Female Politicians: Just How Far Have They Truly Come?

The anecdote was delicious, the kind that always goes over big at gatherings of ambitious women because it confirms their suspicions about the continuing sexism they face, no matter how lofty the professional heights they reach.

It came during a luncheon speech by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and oft-quoted expert on politics and voter perceptions. Her audience was the National Women’s Political Caucus, a bipartisan group of politicians and activists that held its annual convention last week at the Biltmore Hotel.

Jamieson’s story concerned last year’s Republican National Convention. She happened to be sitting in front of two male reporters at a briefing by Torie Clarke, George Bush’s campaign spokeswoman. After Clarke’s briefing, Jamieson overheard the reporters talking. She strained her ears, hoping for some trenchant political analysis.

“Whadja think?” said one.

“Nice legs,” replied his colleague.

“A bit too skinny for my taste.”

Mind you, as Jamieson told this story last week, Clarke was on the dais to her right, having just completed her own luncheon remarks. Clarke winced a bit. She had just made the point that the media pay far too much attention to the way Hillary Rodham Clinton looks and not enough to what she does. Americans, said Clarke, are tired of the media’s obsession with style over substance. They wouldn’t care if Rocky and Bullwinkle were in charge of the health-care task force, Clarke said, just as long as this country gets a rational health-care policy.

(I think she’s wrong. After all, Rocky and Bullwinkle are boys. Try putting Jane Jetson and Wilma Flintstone in charge, and watch the fashion barbs fly.)

In any case, Jamieson’s convention anecdote resonated for this group of political animals. Women shook their heads in resignation; they hooted and laughed.

Was it an overreaction to idle chatter between a couple of guys? Not really. It’s that kind of casual sexism that leads to more public insult.

Jamieson offered as an example the headline on a July 4 Philadelphia Inquirer profile of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, newly nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court:

“At Last,” it read, “Justice for the Baton Twirler.”

*

My tablemates at lunch were typical of the 1,000 or so women who had come from around the country to attend the convention.

Elissa Royal had recently run for a seat in the Massachusetts Legislature. Virginia Johannessen was a contender in the recent primary for Michael Woo’s City Council seat in L.A.’s 13th District.

Both had been trounced; neither was sure she would run for office again.

So much of political success, it seems, is unrelated to a candidate’s positions on issues. Royal, for instance, felt she had lost because her opponent and his family had deep social ties in the area and she didn’t. The crushing blow, she thought, was that he was a well-loved coach. It really didn’t matter what she told voters, said Royal--they were going to vote for the coach.

This theme--that issues take a back seat to other factors--cropped up again and again in the workshops I observed: If you lose an election, it probably is because you didn’t work hard enough, raise enough money, control the debates or wear the right clothes.

In a workshop called “Making the Media Work For You,” a city councilwoman from rural Pennsylvania stood to ask a question of panelists Clarke and MTV executive Deborah Johns. The woman had run for mayor against the incumbent and lost. When she declared her candidacy, she’d been featured on an inside page of the local newspaper. When he announced, he got a picture on the front page and a breathless announcement that he’d conquered cancer.

“ I’m legally blind,” she said, but that didn’t seem to count for anything with the local press. How could she fight this unfairness?

“The challenger has to work three times as hard,” said Clarke.

“You’ve got to do a total post-mortem,” offered Johns.

The woman was unconvinced. “I did all that,” she insisted.

No one dared suggest the obvious: Maybe voters didn’t like what she stood for.

That happens, too.

*

Obviously, the outlook has improved for politicians and would-be appointees who happen to be women. Their number has more than tripled in the U.S. Senate. And it’s likely to double on the Supreme Court.

There is momentum out there, and much of the talk last week at the Biltmore was about building on it for the 1994 elections, not squandering it.

At a luncheon speech on Friday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a pragmatist if ever there was one, told the convention she hopes women will constitute a quarter of the Senate by the end of her daughter’s lifetime, half by the end of her granddaughter’s.

“Whadja think?” I asked the woman sitting next to me.

“Great speech,” she replied.

Right.