Kamala Harris Is Borrowing From the Feminist Playbook

E ver since the Democratic National Convention, commentators and columnists have been dissecting Vice President Kamala Harris’ refusal to focus on the fact that she’d be the first female president.

CNN’s Dana Bash tried to draw Harris out on this topic during her first sit-down interview as the nominee, only to have the Vice President reply that she was running because she is qualified, not because she was angling to be a historic first. Indeed, rather than drawing attention to her sex or race on the campaign trail, Harris told Bash that she is running to be president of “all Americans.” When Harris debated Donald Trump on Sept. 10, her race came up, but her gender and the historical potential of her candidacy did not.

Pundits have highlighted the contrast between this approach and the way in which Hillary Clinton leaned into potentially being the first female president during her campaign eight years ago. Many commentators like former Democratic strategist David Axelrod believe that Harris’s approach is wise. Yet, while they see the strategic value in ignoring the gender element of Harris's candidacy, they have not recognized that this approach is nothing new for American women in their quest to secure greater rights. By downplaying her gender, Harris is reflecting the strand of feminist thinking that has proved far more successful in advancing the quest for equality.

Two types of feminism have dominated the American women’s rights movement. During the middle decades of the 20th century, “difference feminism” — which emphasizes women’s differences from men and their distinct roles in society (ones related to motherhood and domesticity) — was the dominant approach among equal rights activists. The argument was that, because women were inherently different from men, society would benefit by having their different gifts and approaches fully included.

This strategy produced wins in a variety of realms.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, for example, professional political women gained a great deal of influence over presidential campaigns as the heads of the Women’s Divisions of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. Women’s Division directors argued that women worked best with other women and that separate spaces within their respective parties were necessary to enable them to meet their full potential as campaigners and activists.

And these weren’t secondary perches. The DNC Women’s Division wrote the vast majority of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign materials, distributing millions of posters with titles like “The Truth about Taxes” and “Farmers – Make Your Choice.” Later, the women’s division was a key player in helping President Harry Truman secure an upset victory in 1948. Throughout the last month of that campaign, they broadcast twice-weekly radio programs that dramatized inflation, a major campaign issue, by announcing the prices of staple goods in various cities on that day vs. at the end of 1947.

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The gains women made through difference feminism extended beyond the political realm. Some working-class women in the 1950s were able to maintain their seniority within unions and get maternity leave by arguing that they required different treatment in the workplace because they were mothers. By the middle of the decade, all major CIO union contracts, including those covering industries that employed large numbers of women like meatpacking, included these rights as well as health insurance programs that covered childbirth. Officials in the federal Women’s Bureau had encouraged women in the labor movement to demand such benefits to compensate for the lack of progress at securing protections like healthcare for all Americans legislatively.

The selective nature of these benefits reflected how difference feminism was never able to secure truly equal opportunities and rights for all Americans. No government action came on maternity leave or universal healthcare in the 1950s, and the Equal Pay Act failed to pass repeatedly, despite support from President Dwight Eisenhower.

Fundamentally, progress remained halting because the primary attitude within the government (and much of society, including many women) toward women was one of protectionism — a belief that women’s primary role was as mothers and that the government’s job was to protect that maternal role. This position had been explicitly endorsed by the Supreme Court in 1908, and a half-century later, little had fundamentally changed in many federal government officials’ beliefs.

Difference feminists argued that women’s role as mothers was the justification for equal rights. Yet, they were never able to convince the majority of Americans that the two were connected. Instead, by emphasizing the centrality of motherhood for women workers, they inadvertently helped keep the glass ceiling in place.

The inability to pierce the glass ceiling or enact policy change led to champions of a different strain of feminist thinking becoming the dominant voices in the conversation surrounding women's rights. Proponents of what became known as equality feminism such as Democratic activist Emma Guffey Miller, a longtime Equal Rights Amendment supporter who had seconded Roosevelt’s nomination at the 1936 Democratic convention, argued that women should have the same rights, privileges, and opportunities as men because they too were human beings and citizens. In the 1960s, as the Civil Rights Movement was bringing issues of citizenship and human rights to the forefront of American politics, this analysis resonated with many people.

While the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s is remembered for bringing discussions of sexism to the forefront, its many policy successes were almost always grounded in equality feminist justifications and analyses. The founding statement of the National Organization for Women, written in 1966, was overflowing with equality feminist language: “the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America.” NOW believed that it was "as essential for every girl to be educated to her full potential of human ability” as it was “for every boy.”

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The use of equality feminism extended to the courts. Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the foremost feminist lawyer by arguing in front of the Supreme Court multiple times to challenge laws that, in the language of the Justices’ opinions, “arbitrarily” treated men and women differently. The decisions in these cases, combined with congressional action through bills like Title IX, mandated equal treatment for men and women in various aspects of American law, including equal pay for equal work, equal access to educational opportunities, and equal access to spousal benefits for military couples.

By the end of the 1970s, women could get credit in their own names, had a right to birth control regardless of their marital status, and could not be kept out of colleges or professional schools due to admission quotas. Nor could classified job ads specify that they would only accept male applicants. None of these things had been true in 1963. In other words, by the 1970s, the women's liberation movement succeeded in greatly increasing American women’s equality before the law, as well as their equal access to jobs, education, and credit.

Harris’ emphasis on her qualifications for the presidency, and her frequent assertion that she will be President of all Americans, not just women or people of color, falls squarely in line with the equality feminist tradition in American politics. By avoiding the fact that she’d be the first woman in the Oval Office, she’s emphasizing that she has every right to run for President because she is a citizen — just like any other American. She’s not asking voters to think of her identity as the first female President as something “special” or an extra reason why she should get the job.

This strategy is a brilliant move by the vice president's campaign. Not all women agree politically. Emphasizing any female candidate’s status as a woman therefore risks angering those women who hold different political views and who may feel like they are being told they “must” support female candidates simply because of their shared biological traits.

This was always the problem with difference feminism: it assumed that all women have things in common. But perhaps counterintuitively, when the question is not “what do women want or need,” but rather “what do people want or need?” or “what qualifies a person to be president?” women historically have succeeded.

Melissa Blair is an associate professor & department chair of history at Auburn University. She is the author o f Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of the Women who Shaped the Presidency in the 20th Century . She is also the co-author, with Vanessa Holden & Maeve Kane, of a women's history textbook, American Women's History: A New Narrative History .

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here . Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors .

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