By Rebecca Sive
As we begin Women’s History Month, and celebrate International Women’s Day (Saturday, March 8th), I’ve been reflecting on the lessons today’s women office-holders, and those who aspire to political office, can learn from those who’ve already traveled this path.
But, first, a bit of context: this ruminating comes on the eve of my visit to San Diego as the special guest of close the gap CA’s Stop the Slide tour. This slide would be the slide (downwards) in the number of women in the California legislature: while there were a record 37 serving in the legislature in 2006, there are only 32 in 2014. (Sadly, California now ranks 19th in the nation for the number of women serving in its state legislature, down from sixth in 2003, according to Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics. That’s 26% of the legislature versus 31%.)
The Stop the Slide tour, whose purpose is to raise awareness of this problem and recruit women to work to solve it — by becoming candidates themselves — begins in San Diego Sunday, when we will gather at the Women’s Museum of California, at an event hosted by Run Women Run, a nonpartisan group that recruits and trains women candidates for office in the San Diego area.
At that gathering, whose co-hosts include Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, I will share my take on what it takes for American women to succeed politically in an ever-more fractious environment, one in which women’s experience, knowledge and perspective is needed more than ever.
My take is based on my experience as an advocate and strategist for women’s political advancement; as a public official and observer of the political scene; and, most recently, as the author of Every Day Election Day: A Woman’s Guide to Winning Any Office, from the PTA to the White House, (a handbook for women who seek public leadership roles.)
It occurs to me that the most poignant and pointed recent story, illustrative of women’s challenging political path, is that of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, now running in the state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
The February 14, 2014 New York Times Magazine cover story about Davis posed one of the main propositions women candidates, and would-be candidates, need to prepare for. The Times asked whether Davis is “a bootstrapping single mother” or “an ambitious careerist,” as though, among other problems with this set-up, she couldn’t be both — just like most male candidates are– i.e., both bootstrapping and ambitious (Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan, anyone?).
Fact is, nobody — but nobody — gets anywhere in politics without believing in her (or him) self; doing what’s necessary and then some; and then asking for the order –for her or himself, not for someone else. If that’s not ambition and bootstrapping, I don’t know what is. Yet, the Times posed this question as though boot strapping and ambition don’t go hand-in-hand every day in American politics.
First point for women candidates: sexism runs rampant. Would a single father have been presented this way? Probably not.
Then, there’s the problem of not only being ambitious, i.e., wanting to achieve a lot, but of saying you want to be SOMEBODY, besides. Back-in-the-day, women of a certain age were told in no uncertain terms that goal wasn’t “ladylike.” Today’s younger women may not have heard that expression, but most, notwithstanding, have been inculcated with the notion that women should wait to be asked–to do whatever.
The problem is that waiting to be asked is a big problem in any domain in which there is serious competition. And politics is certainly one of those domains. Consequently, women’s recalcitrance has become one of their biggest barriers to entry in to politics. Even those women with burning ambition like, say, Wendy Davis, have waited to be asked (as Davis did in her first campaign).
Run Women Run and close the gap CA seek to change this paradigm by aggressively recruiting women candidates. Indeed, that’s what we’ll discuss Sunday: how we can we recruit, recruit, recruit.
Another one of the charges against Davis is that she obfuscated in telling her life story. Turns’-out, she didn’t live in that humble trailer as long as her campaign said she did. Turns’-out, there are competing stories (hers, her former husband’s, and her daughters’) of how often she returned home (from Cambridge, MA, where she was attending Harvard Law School) to visit her daughters.
Davis clarified these points, raised in the original Dallas Morning News story, contesting her campaign’s version of her biography. Yet, and rightly so, other feminists have noted — for upwards of a month now –that a male candidate wouldn’t have been excoriated the way Davis was –for example, for leaving children with one’s spouse in order to further one’s education. Know any men who’ve made a choice like that? I bet you do.
Second point: women are held to a higher standard in political life, particularly when it comes to behavior or decision making related to female traits, e.g., being a mother. While I’m not wading-in on the merits of the Davis campaign’s strategy, I do think it’s important for women candidates to recognize that what can be perceived as obfuscation, for example about one’s role as a mother, can be a serious blunder, whatever the merits of one’s argument. One has only to look at the fact that Davis is still dealing with the fallout from the Morning News story six weeks later to realize the validity of this conclusion of mine.
Now, none of this is a reason not to do what your head and heart wants you to do; it is only to say, as with anything else, that you want to be smart about it.
We’ll talk more about all this Sunday, when I hope you will join us, speak up, and speak out. For there is just no substitute for frank consideration of these challenges, and then earnestly helping each other overcome them, en route to political leadership. Indeed, nothing less will get us there.
Rebecca Sive, the author of “Every Day is Election Day: A Woman’s Guide to Winning Any Office from the PTA to the White House,” will be speaking in San Diego on Sunday, March 9 at an event sponsored by Run Women Run. For more information, visit: http://closethegapca.org/tour.
