Plenary, NCRW Annual Conference, June 2004

Keynote Speakers:

• Representative Maxine Waters, U.S. House of Representatives, D-CA
• Marie Wilson, President, Ms. Foundation; Co-Founder and President, White House Project

Panelists:

• Amy Richards, Co-author, ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future and the forthcoming Recipe-tested: An Idea Bank for Real Activism
• Gail Schneider, Executive Director, The WISH List
• Eleanor Smeal, Executive Director, Feminist Majority Foundation
• Debbie Walsh, Director, Center for the American Woman and Politics, Rutgers University
• Karen White, Political Director, EMILY's List

Moderator:

• Bonnie Erbe, Host, PBS's "To The Contrary;" CEO, Persephone Productions, Inc.

Overview

Two keynote speakers and a dynamic panel addressed a variety of issues relevant to women's political participation, from their roles as voters to their candidacies in elections to concerns specific to demographics such as minorities or young women. All emphatically agreed that women's participation is vital to the American political process. It is only through their participation that women will see true change in the American political arena.

Summary

After being introduced by Eleanor Smeal, Representative Maxine Waters asked the audience how they might use research more effectively to help shape public perception of women as strong leaders. She cited a poll in which 61 percent of respondents stated that they expected a woman to be president in the next 20 years. The same poll indicated that people believe women are making progress, for increasing numbers are willing to see women as strong leaders. Yet, it remains difficult for women to access the resources required to run for office. Rep. Waters highlighted challenges, including the need to persuade people that women are capable, strong and confident, and the need to connect women in a way that will result in more women in politics. Unfortunately, she noted, by the time many women are finally contacted and encouraged to run, they have developed hardened attitudes that can be difficult to overcome: many women believe that others are smarter, and many women are too scared to make the leap.

Rep. Waters also discussed the importance of bringing women's issues to the forefront of media attention. The press provides the platform on which issues are defined, so it is imperative that one reach large audiences via the news, particularly the Sunday shows. It is very difficult, however, for women to get on these shows - we only see a few Congresswomen appearing on the Sunday shows from time to time. In spite of the media's portrayal of women (or lack thereof), Rep. Waters argued, "It is important for women to be elected to office because you cannot have a democracy without the diversity that women bring to public policy decision-making. It is impossible to have elected bodies making public policy without having minorities and women and the diversity in leadership that represents what this country really is, and how it is really made up."

Rep. Waters noted that there used to be women's projects within political campaigns around which women organized. But this important means for promoting women's issues no longer exists in either the Republican or the Democratic parties. As a result, women must "take the leadership and give [themselves] permission to be a part of [their] party in ways that maybe it doesn't want [them] to be." She concluded that too many people are content with allowing John Kerry to do or say whatever he wishes, with the plan to "deal" with him later. This is a faulty tactic, however, because in the end no one will get what she deserves. A candidate will be elected having made zero commitments or assurances, she said.

Marie Wilson addressed ways to involve more women, particularly young women, in the political process. As co-founder and president of the White House Project, Wilson has worked to educate and train young women nationwide in the fundamentals of political leadership in an effort to increase voter turnout and women's political participation.

In order to fully integrate women into the political world, she said, people first need to know about the reality of the current political situation; while 75 percent of Americans think it is important to have women in political leadership and political representation, many are shocked to hear that the United States is 58th in the world in terms of women's political participation. People also need to know that when women lead, whether at the state or national level, they make a difference. "What happens when women are in power [is that] they actually think outside the box and bring new ideas to the table," said Wilson. She also spoke to the issue of the perception of women as leaders in America, noting, "We are not looking for one woman who can "man up." When there is one woman, it is about gender. But when we have more women running, it will normalize it and we will focus on the agendas that women bring - not their gender."

Wilson discussed women's legitimacy in their claims for leadership. Women have led without "authority" for years, bringing people together across communities and building trust among people. "That is what the country needs," she argued. "And what we find is that the abilities that women bring - even though they are the abilities that allow us to make peace and justice, and they are the abilities that allow work to go forward - are not seen as powerful because they are women's abilities."

Moderator Bonnie Erbe next asked Debbie Walsh, "Where are we, as Americans, in terms of progress for women officeholders and candidates, in comparison to where we were at the beginning of the second wave feminist movement?"

