BOOK MARK : Did Women Undo Their Political Success in ‘84?

The 1984 presidential election figured as a crucial turning point--the Democratic Party’s last stand for women’s rights.

By nominating Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro to the vice-presidential spot on the ticket, the Democrats boldly advertised to women the clear differences between the parties. The measure did not go unappreciated; it earned the Democrats new support from millions of female voters, who contributed more money to Ferraro’s campaign fund than women had ever donated to any candidate’s coffers. In fact, for the first time, a Democratic vice presidential candidate received as much in political contributions as the candidate at the top of the ticket. And Ferraro’s presence encouraged other aspiring female politicians. The number running for the U.S. Senate more than tripled, and the number of female congressional candidates jumped to a record high.

Ferraro’s nomination also inspired instantaneous backlash from the New Right Reaganites, who attacked her not as a politician but as a woman--and, more specifically, as a “radical left-wing feminist.” Before the TV cameras, they re peatedly suggested that her gender would render her incapable of defending the nation.

Though many political candidates in the ‘80s were subjected to harsh attacks and close scrutiny, the assault on Ferraro was unprecedented. It wasn’t her behavior that was on trial, but her husband John Zaccaro’s--she was to be punished for his management of some muddy New York real-estate deals. Ferraro herself was no promoter of that profession--in fact, the realtors association had given her an 88% disapproval rating.

The Washington press corps probed the business practices of this small-time landlord as if he would soon be managing the White House budget. And reporters applied themselves with a perseverance that was to be notably absent four years later in reporting on George Bush’s role in the Iran-Contra affair.

In the end, as myriad post-election polls demonstrated, neither the scandal over Zaccaro’s business affairs nor Ferraro’s presence on the ticket contributed to the Democrats’ defeat. A recovering economy returned the White House to Republican hands. In fact, a national survey after the 1984 election found that having seen Ferraro on the campaign trail, one-quarter of the electorate was now more inclined to vote for a female candidate.

But history has a way of rewriting itself: “Polling indicated that she detracted from, rather than added to, Walter F. Mondale’s electoral strength,” an article in the National Review decreed a year after the campaign. It did not cite these mystery polls.

Democratic Party leaders charged that women were responsible for the party’s poor showing and women had had too much influence in the campaign and were driving away white men. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen complained Mondale had been “henpecked.”

Eventually, Ferraro herself would internalize much of this revisionist history--and turn on herself. In subsequent press interviews, Ferraro said that if she had it to do over, she wouldn’t have run for office. Accepting the nomination wasn’t “fair” to her husband, she said.

Her much publicized regrets later translated similarly in the minds of many American women. In 1984, 53% of women in a national poll said they believed a women would be President by the year 2000; in 1987, only 40% expected it. Women who aspired to a career in politics were even more demoralized by Ferraro’s public drubbing. By 1988, recruiters from both parties suddenly encountered difficulties finding women willing to run for office. They feared “the Ferraro factor.”

On Election Day, only two women--both Republicans--were on the ballot in the 1988 U.S. Senate race, down from 10 in 1984. When the election results came in, both women had lost, leaving the Senate with its usual two women. Overall, the percentage of women in both the U.S. Congress and state legislatures had stalled, and the proportion of women in statewide elective office had shrunk to 12% from 15% just a year earlier--the first decline in 11 years.

By 1988, the voting preferences of men and women had diverged so much that at one point in the presidential race, polls picked up a 24% gender gap in favor of Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis. Dukakis’ supporters who gave him this advantage were women who most supported a feminist agenda of pay equity, social equality and reproductive rights.

During the race, Bush’s campaign managers dismissed questions about women’s rights--they were too trivial to warrant comment, they said. “We’re not running around and dealing with a lot of so-called women’s issues,” Bush’s press secretary indignantly told the New York Times. His one seeming nod in the the direction of working women’s needs during the campaign was a penny-ante child-care proposal that would give the poorest working families about $20 a week in tax breaks. This pocket change was supposed to pay for basic child care that, on average, costs four times as much. The Bush campaign’s only gesture to women was, incredibly, Dan Quayle, who, GOP leaders said, would surely charm the ladies.

In Dukakis’ acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, he did not once mention reproductive freedom. Nor, for that matter, did he take a position on sex discrimination, pay equity or the Equal Rights Amendment. The closest he came was an allusion to the importance of child care. Like his Republican fellows, he could envision women only when they were tucked snugly into the family unit.

By turning his back on women, Dukakis managed to turn off his greatest source of support. But far from protesting their candidate’s desertion, most women in the Democratic Party seemed to be studying to be ladies, suffering in silence. “We’re not doing ‘women’s issues’ anymore,” said a prominent female politician’s aide. “We’re doing ‘family issues.’ ”

Protecting the interests of families and children, of course, belongs in any comprehensive vision of social welfare. And the efforts of women’s groups to aid the family were legitimate, necessary--and far more sincere than the “save the family” cant recited by so many disingenuous presidential candidates. But by allowing themselves to be restricted to family issues alone, women in politics wound up hamstrung and pigeonholed.

By “choosing” to neglect women’s issues for the sake of the family cause, female politicians succumbed to yet another of the backlash’s you-can’t-have-it-all axioms. Women could only ask for child care and parental leave by not asking for educational opportunities, pay equity and reproductive freedom. Not only was this unfair, the half-a-loaf strategy didn’t even work. All the child care and parental leave bills that year were defeated.

BOOK REVIEW: “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” by Susan Faludi, is reviewed on Page 1 of the Book Review section.

1991 Susan Faludi. Reprinted with permission from Crown Publishing.