Kamala Harris to investigate ‘gender-bias’ language in top-secret reports

When Vice President Kamala Harris received her first in-person intelligence briefings, she wasn’t happy with what the official told her.

It was not the specific events or threats to national security that concerned her, but what she saw as “gender-biased” language in the report.

The intelligence officer who briefed Harris was a woman, but Harris requested a system-wide review of the intelligence community to ensure this would not happen again. according to to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, citing anonymous sources within the National Security Intelligence Service.

Harris urged intelligence agencies to train their analysts to eliminate gender discrimination.

In this episode, we see Harris as a leader still struggling with frustrations over the way women are treated in politics.

As the first female vice president, Harris has attempted to tailor elements of her job to her gender.

Some of the changes are simple physical adjustments to change the basic infrastructure of the job.

After Harris took office, her team realized that the office chairs in her office needed to be replaced to fit her, the New York Times reported. The vice president is 5 feet 10 inches tall.

She also made sure that her office significantly more women on her staff than previous vice presidents, underscoring her commitment to gender diversity.

Harris also felt the need to speak out as the first female vice president, emphasizing the importance of advancing gender issues.

In July 2021, Harris delivered a speech in France at a forum hosted by French President Emanuel Macron on gender equality.

Kamala Harris in a situation room meeting with President Joe Biden and his advisers

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, greets US Vice President Kamala Harris as she arrives for a conference

“If we want to strengthen democracy, we must fight for gender equality. Because this is the truth: democracy is strongest when everyone is included and weaker when people are excluded,” the vice president said.

In May 2023, Harris spoke at an EMILY’s List gala and condemned Republicans for trying to eradicate “gender ideology” from publicly funded classrooms.

“Well, what are we talking about here? Lessons on women’s history, women’s equality?” she asked as the mostly female audience applauded. “The study of the fact that there are still only 25 women in the United States Senate in a body of 100?”

Realizing that government officials are male, she began speaking about the presidency using feminine pronouns, as she did during her failed presidential campaign.

“It’s important for people to understand that they really need to control how they think about these things. But we need to help along the way, and part of that is about how we use language,” she told Buzzfeed in October 2019.

Harris became increasingly desperate as voters became less interested in her campaign. She began blaming voters’ perceptions of her gender.

“Is America ready for a woman, and a woman of color, to be president of the United States?” she asked during an interview with Axios, citing her gender and questions of “electability.”

“We lack the capabilities and it is difficult to imagine that someone we have never seen can perform a task that has already been performed forty-five times by someone who is not that person,” she concluded.

Now that Harris is running for president in 2024, she and her political team are putting less emphasis on her gender.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Harris has specifically turned to former advisers to President Barack Obama to help her avoid conversations about her race and gender, which they see as distracting.

Other former aides to Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign expressed regret for focusing too much on her gender when she had the opportunity to make history as the first female president of the United States.

Some have joined the Harris team with the intention of avoiding the mistakes of the past.

“I feel like I learned some really valuable lessons during the Clinton campaign and since then, through the extensive research I’ve done over the last eight years, about the kinds of questions we ask women candidates and how best to support them,” former Clinton strategist Jennifer Palmeri told the Post.