Harriett Woods : Thomas Hearings Jolted Women’s Political Caucus Into Action

What women like Harriett Woods have been saying for years--a woman’s place should be in the House and Senate--was dramatically underscored just three months after she took over, in July, the presidency of the National Women’s Political Caucus. Women watching the televised Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Clarence Thomas’ nomination for the Supreme Court saw no women questioning Thomas or Anita Faye Hill about her charges of sexual harassment. The caucus swung into action, taking out a full-page newspaper advertisement asking, “What if 14 women, instead of 14 men” had been on that committee? “Turn your anger into action. Join us,” the ad urged.

The caucus, formed in 1971 to help elect progressive women, had been treading water. The energy that had accompanied early enthusiasm for the Equal Rights Amendment and the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision “was dampened over time, particularly in the Reagan years,” Woods says. She is trying to restore that enthusiasm by channeling the emotion unleashed during the Thomas hearings into electing women.

Woods became active in politics because of a manhole cover. Every day when she would try to put her three boys to bed for a nap years ago, cars would drive past her house in the St. Louis suburb, clunk across the manhole cover and wake them up. She drew up a petition and got the street closed.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Woods worked as a newspaper reporter and married an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was a city council member, served eight years in the Missouri senate and became the first woman ever elected statewide when she won the lieutenant governorship in 1985. She ran, unsuccessfully, for the U.S. Senate in 1982 and 1986.

Playing the violin with the St. Louis Philharmonic, the city’s full-time amateur orchestra, was probably the biggest thing she gave up to go into politics. A determined tennis player with a deceptively wicked backhand, Woods, 64, is a tall, athletic woman equally at home dressed to the nines and delivering a political pitch for women candidates.

Woods had to feel a special poignancy watching Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) defend Thomas this fall. Woods, a Democrat, lost her first Senate bid by only 26,000 votes out of more than 1.5 million cast in 1982. Her opponent was Danforth.

Question: Women are so angry at failures of the political process during the Supreme Court confirmation of Clarence Thomas that some threaten to form a third party. What do you think?

Answer: The caucus hasn’t taken a position on it--we’re multipartisan, which means we’ll support women who are qualified in any party identification.

Personally, I think it’s the wrong way to go, because this country isn’t a parliamentary system where you can get in a proportional position and represent a viewpoint . . . . I ran without the leadership of my party--but there’s no doubt that the party label helped me with those who automatically assume that label means something to them.

Q: The equal-rights amendment and abortion have been women’s issues for years. Why did the reaction on Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment seem so much stronger than on those issues?

A: It touched that nerve of powerlessness that many women feel in their relationship to men, in not just the work situation but in many social and even family situations. Bubbling underneath the surface has been this sense of frustration and rage at some humiliation, some situation, in which there was an inequality of power which the women accepted and never forgot.

Hill’s statement about sexual harassment struck the chord not as much, I think, because they identified with her but because the men seemed to push it aside. It underscored the message that women’s concerns are less important. So I feel that the issue wasn’t sexual harassment--it was the powerlessness and the frustrations women feel that, although they have lip-service equality, in fact, their lives are often second class.

Q: Do you know any women who have specifically decided to run for office in the time since the hearings?

A: Absolutely. I know specifically of three or four women who now are actively looking into a U.S. Senate race who weren’t even considering it before the Thomas hearings: . . . Carol Moseley Braun in Illinois, Jean Lloyd-Jones in Iowa, Janet Napolitano in Arizona.

Women in Minnesota are also beginning for two years from now. They’re starting to raise $1 million as a women’s investment so that, two years from now, there’ll be a pool of money to support a woman to run against the incumbent Republican.

I want to make clear that I don’t think a woman necessarily can win on a single issue, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to run on, “You voted the wrong way on Clarence Thomas.” But, I think there’s a political homelessness in this country, a sense that “I don’t belong anywhere and no one listens to me” that now is focused for women on: “Let’s do something about the U.S. Senate.” . . .

Q: What does the woman do who can’t drop everything and run for the Senate?

A: . . . . One thing they can do is give money. The biggest contrast between my Senate race, in ‘82, and the races in ’92 is that women have learned how to write their own checks.

Q: What about the working woman who cannot give money? What about getting her to see the issues?

A: The caucus has several unique initiatives that had begun before Thomas but will be accelerated because of it. One is an outreach program into corporations to reach those middle-management and management women who haven’t seen civic involvement as their responsibility. . . .

