TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110890/1108105.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.1 KB | 232 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 16

It's Our Turn


Long the outsiders in politics, women now find themselves
running on the inside track

By MARGARET CARLSON


    At last, not being one of the boys looks like an advantage.
It's the boys, after all, who are responsible for the federal
deficit, nuclear waste dumps and the savings and loan debacle,
to name but a few of the disasters proliferating in the national
In basket. Women politicians, who suffered from not being
insiders, are benefiting from having been outsiders while the
mess was made.

    Cleaning up messes has long been relegated to women's work,
as have certain other issues that have suddenly risen to the top
of the political agenda, like worrying over the young, the aged,
the sick and the environment. Surveys show that women are
perceived to be better than men on these issues, as well as to
have higher ethical standards and greater honesty. "Our
stereotype," says Democratic Colorado Congresswoman Pat
Schroeder, "is finally in." Pollster Mervin Field goes further,
predicting that the 1990s will be the "decade of women in
politics."

    The decade is off to a fast start. In 1990 women entered
races in record numbers, even exceeding the rush of 1972, when
Senate passage of the Equal Rights Amendment gave women the
incentive to run. This year 11 were candidates for Governor, 87
for Congress, eight for the Senate, and hundreds more for local
office. Compare that with the paucity of female officeholders
before Election Day: three women Governors (in Vermont, Nebraska
and Arizona), 28 of the 435 Representatives in the House and
just two of 100 Senators.

    In California alone, 14 women jumped into campaigns: for
Governor, lieutenant governor, state treasurer and insurance
commissioner, and the mayoral races in Berkeley and San Jose.
Five women ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and two for
California secretary of state. Says Los Angeles City
Councilwoman Joy Picus: "Women have been helping men get elected
for years. We just decided to do it for ourselves."

    The explosion of office seekers in California may have been
due, in part, to the state's low threshold for boredom. "A woman
candidate is automatically more interesting," says William
Schneider, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute, "a flash of fuchsia in a sea of gray." Pollster Field
says when people sense that "politically, things are going to
hell in a hand basket," a woman candidate becomes more
appealing: "By not being part of the problem, she comes across
as part of the solution."

    Thus, when Houston became overbuilt, its freeways impassable
and its streets filthy, voters picked their first woman mayor,
Kathy Whitmire. "When people are frustrated and saying something
needs to be done," she says, "they are willing to turn to
somebody different." After the Texas economy went bust in the
'80s, an unprecedented number of women were elected to
straighten things out, including the mayors of Dallas, San
Antonio and Corpus Christi. This year Ann Richards, who became
the first woman to hold statewide office in Texas in a
half-century when she was elected state treasurer in 1982,
hoped for the same voter response in her knock-down, drag-out
battle for the governorship.

    Just as ERA was the galvanizing force in 1972, a major
impetus for women this year was the Supreme Court's Webster
decision in July 1989, which opened the way for states to pass
laws restricting abortion. Of the 76 women still in
congressional and statewide campaigns after the primaries, only
three -- Governor Kay Orr of Nebraska, who was seeking
re-election; Joan Finney, running for Governor of Kansas; and
Senate candidate M. Jane Brady in Delaware -- did not offer
themselves as pro-choice candidates.

    "Women run on women's issues, like abortion," says Sharon
Rodine, president of the National Women's Political Caucus
(NWPC). "It's the way in." As a rule, they don't cross over to
the male power center once elected. For example, a solid
majority of women in the Congress stood behind Democratic
Representative Barbara Boxer of California in 1989 when she took
on Illinois' powerful Henry Hyde in an attempt to restore
Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for victims of rape or
incest. The Boxer amendment passed both houses of Congress, but
was vetoed by the President. Although they were unsuccessful,
fully 70% of the women Representatives voted to override the
veto, in contrast to just 54% of the men. Similarly, it is in
legislatures with very few women, like Pennsylvania and
Louisiana, that some of the most restrictive abortion laws have
been passed.

    When women candidates suggest that they should be trusted
more on an issue they know about -- for instance, reproductive
rights -- men cry foul, despite the fact that for years they
have been touting their war records as a way to show how much
they can be trusted on national defense. During the primary
campaign for California's Democratic gubernatorial nomination,
former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein said that as a woman
she would be more steadfast in her support of abortion than her
pro-choice male opponent. For that temerity, she was called
sexist. The New York Times editorialized that such stereotyping
was "precisely the kind of bias that women have fought against
for years." (Unsuccessfully, the paper should have added.) One
might think that women could be forgiven for taking advantage
of bias when it finally works in their favor.

    While abortion has been a galvanizing issue for women
candidates, it is far from the only one: these days, there are
plenty of problems to go around. Lots of men care about
education, health care, pay equity, child care and parental
leave, of course, but in a theoretical, not a life-altering,
way. As Schroeder puts it: "Most Congressmen come from Leave It
to Beaver families and go back to the district and talk to Leave
It to Beaver fathers at the Rotary Club and the Chamber of
Commerce, in other words, to people just like themselves.
Women's issues aren't on the radar screen." In addition,
powerful men want to project power. Fighting for the right to
take time off to care for a newborn or an aging parent is not
the read-my-lips image that wins elections.

