Kyrsten Sinema’s Thumbs-Down on $15 Minimum Wage Was a Disgrace to Women

The Democrats have defined themselves in contrast to the Republican Party by attempting to embrace liberal representation politics. As feminist columnist Jessica Valenti points out, misogyny is openly baked into Republican politics, leaving space for Democrats to swoop in and claim the feminist mantle, in large part by focusing on electing “firsts.” The 2018 election of Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, the first out bisexual woman in Congress, is one example of this.

However, Sinema caught national attention on Friday during the COVID-19 relief bill vote, when she thumbed-down a provision for an incremental raise towards a $15 minimum wage, live on C-SPAN in a vivid performance of coy white womanhood. While the Biden team, during its campaign season, claimed that raising the minimum wage would be a priority, Democratic politics as usual meant they quickly backed down on this commitment in the COVID relief bill. Following backlash to the scene, Sinema’s press secretary claimed it was “sexist” to comment on a woman lawmaker’s “body language.”

This scenario feels grossly representative of what stands for gender politics in the Democratic party. What is “sexist” is the suggestion that women — especially women with significant positional power, whether via whiteness, cis-ness, or being a literal elected official — are ineligible for critique. Furthermore, what about the sexism of choosing to abandon American women? Sinema’s choice to reject a minimum wage hike — one that wouldn’t even meet the living wage in many American cities, but would push us in the right direction — will directly impact millions of women working minimum-wage jobs.

As Teen Vogue ESP fellow Jacqui Germain reports, the Fight for $15 and safer workplaces for women are directly linked: Jobs where employees are paid poverty wages are harder to leave. According to the Economic Policy Institute, many of the workers who would benefit from raising the minimum wage are college-educated women with children and workers of color, helping to eliminate the racial pay gap.

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Meanwhile, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is rejecting calls to step down from office following at least four public accusations of workplace harassment and other inappropriate behavior from former women staffers, not to mention his office’s mishandling of elder-care home deaths throughout the pandemic. Cuomo is also facing accusations of bullying State Assemblyman Ron Kim, who pushed him for accountability over the nursing-home scandal, joining a growing narrative of bullying and mistreatment under the Cuomo administration. (Cuomo has apologized for “any pain” he caused his accusers and requested that the public reserve judgment until State Attorney General Letitia James’s investigation is complete).

“I’m compelled to tell my story because no woman should feel forced to hide their experiences of workplace intimidation, harassment, and humiliation — not by the governor or anyone else,” Lindsey Boylan, a former aide for the Cuomo administration, wrote in her essay describing her experiences.

This follows what is becoming a trend amongst Democratic leaders: Electing women is supposed to be the real achievement for feminism. However, the women whose humanity the Democratic establishment seem to most care about preserving are privileged white women, which hardly differentiates them from their legislators across the aisle. The party claims to champion the #MeToo movement, but we’ve seen multiple examples of women being sidelined or criticized after raising complaints of mistreatment by powerful lawmakers.