Walsh responded that she used to become frustrated when she had to report that women were only making slight, but continual, progress in politics. Since 1999, however, "that slow, steady progress has turned to stagnation; and in some years, actually turned to decline," she said. At the state legislative level, we have seen a plateau, with no visible increase in the numbers of women either running for or holding office at that level. Meanwhile, at the statewide elected executive level, which includes such offices as Governor, Lieutenant Governor and others, there have been significant declines since 1999.

Walsh discussed the "pipeline" by which politicians initially start out at the state legislative level and move up to the national legislature or statewide executive offices. "Of the 74 women who are now in Congress," she noted, "37 of them started out in the state legislature. Of the eight women who are now Governors, four of them started out in the state legislature. So we need to make sure the pipeline keeps going." In order to ensure that the pipeline continues, women must continue to be recruited, because, as Walsh explained, "women do need to be asked more often than men." One survey, conducted by Richard Fox, looked at a pool of potential candidates and found that while 36 percent of the women thought that they were qualified to run for office, 57 percent of the men thought that they were qualified. A sense of entitlement exists among most American men that is not found in most women.

When asked by Erbe, "What is being done to get more pro-choice Republican women to run for office?" Gail Schneider explained that, contrary to popular belief, there are many Republican pro-choice women. Even so, they, too, have to be persuaded to run for office. "They don't think they are going to have the support of the guys, only because they usually don't have the support of the guys," she said. It is also difficult for these women to raise money for their campaigns. In an admitted generalization, Schneider explained that while men seem to have little trouble soliciting funds from friends and colleagues, women are far more uncomfortable asking friends for money.

Schneider explained that, in order to counter women's seemingly inherent aversion to politics, the WISH List holds training sessions for potential women candidates. The women learn how to select staff, advertise, hold town hall meetings, and run a campaign. These women then run for office and, according to Schneider, win about 65 to 70 percent of the time, because they have been well trained.

When asked how EMILY's List, the country's largest PAC, defined their challenges and opportunities right now in terms of getting Democratic women to run for office, Karen White addressed the issue of term limits, which she dubbed a "double-edged sword." In many circumstances, term limits provide women with a chance to run for an open seat. In other cases, however, they term women out of office, which is problematic because there are not enough women running for office to replace the dozens who will be termed out in coming elections. A second challenge lies in the fact that there are three identifiable stages in woman's life in terms of running for office. At first, women are accused of being too young and without adequate experience. Later in life, when women are raising families, they are accused of not having the time to run for office. Finally, as women get older, they are told that they have spent too much time raising their families and are thereby without adequate experience to be in elected office. In order to make it easier for women to enter the political process, EMILY's List holds trainings for potential candidates and writes checks for Democratic women's campaigns.

When asked what she saw as the issues most likely to engage different groups of women voters this election, Eleanor Smeal first noted that the best way to rally large groups of women, as she and the Feminist Majority did, along with six other groups, for the March for Women's Lives, was to have cosponsors. After securing cosponsors, the groups built the march by delegations. She also noted that when organizing on the local level, media coverage is not as necessary. "I think we have an over-reliance on media that is hostile to us and too expensive to buy," she said. In order to make these local-level campaigns a success, Smeal suggested, "candidates should mimic the March for Women's Lives, which was successful because people attended in delegations and groups, not singly." The Feminist Majority and three other organizations have grassroots "Get Out Her Vote" campaigns, of which reproductive choice, equality issues and women's rights issues are the main components.

Maria Echaveste spoke to the role the media plays in encouraging or dissuading women as candidates and voters. Echaveste agreed with previous speakers who argued that the media has, as she put it, "an unrivaled power in making and breaking candidates." While the media is, in reality, a business looking for ratings and advertisement, it affects our lives in definite ways. It often determines the ideas that are debated and the people who will run for office. Many women, particularly Latina women with whom Echaveste often works, are discouraged from becoming candidates because of the possibility for total exposure by the media.

Asked what motivates today's young women, Amy Richards drew a comparison between the young women of the 1960s and 1970s who were incredibly politically active and those of today, who do not seem to have the same enthusiasm. Richards agreed that young women today are not political in a traditional way, because they generally are not running for office, are not voting in a partisan way, and are not talking about politics in a partisan or bi-partisan way. Not only do young people not want to be divided along partisan lines, but they also do not want to run for office because of the vulnerability of exposure. Yet young people are still political, Richards argued, even if they are not political in a traditional way. The term "political" has a different meaning today than it did 30 years ago. For young people today, to be political is to fight issues in their individual lives. "Young people today were born into a cynical political time," Richards explained. "So that has just been our culture. I think that in a way our resistance is simply not wanting to get involved."

