Vice President Kamala Harris not only has a very real chance to make history, but she also has a shot at defying science.
The last few days have been a whirlwind for the Harris campaign—a campaign that technically only launched on Sunday and has already amassed more than $100 million in donations and secured the all-important endorsement of Charli XCX, which catapulted her into the pop-culture stratosphere. However, alongside that endorsement—and many others including from former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama—Harris switched over her campaign X (formally Twitter) account to the handle “KamalaHQ.” According to research, it’s a move that could make or break her campaign.
“I kept seeing men referred to by just their last name, and equally famous, well-known, eminent women, not identified the same way,” Dr. Stav Atir, an assistant professor studying behavioral science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Glamour about what inspired her research, “How gender determines the way we speak about professionals,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “I saw it in academia. We would have lab meetings and casually talk about women and men differently. And watching panel shows on TV and politics, I’d notice the same thing.”
Think about it this way: You call her Jane Austin. You call him Dickens. You call her Hillary. You call him Clinton. You call him Trump and her Kamala.
That “same thing” was that women, even those running for the highest office in the United States, are more often referred to by their first name alone, while men are more often referred to by their last. And that, Atir and her co-author Dr. Melissa Ferguson reported, is a form of gender bias that can have serious consequences when it comes to how people are perceived.
Think about it this way: You call her Jane Austin. You call him Dickens. You call her Hillary. You call him Clinton. You call him Trump and her Kamala.
To come to these conclusions, Atir and Ferguson collected transcripts from shows like All Things Considered, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, The Rush Limbaugh Show, and The Sean Hannity Show, coding 9,572 references from 336 segments. After crunching the numbers, they found that “speakers were more than twice as likely (126.42%) to use a surname when speaking about a man than when speaking about a woman.”
They ran eight different studies in total. Across the studies, the results suggested that this gender bias may be seriously consequential.
By referencing female candidates informally, newspeople infantilize the candidates and detract from their power and legitimacy.
“Participants judged fictional researchers referred to by surname as better known and more eminent in their field than researchers referred to by full name,” the study stated. “Evidence suggests that this inference of fame and eminence, in turn, led to increased judgments of status, likelihood of winning an award, and deservingness of career award[s] and associated funding.”
Their study isn’t the only one showing this effect.
“Media coverage can profoundly affect election outcomes,” the 2011 study “What’s in a Name? Coverage of Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Primary,” published in the journal Political Research Quarterly, proclaimed. “Specifically, gender bias in coverage can disadvantage female candidates. Historically, female candidates receive 50% less coverage than their comparable male counterparts.”
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As this study noted, throughout the 2008 election, television newspeople referenced Clinton “more informally than her main male counterpart, Barack Obama, and the other male candidates in the race,” adding, “The names newspeople use to reference candidates paint a subtle, yet pervasive, picture of social status. By referencing female candidates informally, newspeople infantilize the candidates and detract from their ‘power and legitimacy.’”
“If it hadn’t been for Chris Matthew’s misogyny, the data actually would’ve kind of been basic,” Dr. Lilly Goren, a professor of political science and global studies at Carroll University and co-author of the study, said. “But Matthew’s constant, constant attacks on her and the way that he talked about her really made it statistically significant.”
‘Kamala’ is more informal. It’s more familiar. It’s potentially meaningful that she gets a first name. This could, in turn, make her more familiar and more approachable.
What kind of misogyny, exactly? As the study noted, on January 8, 2008, Matthews took to television and said, “The reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a frontrunner is her husband messed around. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win there on her merit.” Failing to mention her Yale Law degree, her work as an attorney, her work as an advisor in the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal, or her body of work as First Lady. Not to mention that she was democratically elected by the people of New York state.
Matthews appears most frequently in the data for referring to her as “Hillary” rather than by her full or last name 13 times in his show. But, even taking Matthews out of the data set, Clinton was still referred to by first name thirty times compared to Obama’s seven across all other pundits the team ran data on.
But here’s the fun part about all these rules. They are meant to be broken. And, as both researchers noted, Harris has the best shot at bucking convention.
“We focused on the disadvantages,” Atir said about her research. “But I don’t think [Harris] is necessarily at a disadvantage. I think the way that people refer to her reflects how she’s seen, and her gender and her ethnicity clearly play a role.”
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She’s so Kamala.
Trump, Atir noted, is “often just Trump,” adding, “We know that this single name is linked to fame and eminence, and his prominence is reflected and reinforced by this use of his last name.” But Harris, on the other hand, “sometimes she’s called Kamala Harris and sometimes just Kamala. And just Kamala, I think like Trump, also assumes recognition without the full name.”
“Kamala is more informal. It’s more familiar. It’s potentially meaningful that she gets a first name, even though they’re both quite well known at this point,” Atir noted. This could, in turn make her more familiar and more approachable. While the use of a surname is often associated with coldness, it can also make someone appear more distant. And with a candidate like Harris, whose policies are less known, familiarity may be critical.
“I think in terms of presenting herself as the presidential candidate, her name distinguishes her,” Goren added. However, Goren says, all this “is, of course, the difficulty of being a woman running for the presidency, is that the form that you’re trying to fit into is uncharted territory.”
Neither wanted to wade into the water of saying which naming convention would be the optimal strategy because it can vary from candidate to candidate and gender identity to gender identity. And even with all this scientific data, they both agree that it comes down to one easy thing: Harris’ choice.
“I think that the use of her first name can mean really different things if it’s embraced by her and done by her and her supporters,” Atir said. And all her names appear to be embraced by the VP — who uses @KamalaHQ on X, @KamalaHarris on Instagram, “Wife, Momala, Auntie” on her bio, and “Harris for President” as her official campaign site. “That highlights her identities in a positive way.”
Think: She’s got a shot at being called whatever she wants. Including Madam President Kamala Devi Harris.
The post What’s in a Name? For Kamala Harris, a Lot. appeared first on Glamour.