If she joins in the kind of ready banter that takes place among political figures and those who report on them, she is (a) coarse, (b) shocking, and/or (c) lacking the dignity of office. If she stays away from the banter, she is lacking in humor and humanity, stuffy, prudish, holier-than-thou.

If she talks about deep human concerns such as families, children, elders, health care, education, she is showing her limitations by discussing "soft" or "women's issues." If she minimizes talk about these things, she is cold and unaware of the real lives of real people.

If she demonstrates her intelligence and breadth of knowledge, she is a show-off who wants to put others down; if she plays down her knowledge and ability she is a lightweight, out of her league.

If she lets slights by her opponents pass by, she is a pushover who will never be able to work effectively in the rough and tumble of national and international government; if she confronts slights, she is (a) oversensitive and/or (b) angry and vengeful.

If she shows her emotions, she is hysterical, shrill, or manipulative; if she keeps her emotions under wraps she is cold, indifferent, inhuman.

Doublebind categories also used against male candidates but easier against women

Many of these doublebind categories are also used against male candidates; a difference is that the residual cultural ambivalence about women in positions of power makes it far easier for the tool to be used deliberately against women. The Narrow Door can be made narrower while the criticisms still seem valid to a large number of people.

The current presidential campaign has seen many Narrow Door issues (including an attempt in New Hampshire which evidently overstepped and backfired). Much of it has been used against the woman; it seems extremely likely that if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, there will be much more to come against him.

When making up their minds, voters will be wise to look for specifics and the whole context --- and to consider the possibility of Narrow Door influence --- before drawing conclusions. It isn't that it's impossible for a white male to walk through the wider door and be an excellent president. It's that we lose more than half our best possibilities if we let the Narrow Door block us from seeing our choices.

Guest Contributor Note: Jinx McCombs is a free-lance writer who lives in Northern California. She holds an M.A. in Psychology, is a retired Marriage & Family Therapist, and had a 30 year career in local government as a deputy probation officer. She believes human behavior, at the level of individuals, can be influenced but not wholly controlled, and is only moderately predictable but often understandable in retrospect