Sanders, the true feminist choice

The 2016 Democratic primary presents a difficult dilemma — a historic win with a vote for Hillary Clinton, and a legislative win with a vote for Bernie Sanders.

If successful, Clinton would make history as the United States’ first female president, while her main competition, Sanders, would be the 44th white male president.

On a superficial level, it seems like any self-respecting feminist should support Clinton out of female solidarity. That intuition to base a vote on gender, though well-intentioned, is misplaced.

Voting for Clinton out of female solidarity will not result in more feminist policies — but voting for her opponent, Bernie Sanders, will.

Sanders and Clinton appear to diverge very little on what we commonly call “women’s issues.”

Both candidates are strongly pro-choice and have actively campaigned behind equal wages for women. These positions are unsurprising in the modern Democratic Party where 68 percent of voters identify as pro-choice, and 67 percent support the federal government taking action on wage equality.

Where the two candidates differ is in economics.

Sanders’ proposed programs focus more on impoverished people than Clinton’s proposals, which focus on the middle class.

Sanders has called for free public college funded by investment taxes on top earners, while Clinton’s plan is essentially an expansion of financial aid. Her program would provide states with money to increase Pell Grants and reduce base tuition rates over a 10-year span. Rather than providing “free” college, Clinton has supported “affordable” changes, but the country’s poorest students still won’t be able to afford college under her plan.

What’s more, Sanders has vocally supported the push for a $15 minimum wage, while Clinton has avoided committing to a figure, despite supporting a general increase.

A report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women make up nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers. Any increase in minimum wage would disproportionately benefit women.

For people barely getting by, a fleshed out plan for doubling their wages is vastly different from vague support for an unspecified solution.

These big differences, though seemingly slight,  could have a great significance for women if either candidate beats out the Republicans in the election. According to the 2013 U.S. Census Bureau, four in 10 households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary breadwinners.

If those children want to go to college, it is now more likely than ever that their mother will provide most of the financial backing.

In general, women are far more likely to fall into poverty than men, so when Sanders talks about income inequality, he is — inadvertently or not — referring to one of the largest issues facing women on a daily basis.

The reasons for women to vote for Sanders instead of Clinton are not exclusive to women in poverty. There are many reasons to vote for Sanders over Clinton.

Sanders has managed to finance his entire political career without accepting large corporate donations, to which other politicians are beholden. Nearly all of Sanders’ top 20 donors are workers unions, and the rest are non-profit advocacy groups. Meanwhile, all but two of Clinton’s top 20 donors are major banks and corporations like Time Warner Cable and Morgan Stanley.

Eighty-one percent of Americans feel that workplace reform, including pay equality and increased maternity leave are assets for our nation. It then seems problematic that large corporations — many of which have histories of gender discrimination — are financing the campaign of someone who has pledged to fight gender biases.

Despite these concerns, Sanders has yet to catch up to Clinton’s poll numbers amongst likely female voters.

The fact that Clinton’s sixth highest donor is feminist political organization EMILY’s List, an organization that has not donated to Sander’s campaign, indicates that she solidly remains the mainstream symbol of women in politics. A portion of the electorate will vote for Clinton simply because she is a woman they can identify with. There have been a number of columnists — such as Jessica Valenti for The Guardian, Brittany Stalsburg for Bustle and Kate Harding for The Daily Dose — who have advocated voting for Hillary out of gender solidarity.

If Sanders has a similar advantage, it’s not nearly as much of a hallmark of his campaign.  He is an open atheist who others endlessly mislabel as an out-and-out socialist. Sanders’ struggle with his image demonstrates why others should see him as an inherently significant leader of the groups his social policies seek to help.

While a Clinton victory would represent a step forward for women in the testosterone-fueled world of Washington, feminist voters should favor her opponent. Yet, this may seem like asking voters to set aside a major societal milestone in favor of genuine policy beliefs. It’s a nuanced dilemma, but the reality is that a Sanders presidency would likely improve the lives of more women than that of the first woman elected.

Women for Bernie, currently the largest feminist pro-Sanders organization, is run by a small grassroots group of men and women. Their Facebook page boasts more than 20,000 likes, and has volunteers running “Women for Bernie Sanders” pages in all but six states. They are attempting to directly confront the internal conflict women may feel about supporting another man.

“Voting for a man when a woman is running does not make me any less of a feminist,” Kelli Boyle, one of their supporters, wrote for Elite Daily. “It means I’m taking the very feminist route of expressing my right to choose.”

Women should not feel like they must decide between their interests and a larger commitment to their gender. For commentators, such as Molly Mirhashem for The National Journal, to argue that they must do so in 2016, just as commentators like Gloria Steinem argued for the New York Times in 2008, is to ignore the true implications of each candidate’s platform, placing unfair pressure on voters in the process.

Though Clinton herself has avoided making her gender the key issue of the campaign, instead calling it one of her “merits,” her lack of clear support for key women’s issues calls into question how valuable that quality is to female voters.

If the goal of feminists is to help the women live healthy, happy lives, then they already have an ally and a candidate in Bernie Sanders.

Write to Matthew at mdm123@pitt.edu.