Yes, likability really is about sexism

“The issue with Elizabeth Warren isn’t likability,” reads a headline in the Guardian, echoing similar defense pieces in Slate, the Atlantic, and the New York Times. “It’s sexism.”

The question of “likability,” supposedly a metric for electability, has long been entangled in gender politics. Hillary Clinton was “unlikable,” which, according to some Democrats, was the reason for her political demise. Even President Trump seems to think it contributed to her failure.

“That’s why she lost,” Trump said last week, “nobody liked her.”

Although the supposedly sexist constraints of likability are a convenient excuse for mediocrity, they don’t account for Clinton’s failure. Trump did have one unfair advantage, though. It is true that for women, more so than men, likability matters.

“This likability dimension is a real barrier for women,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, told Vox last year. “Voters are perfectly willing to vote for a man for executive office that they think is qualified that they don’t like, but they are not willing to vote for a woman they think is qualified that they don’t like.”

New research proves that this is true. According to a study published in The Economic Journal, likability matters among women and among mixed-gender groups but not among men alone. In other words, women want both sexes to be likable, and men want women to be likable, but they don’t care so much about other men.

“Our results hint at the existence of a likeability factor that offers a novel perspective on gender differences in labour market outcomes,” Leonie Gerhards, the paper’s lead author, said. “While likeability matters for women in every one of their interactions, it matters for men only if they interact with the opposite sex.”

In short, women always need to be likable, and men only have to worry about it half the time. To Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Tulsi Gabbard, likability is vital. For every other 2020 candidate, not so much.

For men, it can even pay to be unlikable. The fact that Trump is a pompous blowhard has somehow become a point in his favor. Sanders actually benefits from having the unlikable Clinton say, as she did last week, “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him.” (Cleverly, Sanders shot back, “My wife likes me.”)

If likability matters to female voters, then emphasizing it isn’t sexist (unless you want to run with a narrative about internalized misogyny). It’s pragmatic. And from a pragmatic standpoint, Warren and Klobuchar just aren’t doing too well.

The failure to seem relatable on the part of these candidates isn’t due to some invisible sexist forces working against them. According to Warren’s Instagram, she doesn’t even know how to drink beer like a human being. And Klobuchar is anything but likable according to her long-suffering aides, who have the comb to prove it.

On the other hand, Tulsi Gabbard, a surfer and a push-up champion at the gym, is eminently likable, and her reasons for flailing in the polls have nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with her position as a threat to the Democratic establishment.

Among the male Democrats, Andrew Yang is by far the most likable candidate in the 2020 field. When the New York Times asked candidates about their celebrity crush, a puff question that was more revealing than you’d expect, Yang replied evenly, “I’m a happily married man. I think my wife’s a star, and I’ve got a big crush on her.”

Warren, on the other hand, called Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson “eye candy.” That’s a level of cringe that has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with being out of touch.

It’s a shame that likability matters for women more than it matters for men. But female politicians can also use that to their advantage. However, Democrats such as Clinton and Warren will continue to decry the double standard, not because they cannot surmount it, but because they’re just not that good at playing the game.