As debate moderators, will women get more respect?

The candidates weren’t kind to Jim Lehrer in the first presidential debate. The veteran moderator was talked over, interrupted, cut off and ignored.

Would they dare to do the same thing to a woman?

Gallery

Debate moderators through the years: As the first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign approaches, here’s a look back at Jim Lehrer and other famous moderators.

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Voters and viewers are about to find out. Women, rarely seen in the moderator’s chair, will be refereeing the next two debates. Martha Raddatz of ABC News will moderate Thursday night’s vice-presidential face-off; CNN’s Candy Crowley will be the moderatoron Tuesday when President Obama and Mitt Romney square off a second time.

The past doesn’t offer many clues. Only one woman, Carole Simpson, then of ABC News, has moderated a presidential debate — and that was 20 years ago. Two others, PBS’s Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill, have moderated vice-presidential debates. But here’s a guess from some people who know something about men, women and conversation: Don’t expect a whole lot of restraint.

“I don’t think the candidates will be more deferential to a woman,” Simpson says. “In fact, they may be tougher.”

Simpson says much has changed since she moderated the 1992 debate among George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

“There was a time . . . when men were afraid to say certain things to women for fear of being charged with sexual harassment or being rude. They were timid. But today, you can see evidence of a backlash to women’s success in many fields. . . . Men have no hesitation taking on a woman who disagrees with him. They don’t use sexual innuendo as much. They attack verbally. And unfortunately, it seems neither women or men care. What I see now is, ‘Game on.’ ”

Isn’t equality grand?

For the record, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul says the candidate “has a great deal of respect for both Candy Crowley and Martha Raddatz as professional journalists.” Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter had a similar take: “I’m pretty certain that gender won’t play a role in any of this.”

Deference (if any) to a female moderator may be less about respect than about votes. With millions of voters, particularly women, tuning in, appearing rude or abrupt to the moderator might be taken as evidence of hostility, a political statement in itself. The stakes may be even more elevated this year by the Democrats’ promotion of the notion that Republicans are waging a “war on women” designed to limit their reproductive rights and choices.

On the other hand, talking over a woman might be viewed as something else: typical male behavior.

Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown linguistics professor who studies conversational dynamics, says studies repeatedly show that men regularly interrupt or cut off women. People noticed Obama’s and Romney’s dismissive treatment of Lehrer in part, she says, because it was unusual; men at such high and visible levels rarely converse like that.

“You might conclude that if a [female] moderator was treated that way, people won’t notice as much,” she says, “because it’s business as usual.”

What’s more, Raddatz and Crowley may fare poorly in viewers’ eyes if they attempt, as Lehrer did, to move the debate along. “Many people feel more negative toward a woman cutting off a speaker than a guy,” Tannen says. “If a woman talks that way, she’s disliked. [People say,] ‘She’s so aggressive, she’s so intrusive.’ ”