Can Women in the Senate Make a Difference? You Bet! : Congress: While men engage in ritual legislative combat, the other half of America gets ignored. Or so it used to be.

There are certain questions that even friends will ask, again and again, of women candidates running for the Senate. “Do you really think women can make a difference? How can you go on being outsiders if you get inside? Won’t you just be co-opted by the system?”

Take it from one who has been there: Women can make a tremendous difference. It makes a difference when one woman senator speaks up about the reality of women’s lives, about the economic problems that confront older women and the need to pay more attention to women’s health. It made a difference that one woman senator spoke up and told the truth about sexual harassment during Anita Hill’s ordeal.

I know that I’ve been able to make a difference by listening to people talk about the issues they confront in daily life and then working to turn those issues into national policy. For example, I heard from women whose husbands had entered nursing homes for long-term care. After 30, 40, even 50 years of marriage, they had to choose between poverty or divorce. So I filed a bill to ease the problem of spousal impoverishment, making it possible for those spouses to hold onto just enough of the family assets to live a decent life. And then I worked with good friends in the Senate to get the bill passed.

Yes, there are good guys on Capitol Hill--men who understand the importance of these issues and make successful action possible. We have to make clear that the movement we represent is not women versus men; it is about change. By electing more women to the Senate, I believe we can bring about change.

Voters want an end to politics as spectacle, which is more noise than action. Too often the Senate gets bogged down in ritualized combat, like a medieval tournament, with each side roaring defiance and preoccupied with keeping score. But when the tournament ends, real life has not changed. Congress can’t go on playing insider games while the economy grinds down and people’s lives grow desperate. Congress can’t pass rules that apply to every other business and occupation and not live up those rules themselves.

The Administration can’t claim that they honor family values in their rhetoric, then deny them by their actions. If they truly care about making families stronger, then get the Family and Medical Leave Act passed, instead of threatening a presidential veto. If they truly honor fathers and mothers, then pay attention to the needs for long-term care. If they truly want to reward hard work, then act so that hard-working Americans can get jobs.

Women have experience in making the personal political, of bringing our private values with us into public life. I am looking forward to the day when more women join me in bringing our values and our voices to the Senate. That would be the new world order America has been waiting for.