Second, we have an initiative with women in labor unions to reach the blue-collar woman who may not have adequate health care, who may not have day care, whose children may not have good schools but who hasn’t made the connection between getting out there. . . . We’re going to be working with them to help them see that having a woman in office makes a measurable difference in their lives.

And the third thing we’re doing is a huge initiative toward young women, which is long overdue.

Q: You mentioned you were trying to set something up with McDonnell-Douglas Corp.?

A: Yes. There is a commitment. The funds won’t be coming until after the first of the year, but there is a commitment. That is going to begin with a survey around the country, in focus groups, to look at why women aren’t making that connection so that we can put together a better program to go into the businesses and work with women. We don’t really understand what happened with the Hill-Thomas reaction among women.

Q: Why it was so divided--with many believing Thomas and many others believing Hill?

A: Yes. . . . If we want to provide leadership, we have to make sure we are not out of step with the needs and thoughts of the women we are asking to support women in office. It’s a great mistake to think you have all the answers.

Q: Looking back at your 1982 race and looking at today, do you think the climate is more promising for women candidates?

A: . . . . I ran in ‘82, . . . when women were considered losers. That was the biggest problem. That was the year when just I and Millicent Fenwick were the Senate candidates; when both parties were almost hands-off in terms of support; when women didn’t write checks, and there was an emphasis on foreign policy, the Cold War and the kind of issues where women weren’t seen as tough enough. So you had the combination of an unfavorable issues climate, a hostile political climate and lack of funds.

Here we are in 1991, with the agenda having shifted to the domestic field, where women are considered automatically more interested; with women everywhere polling as the best candidates, particularly in suburban and marginal districts because they’re viewed as outsiders and people want to get rid of whoever’s in office, and, finally, because money is available. There are the EMILY’s List, the Women’s Campaign Fund, the caucus, but, more important, a lot of women who will write checks.

Q: We often heard in the ‘70s and ‘80s that this was going to be “the year of the woman.” But are these the conditions which might really make that change?

A: . . . . People have reason to be skeptical--the numbers have gone up, but not dramatically. I don’t think there’s any guarantee that in one election cycle they’ll go up dramatically, either. . . . (But) this is probably the best shot we’ll have--particularly with redistricting.

Q: Is the current political climate within the GOP creating any more activism among some Republican women--or is it making it harder for them?

A: They’ve always had a tough time, because, as the party structure moved farther right, it became more--they were really penalizing themselves by being identified as progressives. But now we are having increases again. . . . Their trouble really is more when they’re trying to have an influence within their party--where many of the women’s slots are filled with fundamentalists and anti-choice women, who are difficult to dislodge.

Q: You don’t sense, though, within the caucus that, “Well, that’s just a bunch of Democratic women, I’m not going to be active”?

A: . . . . There are only three bedrock principles for the caucus: the equal-rights amendment, reproductive rights and support for day care from public or private sources. Therefore, a Republican may have a position in terms of government’s role in the economic sphere that’s different from a Democrat’s and still find comfort in our house.

. . . . We did support Claudine Schneider and Pat Saiki (in their 1990 Senate races in Rhode Island and Hawaii). We didn’t support Lynn Martin (in Illinois), and there were Republican women who were furious about that. . . . That was done on the basis of looking at (Martin’s) record. There was the feeling she had not been as committed to women’s issues as she should have been as a woman in Congress, and therefore didn’t merit the endorsement. . . . But, yeah, those things are tough for Republican women.

Q: The caucus has taken money from Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco and the Tobacco Institute. Doesn’t that compromise potential advocacy on women’s health issues?

A: Absolutely not. As far as I’m concerned, if the membership wants to vote tomorrow to stand up against smoking, that’s fine with me. My position is that we are dedicated to getting women trained and recruited and supported to be elected and appointed to office. If a corporation wants to contribute to that--that’s great.

I think it would be objectionable if we trimmed our sails, so to speak, on policy influenced by corporate contributions. We don’t. Any more than we do on labor unions or foundations. It’s certainly a legitimate concern. . . . I don’t smoke. I think it’s bad for you, and I say it. But I don’t think that has any relevance: If they want to contribute to help getting more women elected to office, more power to them.

Q: Do you see women’s issues being more mainstream in this campaign?

A: Well, I hope we’ll get rid of the euphemism of “family issues,” which became a kind of substitute strategy for dealing with women’s concerns in the last presidential election. There is no doubt that women’s issues now are viewed as economic issues, because women are in the workplace or are focused on what’s happening to their family’s standard of living. Therefore, issues like parental leave or day care are not seen as frivolous or optional but essential to a woman--or a man, for that matter--to a family being able to survive. I think that’s healthy.