The Subtle Use of Sexism to Bring Down Women Candidates

Six years ago, California elected its first women U.S. senators. One of them, Barbara Boxer, is running for reelection, and she is the front-runner. Her colleague, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, won reelection in 1996. Rep. Jane Harman has entered the race for governor. It is thus possible that California’s top three government posts could be occupied by women, a historical first.

It would thus seem that Boxer should not have to worry about sexism, but rather the likelihood that she will be portrayed as “too liberal” by a conservative, Republican opponent. This is all too predictable, but can be especially effective when the liberal happens to be a woman.

Harman’s chief vulnerability may be her inexperience in statewide politics. But, on the surface of it, this would not seem to be a insurmountable disadvantage, since one of her primary opponents is similarly inexperienced. Yet, when coupled with her gender, it may carry more weight.

Gender still matters.

There is reason for Boxer, Harman and other women candidates to resist overconfidence, even if women do make up a majority of the voting pool. In 1992, the “Year of the Woman,” 11 women won Senate nominations and 47 were elected to Congress, nearly double the previous high. But, four years later, female progress stalled, with representation leveling off at 10 senators and 48 congresswomen--and, most telling, just two state governors (remember Kathleen Brown’s landslide defeat in California?). In November 1996, women candidates competed in less than half of California’s 52 congressional races--and lost in nearly two-thirds of them.

Recalling the landmark Richard M. Nixon-Helen Gahagan Douglas race for the U.S. Senate in 1950 proves instructive in showing how far California has come, yet how vulnerable women candidates remain to subtle remnants of sexism.

When Douglas challenged Nixon for an open Senate seat in 1950, she was one of nine women in Congress. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was the sole female U.S. senator. Obviously, Douglas faced more obstacles than a woman candidate confronts today. Then, a woman politician was “looked on in many places as sufficiently odd to warrant a place in a zoo or museum,” Douglas complained.

Still, like Boxer, Douglas was the front-runner, with a big edge in Democratic registration and strong name recognition as a result of her three terms in Congress, her acting career and her marriage to film star Melvyn Douglas.

Her victory or defeat hinged on how many Democratic males would switch to Nixon. Many men supported her in the congressional races but had serious doubts about elevating her to a statewide post. The outgoing Democratic senator, Sheridan Downey, using code language, said that Douglas lacked the “fundamental ability and qualifications” for the Senate. The press joined in, referring to her as “the gushy congresswoman,” a “bubble blower,” “a scolding woman” and a “fluttering satellite” of her party’s left wing--and, most memorably, “the Pink Lady.”

Editorial cartoonists frequently portrayed her in girlish dresses. A Santa Clara columnist paid her a backhanded compliment by noting that she had arrived on time for a campaign appearance, “sufficiently remarkable in any woman.” Los Angeles Times’ political kingmaker Kyle Palmer advised her primary opponent to “slap her around a bit . . . in a political sense, of course.”

Nixon was delighted when Douglas emerged from a tough Democratic primary as the victor. He knew she was vulnerable not only because of her liberal voting record but also because of her gender. Still, he worried about how to conduct a campaign against a woman, something he and most other candidates had never done. “You can’t get into a name-calling contest with a woman,” his campaign manager, Murray Chotiner, advised. “The cost in votes would be prohibitive.”

Nixon himself observed that he could not be “ungallant” in his criticism of Douglas, a revealing comment in itself. Any gender-based attacks would have to be subtle. Nixon would struggle with this concession continually, because, at heart, he had what one aide called “a total scorn for female mentality.”

During the campaign, before general audiences, Nixon would sometimes suggest that hard campaigning or long hours at the office sure were hard for a woman. Or he would complain that he could not attack Douglas as intensely as he wanted because she was a lady. In private, off-the-record meetings, he might assert that Douglas was “pink right down to her underwear” or, with a raised eyebrow, suggest that Douglas and Harry S. Truman were in bed together in more than a political sense.

Generally, however, he let associates and sympathetic reporters gently raise gender issues. His campaign directors often referred to Douglas’ acting career, suggesting she was a “comedienne” or capable of only reading a script and emoting on cue. Evelle J. Younger, then a top GOP official in Los Angeles, wrote that Douglas “expects to devote her campaign to convincing the citizenry that, being a woman, she has the right to change her mind, and her record.”

As did Nixon’s aides, reporters and editorial writers lamented Douglas’ “feminine” qualities without claiming that women were unqualified for office. Palmer wrote a well-circulated column depicting Douglas as an “emotional artist” who had been “emotionally attracted” to left-wing doctrine. He mentioned one occasion at which she had wept in public and called her a “veritable political butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.”

Although polling data do not exist on this subject, there is little doubt that her gender cost Douglas votes. More crucial to her defeat, however, was the charge of being a communist sympathizer. Nixon was undeterred by any campaign manners in openly smearing the Pink Lady on this count.

Yet, even here, gender played a role in a way that Boxer and other women candidates must be wary of. Douglas was susceptible to attack as “soft on communism” partly because she was a woman. Supposedly, she was not “tough” and was emotionally prone to embrace dubious causes.

Today, for many, the old stereotypes still hold sway, particularly the view that women are overly emotional, think with their hearts not their heads or are drawn to irrational idealism. Opponents will not have to put a gender spin on it; for some voters, the old cliches still apply.

Perhaps that’s why female candidates have treaded water since 1992. A recent study found that the proportion of women on Capitol Hill, a little greater than 10%, was actually below the average for freely elected national assemblies worldwide. Two-thirds of the women in the House of Representatives are concentrated in seven states. Women, in general, have made no progress in much of the South and the border states.

By contrast, California and women in politics have come a long way since Douglas’ effort in 1950, but 1998 may show us how far they still have to go in the state and across the country.