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Those who care about women’s place in politics and who followed both the Republicans’ and Democrats’ Convention in late August/early September may have had a funny feeling watching the Tuesday program of both these events. In fact, whether one was looking at the Convention in Tampa, Florida (Republicans) or that in Charlotte, North Carolina (Democrats), both those Tuesdays really looked like they were designed as “women’s” day – or, to put it in a more accurate way, “wives’” day. On Tuesday, August 28, New Jersey Governor (and Republican hopeful for the next cycles) Chris Christie had to share guest-star-speaker status with Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann. In the end, Christie’s performance, judged as too egocentric, was totally wiped out by Mrs. Romney’s, who managed to speak from her heart to that of the core female voters of the GOP – i.e. those women who usually put family before their career (which does not mean that they do not have a job on their own) and care about values just as much as about ideas. To these women, Ann Romney gave an emotional speech and expressed what her relationship with her husband was: “I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a “storybook marriage.” Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called Multiple Sclerosis or Breast Cancer [two illnesses she went through in the 1990s and 2000s, NB]. A storybook marriage?  No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage”.

The intervention, made by a woman who announced that she did not want to talk politics but about life and her husband, was well received. Why? First, because her commitment behind her husband seemed sincere and genuine, and also because Mrs. Romney achieved two objectives through her speech: show Mitt Romney’s “humane” face (his image as a cold machine was and still is one of his very weak points when competing against Barack Obama), and provide a narrative for a majority of American women to vote for her husband. One week after, the setting was different, the strategy as well, but that Tuesday saw another future presidential hopeful (namely San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro) share the floor with another presidential candidate’s wife, Michelle Obama. And just as the Tuesday before, the performance of the Young Turk was clearly overshadowed by that of the First Lady. Strangely enough, the narrative given by Mrs. Obama was not that different in style and in content with that of Ann Romney.

Both were speaking “from the heart”, both were making a point that they were not politicians but loving mothers, both showed the human and humane side of their beloved husband (to quote Michelle Obama: “Barack knows what it means when a family struggles...he knows what it means to want something more for your kids and grandkids”), and both were appealing to their side of the female vote, as Mrs. Obama’s speech was clearly appealing to the younger, more urbanite, and career oriented women of America (to give one example, you would find the following quote she gave during her speech much more appealing to a young NYC hipster or lower-middle class working woman than a hockey mom: "You see, even though back then Barack was a senator and a presidential candidate, to me, he was still the guy who'd picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by in a hole in the passenger-side door”).

Of course, the contents are somehow different, because each of the first lady candidates is trying to appeal to a different electorate, a different category of the American women population. But what is really fascinating is that the style (appeal to emotions, personal stories, etc.) as well as much of the substance (speech designed to make a certain category of women tick, insistence on the human side of the politician-husband, etc.) are actually extremely similar. In many ways, it does look like there is only one real standard for a First Lady this year, and each of the two candidates’ wives is complying with this. Here, we need to remember how far we are from the “grumpy” Michelle Obama of four years ago, when she shocked half of America when, during the Convention, she uttered “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am proud to be American” (quite a rebellious statement here, one has to admit), or where the other woman of the race, Sarah Palin, was bringing to herself both the sympathy of hockey moms by her strong statements and the scorn of a good proportion of the population by her multiple gaffes. In 2012, as the campaign gets much duller than four years ago, so does the role of women in the elections. Both wives are efficient in what they are doing, but may be a little bit too much, as if they were some standard products trying to sell themselves too hard.

In many ways, this presidential electoral cycle is seeing a real setback for women’s roles in American politics. Remember that four years ago, Hillary Clinton fell short of becoming the first major-party woman candidate, while Sarah Palin became the first female VP candidate in American history. Today, women in politics are again “behind every great man”, and their role has gone backward from that 2008 conquering figure showing her wishes to attain independence, to the 2012 caring mother whose role is to reassure and polish the image of her husband. This is certainly a very important role in terms of communication, but here we get back to a more traditional image for the First Lady, or the image of women in high-profile politics. Is this a consequence of the crisis? There is certainly a case for this affirmation: after four years of crisis and bitter questioning, the American public is probably looking for a more familiar, motherly figure rather than a conquering, independent woman. This is probably just a transitory (and still artificial) period, but is one that is certainly present in the American subconscious right now, and it could well explain the more traditional role women are having in this campaign.

Can we conclude that the general role of women in politics is regressing? Some would think so after reading this article, and may be also after remembering some infamous comments made by some Republican candidates during the campaign (Senatorial candidate Todd Atkin’s comments on “legitimate rape” obviously come to mind). But this is only part of the story. The other part shows that the next generation of women that will come of age in the next electoral cycle is showing a will to take a more important (and less traditional) role is US politics. In this sense, the speech of New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez at the Republican Convention, enthusiastically greeted by the crowd, may well be a sign that the more traditional “First Lady” approach of 2012 will be an exception in a more general trend towards a greater gender balance in US national politics.

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