The media’s catty coverage of women politicians’ “likability” creates a maddening chicken-or-the-egg scenario: Are Warren, Pelosi, and Clinton inherently unlikable people (even if, hmm, they have somehow managed to win elections) or are they just dogged by so many sexist stories about their voices and health and capability for warmth or even their age (in the case of the rotten “go away, grandma, time for someone new” argument against Pelosi, consider that she is a full seven years younger than Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley), that they are just branded as unlikable, again and again, on the national stage?
