Winning Without the War on Women

The euphoric post-election story goes something like this – women rocked the vote, both as voters and as candidates. There are now 20 women in the U.S. Senate – a historic number. Our very own Massachusetts elected its first woman to the Senate. New Hampshire became the first state to have an all-female Congressional delegation and a female governor.

As we celebrate this historic moment, however, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that women are on some kind of irreversible trajectory to reaching political parity. The current advances are a product of targeted efforts by political parties. Unless female politicians and aspiring candidates want to remain dependent on the salience of ‘rape’ and ‘abortions’ in the next election cycle, they must use this moment to push beyond the so-called “women’s issues.”

It is tempting to say that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recruited record numbers of female candidates simply because its chair, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), is a women’s champion. She is, of course, but she is also an astute political operator, as is her counterpart at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), who recruited a record number of female candidates for the House. Political parties are not altruistic actors.

Parties can play a major role in bringing about gender parity, but the goal of party establishments is to win a majority. Parties do not recruit a certain type of candidate because it would build a more representative Congress. Parties recruit candidates who can win. It is not difficult to surmise that in the context of a “Republican war on women,” the best Democratic candidates would be women.   

The success of Democratic recruitment efforts is evident. Of the 20 women in the Senate, 16 are Democrats and 4 are Republicans. The House, with 58 Democratic and 20 Republican women, beats previous records, and white men are no longer the majority of the House Democratic Caucus. Clearly, when parties decide to recruit and elect women, they are able to do so.   

So what happens in the next election when there is no more “war on women”? The political establishment will search for candidates who can win on whatever issue dominates the discourse. If women want to be in the game, then they have to use the current wave to assert their leadership and demonstrate the value of a female perspective on all issues.

Yes, it is unfair – men as a group are never required to prove their fitness to govern – but if any group of women could change the game, it is the newly elected class. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), has big banks shaking in their boots. Wall Street lobbyists are working overtime to prevent her from getting on the Senate banking committee, and she has not even been sworn in yet. Enemies foreign and domestic should be likewise terrified of Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL). Both have served in combat with distinction, and Duckworth has the prosthetic legs and the Purple Star to show for it.

These are just a few examples. Let’s hope that the women in Congress can show their parties, their constituents and the country that they are not to be confined to a narrow set of issues. Until this happens, progress toward parity will remain slow, uneven and reactionary.

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For more information:

Center for American Women and Politics, Election Watch Fact Sheet

Time, "Four Ways Women Won the 2012 Election"

Forbes, "Did America Just Elect its First Woman President?"

Washington Post, "Women Make Historic Gains in the US Senate"

The Telegraph, "US Election: Here come the girls as women make historic gains"

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Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Year of the Woman 2.0?

In less than 48 hours, on the morning of November 7, 2012, Elizabeth Warren might become the first Massachusetts woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, bringing women one step closer to closing the stubborn gender gap in America’s national legislature. Warren is in good company – 18 women are running for the Senate, and 166 for the House of Representatives. These are record numbers of candidates and it will be the Year of the Woman 2.0 if enough of them succeed.

The factors that shaped 1992 to become the original Year of the Woman are present again in 2012. It is the first election after redistricting, coinciding with a presidential election, and a heightened awareness of gender and related issues. The awareness this time can be attributed to events like the infamous all-male panel at a Congressional hearing on contraception and the ‘legitimate rape’ comments of Missouri Senatorial candidate Todd Akin. Incidents like these propel gender to the surface of public consciousness, albeit not in a constructive manner.  

A constructive discussion would focus on the point that more than 50 percent of the population should not rely on only 17 percent of Congress for representation. Even with record numbers of female candidates this year, we are looking at a goal of reaching just 20 percent in the House of Representatives. Only the most ambitious advocates, like Political Parity, are aspiring to more - aiming to double the number of women at the highest levels of government by 2022.

In the meantime, the 2012 Project has focused on getting the House of Representatives to that 20 percent mark this year. This non-partisan organization has worked to encourage women to consider candidacy and then connected them to campaign training programs like Emerge America or WAPPP’s From Harvard Square to the Oval Office and to relevant state and national networks.

Through its latest campaign, the 2012 Project is hoping to net 87 female Representatives of the 166 candidates. Their estimate is that 56 women incumbents are certain to win, 3 are likely to win and 10 new women candidates are almost certain to win. This leaves 27 competitive races, of which women would need to win 18.

Such a scenario seems possible, in which case November 7, 2012 will bring the Year of the Woman 2.0 and allow the US to move up from 80^th place in the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking, breezing just past Tajikistan and Bangladesh. 

Obama and America's Political Future...and Women!

Theda Skocpol is a rock star of the political science world. Her lecture on “Obama and America’s Political Future” drew a crowd to the WAPPP Cason Seminar room. I have never seen so many men at a WAPPP lunch before. Something tells me it’s because the topic was not gender this time...And yet, here are the top five women-related highlights from the conversation:

5. Women are a politically relevant demographic. In case you were wondering why both presidential campaigns are aggressively pursuing women, it is because women vote in higher numbers than men do. They trend Democratic. When they vote, they tend to be more aware of how policies may affect their families. 

4. The Tea Party is teeming with women – older white women, given the demographics of this movement. Professor Skocpol, who co-authored the first in-depth book on the Tea Party, said that the women were the lifeblood of the local chapters. They organized the meetings, brought the snacks and shouldered most of the work of the grassroots movement, but they stopped there. “Just like in every other movement” Professor Skocpol reflected “the women did not advance to the top or become candidates.”

3. Women in Election 2012: Issues and Voters is currently highlighted on the Scholars Strategy Network website. The SSN, which Professor Skocpol directs, brings together America’s leading scholars to address important public policy problems in language that anyone can understand. 

2. Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate challenger from Massachusetts, might benefit from the high number of educated female voters in the state. However, Professor Skocpol said Massachusetts is a historically difficult place for a woman to win. To illustrate the surprising ways that sexism manifests here, she described recent behavior of incumbent Senator Brown’s staffers at a Warren rally as “reminiscent of teenage boys trying to annoy their teacher.”  

1. “Hillary Clinton is going to run for President. And win.” Answering the question “Do you think Hillary Clinton might consider running?”

I should mention that in the best tradition of effective lecturing, Professor Skocpol also took us through the challenges the Obama administration has faced, dissected the failures of the administration to address some of those challenges, and explained the Tea Party practice of “kick-ass politics.”  She covered much more ground than I could possibly fit here, and even left us with some things to ponder for 2016. 

Victoria Budson Elected Chair of the Mass. Commission on the Status of Women

Victoria A. Budson

Congratulations to WAPPP Executive Director, Victoria Budson on her election to Chair the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women!
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“I am pleased to have the opportunity to strengthen the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by improving the equality and status of women,” said Budson. “I look forward to working with the members of the Commission, the local and regional commissions throughout the state, Governor Patrick and the Legislature to lead us toward the realization of gender equality.”