Another reason young women are resistant to becoming further involved in change is that they perceive a lack of progress when they have indeed gotten involved. Traditionally, people became involved in politics by showing up at marches, calling their Congressperson, writing letters, and sending money. "We've done all those things, and it still doesn't make a difference. We vote, we send money, we go to marches - but we still have a government that doesn't reflect back to us our values," Richards said.

Richards concluded by offering ways to involve young women. While they do not seem interested, she argued, they are - "It's just that they don't know how to follow the process from A to Z," she said. There are issues that young women care about intensely, such as health care, but they do not realize that they have the power to change the situation. Richards argued that the women's movement should put its politics into independent media, because young people are reading zines and magazines like Bitch and Bust even when they are not paying attention to the mainstream media.

Adding her thoughts on how to get more young people involved, Wilson cited a study that showed that 70 percent of young people do care deeply about the country, to the extent that they volunteer. "But they haven't translated that soup kitchen work into 'if I were in office and working on policy, we could actually change the availability of food,'" she said. The best way to getting young women more involved is to "take them very seriously and say, 'We are thinking about you as a leader,' and encourage them to invite each other." Most young women are not averse to becoming involved, but simply do not know how to get involved. Groups that provide training are one of the best ways to increase young people's involvement.

Rep. Waters noted that she saw a disconnect between the time of registration and the actuality of voting, which she was trying to understand.

Walsh explained that the problem is not apathy on the part of young people. Rather, "they are engaged in the world and they are caring about issues and they are volunteering and they are working in their communities." The problem, instead, is that young people are not making the connection to politics. Even if they do understand that there is a bigger political world, they do not know how to connect to it. In order to ameliorate this problem, the Center for American Women in Politics has, for the past 13 years, had a program called, "New Leadership: National Education for Women's Leadership," which helps young, college-aged women make the connections and demystify the process.

Echaveste then spoke about the difficulty involved in connecting the Latino community to the political process. She blamed our current problem with the political system on the fact that the public has made the elections be about the candidate, instead of the voters.

Smeal added that there exist more profound, structural problems. Not only are most seats uncontested, but also young people, aged 18 to 24, are discouraged from voting, largely because of colleges. Smeal explained, "If in fact [the students were encouraged to vote], colleges, towns - some colleges [have] 50,000 students - would be dictated by the students. The college towns don't want those students to vote. They do everything they can to dispel, to make them not vote. We have got to dispel the mythology that they will lose their financial package if they vote there." Another problem she finds with the system is that professional, political people have determined the districts, condensing as many of one demographic as possible into a single district and thereby disenfranchising the voters. When single women are bunched in the same districts as blacks and Latinos, the number of women's, black and Latino seats are minimized.

White added, "Redistricting in every state is run by either the Governor or the President of the Senate or the redistricting commission that's appointed by the Governor or the Senate leader. We have to get more women in those offices, so they are at that table." She then offered two pieces of "good news." First of all, EMILY's List is now responsible for Campaign Corps, which takes 30 to 40 young people just out of college through a class, training them with the help of the best political professionals, before paying them to go work on campaigns for four months. With nearly 600 applications for so few spots, Campaign Corps is proof that young people want to be a part of the political process. The second piece of good news was that a coalition, of which White is a part, called "America Votes" had several different youth voter presentations, by which she was able to learn better ways to communicate and work with young voters.

Erbe then asked the panel about anger in political elections and how anger works with regard to women voters.

Women are angry, said White, and that that anger is motivating them. Women are 52 percent or more of the electorate, and women in this election are going to comprise upwards of 64 percent of the swing vote and almost 63 percent of the base Democratic vote. Consequently, women are going to decide the election, and their anger will be a motivating factor in their decision.

Schneider agreed, but maintained that people are not angry enough. With regard to women voters, however, she expressed the hope that women do not become so angry that they feel hopeless. It is necessary to bring women together, keep them angry, and tell them to spread their anger and to act on it. Echaveste added, "Anger is enough for you to pay attention, but it's not going to get you across the finish line."