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I’m underwhelmed at the thought of producing Louie Gohmert in a skirt and calling that progress for women in politics.
Please tell me you’re not referring to Wendy Davis. To conflate Wendy Davis and Louie Gohmert–perhaps the single DUMBEST elected official at the federal level (I’m sure there are dumber at the state and local levels, difficult as that is to imagine)…..that’s just plain insulting, even to me. Wendy Davis is about as blue as you’re gonna get in a state like Texas.
Wow Andy– you missed my whole point. The “bipartisan” aspect of Run Women Run makes me want to heave. Conservative women like Sarah Palin and Phyllis Schafly have clearly benefited from the feminist movement. These same women support conservative policies that undermine parity and equity for women.
On that point we can agree. But those aren’t who all of their candidates are. Sarah Boot was a founder of Run Women Run, and she is everything in a candidate that you’d want representing your City Council district.
Perhaps some of their supported candidates might be controversial (and, BTW, a part of RWR is being Pro Choice, so Schlafly and Palin would not qualify), but not all of them are. Don’t condemn the good ones because of a small minority that you don’t agree with.
Besides, the overarching purpose of RWR is to find qualified, quality women candidates and encourage them to run for office. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a partisan goal.
This is an impenetrable mess. What do you guys really believe in?
Nonpartisan, bi-partisan or whatever you want to call it I’m gathering the point or RWR is to simply get more women interested in pursuing politics. There are women who want the same opportunities as men to climb the corporate ladder and crush those below them, or put another way there are women who want equal opportunity to peruse greed. Also there are people out there (men AND women) who are liberal about some things and conservative about others, so not everything is so black and white. Sarah Palin to everyone’s benefit is a complete dingbat. It’s the Jan Brewers we have to worry about.
These, er… extra…. demands being made of women who aspire to higher achievement — for example, expecting more from them as parents than we do from men — pose tempting moments for laughs; they’re maybe a little bit like asking fathers running for office if they prefer breast feeding to bottle feeding their kids. A good bubba would report he’d ordered his wife to breast feed, I suppose.
We gotta laugh at these white male extremes on women’s nature as just one of many, many areas where white males get rewarded by other white males for maintaining a Gomer standard for political argumentation. Do we really want to take these Frat boys seriously? More and more voters are being turned off by them.
Here’s the thing about San Diego Democrats right now that really has me flummoxed: Do you want to actually WIN an election, or is it more important to simply make a point? Because this whole Tea Party-esque ideological purity test is the perfect recipe for long term Republican rule in San Diego.
Maybe it’s just me, but actually winning an election is far more important than scoring a few political points while watching the opposition consolidate its power. And sometimes small compromises are necessary in order to accomplish that goal.
……but yes, yes, I know……”compromise” is now a dirty, taboo word. What a sad world we live in…….
The issue you don’t consider is that principles are compromised when Democrats go to the table to bargain, while the Republicans might just give up a little money. Do we want to privatize the schools? Some of them? There are people who call themselves Democrats who would give up public education. That’s a compromise I wouldn’t make. There are some others. What would you want to give up on the issue of privatization of schools, Andy?
And yet you expect Republicans to compromise? It’s a two way street, Bob. That’s how things actually get done in the real world. You can’t just stomp your feet and insist on getting your way all the time and expect it to happen. The Republicans have that market cornered.
Compromise means maybe you give up little things here and there in order to achieve something bigger. Like the ACA: Universal health care was NEVER going to happen. If that was the only option, then we’d be stuck with the same system we had four years ago, and tens of millions still without health care. The ACA is far from perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction, and it’s sure as hell better than nothing at all, which is what we would have gotten (see: Clinton, Bill/Hillary, 1993). And it doesn’t mean we privatize our schools or Medicare. Now you’re just being contrarian.
The ONLY way to change things is to elect Democrats to office. And in order to do that, you actually have to run candidates who have a chance at actually WINNING. Making a statement is fine, but it doesn’t change anything. Running ideologues who turn off the middle–particularly in San Diego with such a large proportion of DTS voters–is simply playing in to the traditional power structure’s hands.
Just look what happened in the mayoral race. You got your ideologue, and he got stomped. Is San Diego better off for it?
Alvarez was an ideologue? Really? What part of his campaign would you call out of line? Do tell….
David Alvarez was an ideologue? No, he wasn’t an ideologue, but he played one on the Lincoln Club mailers.
Jeez, Andy, you make everything so personal. Here I am, stomping my feet, “just being a contrarian” and “playing (into) the traditional power structure’s hands…” I can feel myself wobbling off my ideological throne already. I’m willing to compromise, Andy.
How’s about a deal: you tell me how we should go about privatizing education in some pragmatic way and I’ll tell you which of my principles I’m willing to compromise.
Wow, every comment here is from freepers. I thought we weren’t writing for ourselves, LOL.
“Do any of us really own anything but our selves?” (Richard bon Giorno, I am Me, 1943)