Pink Bus For Trump: The Color of Disempowerment For Women

 

“The pink bus (“Women for Trump” bus tour) is an auxiliary to the flag-streaming Trumpist pickup trucks sometimes observed revving in menacing formation in American towns and cities to own the libs. It's one half of the two-part strategy to try to keep enough white women on Trump's side to keep him in the Oval Office …

“But no amount of empowerment word salad can hide the fact that Trump has disempowered women in American politics and policy.”

– Nina Burleigh, author of The Trump Women: Part of the Deal

Trump's two-part strategy?

1. Messages from Trump himself aimed at “suburban housewives,” those who Burleigh says are “presumed to be huddled in fear in their kitchens watching Fox News re-roll video of looters in the cities.” Only President Donald Trump can keep them safe.

2. The empowered: “the Ivankas and the Lara Trumps – those in the Trump circle who have hijacked the United Nations patois (dialect) word 'empowerment' and attached it to a movement that has actively disempowered women from the start.”

(Nina Burleigh. “Women for Trump's final 2020 push has rendered 'empowerment' meaningless.” NBC News. October 29, 2020.)

The Trump administration employs fewer women in the U.S. Cabinet (21.1%) than those of recent presidents like Bill Clinton (40.9%), George W. Bush (23.8%), and Barack Obama (34.8%).

(“Percentage of people in the U.S. cabinet who were women from Johnson to Trump:1969 to 2017. ” Statistica.)

And the pay gap between men and women in the Trump administrations is greater than the national average. An analysis of the 2020 median salaries in the Trump White House (as of September 19, 2020) found a $33,300 chasm between the salary for male staffers ($106,000) and the salary for female staffers ($72,700).

Women make nearly 69 cents on the male $1 – worse than the national gender pay gap of 82 cents on the dollar.

(Chabeli Carrazana. “Women in President Donald Trump’s White House earn 69 cents for every $1 paid to male staffers.” USA Today. September 23, 2020.)

Women haven't advanced in the party caucuses, either. Republicans lag far behind the Democrats in numbers of elected women.

In 2019 Republican women only made up:

32% of women serving in the U.S. Senate

13% of women serving in the U.S. House

33% of women serving as governors

31% of women state legislators

(“By the Numbers.” Represent Women. Parity For Women in Politics.)

But what about women in the U.S. workforce? During a women’s event at the White House in January 2018, Trump said he is “very proud” that “on my watch” there are “more women in the workforce today than ever before.”

It’s true that 863,000 women joined the workforce during the president’s first 11 months in office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that’s 34 percent less than the number of women workers that were added over the same period, from January to December, in each of the last two years.

In fact, it’s the smallest increase since 2012 and below the historical norm for the past 54 years, dating to 1964.

(Eugene Kiely. “Video: Women Employment Under Trump.” Factcheck.org. January 27, 2018.)

And, of course, the effect of COVID-19 on the number of women in the workforce are staggering. According to “Women in the Workplace,” the largest study on the state of women in corporate America, more than one in four women are contemplating what many would have considered unthinkable just six months ago: downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce completely.

This is an emergency for corporate America. Companies risk losing women in leadership – and future women leaders – and unwinding years of painstaking progress toward gender diversity.

(Ali Bohrer, Jenna Bott, Kelen Caldwell, Gina Cardazone, Marianne Cooper, Chloe Hart, Ryan Hutson, Allison Koblick, Madison Long, Sonia Mahajan, Jordan Miller-Surratt, Mary Noble-Tolla, Megan Rooney, Raena Saddler, Rachel Thomas, Kate Urban, Kirsten Tidswell, Katie Wullert. “Women in the Workplace 2020. McKinsey and Company.)

Empowering Women

First daughter Ivanka Trump wants to help 50 million women around the world "realize their economic potential" by 2025. No matter how misogynistic Donald Trump is – many women have accused him of sexual misconduct and abuse; he has repeatedly denigrated women like Elizabeth Warren, Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi; and he has silenced women through isolation, threats, and nondisclosure agreements – Ivanka campaigns that her father favors empowerment and equality

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

– Trump after Megyn Kelly moderated the Republican debate (CNN)

Some buy the sincerity of the pink bus campaign despite evidence to the contrary. Donald Trump's infamous boast that, by virtue of his wealth and celebrity, he could sexually assault women and roam the dressing rooms of teenage beauty pageant participants is met with giggles of admiration by his supporters, many of whom have daughters of their own. The hypocrisy is there for all to see and judge.

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”

– Trump comments to a Rolling Stone reporter about Carly Fiorina's appearance on TV (Rolling Stone)

“Empowerment” is defined as “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights.” Trump has hobbled the empowerment of women, The damage he has done is incalculable. Promoting hundreds of anti-choice judges, encouraging toxic masculinity in his supporters, pushing anti-woman policies – Trump views women as commodities and “deal enhancers” while he requires loyalty and discretion from females in his circle.

"You know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."

– Donald Trump, 1991 Esquire interview

Empowerment? Trump relishes his own control and power, and he frequently attacks tenacious, intelligent women who think for themselves. He wants to harness women, not free them to find success. Ivanka and Melania are political figures with no integrity in the movement. For Trump's female surrogates to exalt the idea of the self-made, entrepreneurial woman but crave protection from a strongman leader who spouts toxic masculinity is unbelievable. Nina Burleigh says …

“The women around him (Trump) are accessories to his brand.”

Donald Trump's long history of misogyny matters very little to his female supporters. But now, he is trying to broaden his appeal to the “Suburban Housewives of America.”

Trump is desperate. An NPR-PBS Newshour-Marist poll released last July showed Trump’s disapproval rating among suburban women at 66 percent, with 58 percent saying they “strongly” disapproved of the job he’s doing.

In the 2018 midterm election, suburban women, independent women, and women of color came together to vote in record numbers and fuel the blue wave that delivered the House of Representatives to the Democrats.

The 2020 election may very well hinge on whether the suburban women, women of color, and women under 30 in key states such as Wisconsin and Michigan turn out in large enough numbers to outweigh the voting by Trump’s female base in those critical electoral states.

Pink buses on the Trump campaign certainly catch the eye, but the intention of strengthening women's empowerment may be an illusion – especially misleading from a conservative white nationalist perspective.

Researchers on the preference for the color pink found a 1918 trade publication for infant clothing that read “the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl,” since pink was seen as more “decided and stronger” and blue more “delicate and dainty.”

Jo B. Paoletti, Ph.D., a textiles historian and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, says that before the 1920s, all kids in America wore white because bleach was the only name in the kid-laundry game. When their clothing started to be gussied up with colorful ribbons, Paoletti argues, in many places blue was the girl color and pink was the boy color. Things change don't they? Or, do they? From the view of history – recent and ancient – many things are not exactly what they seem.