    Male politicians may not see the hundreds of Roseannes out
there, or the thousands of pregnant women with no prenatal care,
but female candidates do. Since Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin
introduced a maternal and infant welfare bill in 1918, women
have often been instrumental in passing the kind of legislation
overlooked by men. Women in Congress have been the sponsors of
bills that set up the network of veterans' hospitals, assisted
middle-income families in financing homes, reformed pension laws
and funded education for the disabled.

    Running against a woman is still something of a novelty.
White men in blue suits know how to run against other white men
in blue suits; they've been doing it for years. But throw a
woman into the mix and, to some men, it's like putting cleats
and a helmet on a cheerleader and sending her onto the field.
Does this mean he can sack her? Says Michele Davis, executive
director of the Republican Governors Association: "It's a new
game, and men haven't cracked the code yet."

    Maybe so, but some men have decided that gridiron rules do
apply: if she can run, he can tackle. In his vice-presidential
campaign against former New York Congresswoman Geraldine
Ferraro, George Bush went easy at the beginning to avoid looking
like a bully. But then, apprehensive about appearing to be a
wimp, he overcompensated toward the end with his "tried to kick
a little ass" remark. Female candidates have been called "cute,"
"debutantes," "an honorary lesbian," desirous of being crowned
"queen" and other reductive terms to make it seem that their
place is anywhere but at the top of a political ticket. Says
Richard Shingles, who is writing a book on gender and race in
politics: "It's risky, but an opponent will often try to
reinforce a lingering image of a woman as the weaker sex, make
her seem childlike or frivolous."

    When this happens, responding in kind can be politically
fatal. An aggressive woman is quickly perceived as a bitch,
while an aggressive man is, well, an aggressive man. Pollster
Celinda Lake conducted studies in which observers were asked to
rate men and women reading the same text at identical decibel
levels. "Women are almost always described as more aggressive,
louder and in the end shrill," Lake says.

    But go too far in the other direction -- display vanity, get
emotional, or, worst of all, cry -- and a woman has reinforced
the most damaging stereotype of all: that she is, as Dr. Edgar
Berman, Hubert Humphrey's personal physician, said in a letter
to a Congresswoman, a victim of "raging, hormonal imbalance of
the periodic lunar cycle." Women must be careful not to be seen
gesturing with their hands, blinking in any way that could be
construed as eyelash batting, giggling or looking in a mirror.
When the NWPC lightly suggested that women candidates ignore the
wine at fund raisers not only because it might affect their
motor skills but also because it has calories, the group was
inundated with indignant letters. Says spokeswoman Chung Seto:
"There was outrage that we would acknowledge that appearance
counts for something." Meanwhile, a multimillion-dollar
political consulting industry has organized itself around just
how politicians should look and act on TV, right down to the
choice of a power tie.

    In women's campaigns, money remains as serious a problem as
sexism. "There is no money in women's issues," says Schroeder.
"There isn't one PAC organized around the Women's Health Equity
Act." Raising money, since women have less experience at it, is
also harder. Says former Republican National Committee
co-chairwoman Maureen Reagan, an indefatigable fund raiser:
"Women still feel they ought to say thank you for their
paychecks, so it's hard to get them in the habit of making
campaign contributions and doing it for more than spare change."
Nonetheless, fund-raising operations -- notably EMILY's List
(Early Money Is Like Yeast), the Hollywood Women's Political
Committee and the Women's Campaign Fund -- are slowly changing
the gender deficit. EMILY's List, founded by Ellen Malcolm, has
raised more than $800,000 in 1990, in contrast to $650,000 two
years earlier. Special-interest groups like the National
Abortion Rights Action League have formed political-action
committees that contribute heavily to pro-choice candidates.

    Money follows power, and as women accumulate more of it
their treasuries will grow. According to Jane Danowitz,
executive director of the Women's Campaign Fund, when women run
for the big-ticket offices in which Big Business has an
interest, "gender is no bar. Money takes notice, as it did in
gubernatorial races in California and Texas, and the Senate race
in Hawaii."

    If female qualities are slowly becoming a political plus,
Geraldine Ferraro may eventually be remembered as the first
woman vice-presidential candidate, not as the only one. And the
next presidential bid by a woman will not just be remembered for
having ended in tears, as Schroeder's did in 1987. Harvard
psychologist Carol Gilligan, author of In A Different Voice, a
landmark study of gender differences, argues that women have
greater moral strength, a stronger ethic of care and overriding
concern for making and maintaining relationships -- all
qualities of a good politician. She has even said that feelings
-- and, yes, tears if it should come to that -- have their
place in a man's world. Meantime, the NWPC tackles crying head
on by recommending that women talk about a tear-inducing subject
for so long that it loses its poignancy, or, failing that, take
deep breaths or change the subject. The women now entering
politics may justly consider weeping a phony issue, but it is
a sign of improving times that at least the question is on the
table.