2025 Sex, Gender, Sexuality Studies Symposium Lecture by Kelly Dittmar, Ph.D

Gender is a persistent force in presidential politics, a fact repeatedly demonstrated regardless of whether women have been on major party presidential ballots. The 2024 election again demonstrated how intersectional effects of gender and race shaped not only the experiences, treatment, and strategic calculations of candidates—men and women alike—but also how deeply rooted forces of sexism and racism affected the presidential contest. This lecture will focus on the myriad ways in which gender and racial dynamics—including the dominance of whiteness and masculinity—contributed to the 2024 presidential election and its outcome. It will  move beyond the question of whether or not the country is "ready" for a woman president to interrogate the complex ways in which both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump navigated gendered and racialized terrain in contemporary U.S. politics. 

Kelly Dittmar is an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University–Camden and Director of Research and Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. She is the co-author of A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen’s Perspectives on Why Their Representation Matters (Oxford University Press, 2018) with Kira Sanbonmatsu and Susan J. Carroll and author of Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns (Temple University Press, 2015). Dittmar’s research focuses on gender and American political institutions. Dittmar was an American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellow from 2011 to 2012. At CAWP, she manages national research projects, helps to develop and implement CAWP's research agenda, and contributes to CAWP reports, publications, and analyses. She has been an expert source and commentator for media outlets including the Associated Press, 19th News, NPR, PBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Dittmar earned her B.A. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Free and open to the public.