Getting a Gender Message

By Jane O'Reilly

Politicians affirm that a woman's place is in the voting booth

It was courting time in San Antonio. The suitors came early and stayed late. They made sure that the women staff members who accompanied them were highly visible, flourishing them like bouquets. Addressing the 800 delegates to the convention of the bipartisan National Women's Political Caucus, they offered lyrical tributes to the ability of women to influence the election of the next President of the U.S. And with good reason. Each--Walter Mondale, John Glenn, Gary Hart, Alan Cranston and Ernest Hollings--is a Democratic contender for that very office.

The gender gap--the marked difference between the political views of men voters and the increasingly sizable body of women voters--rang out as the theme of the convention, set to a Texas mariachi beat. The delegates, most of them Congresswomen, state officials and activists, found that women's status as this year's pre-election prom queen was a lot more fun than last year's post-ERA role as wallflower. It was, for one thing, the first time since the Caucus was founded twelve years ago that the guys had come to their party.

On a sunny terrace above the cypress-shaded San Antonio River, four Congresswomen gleefully summed up the moment. Said Democrat Geraldine Ferraro of New York: "We've got the issues, we've got the gender gap on our side, and at long last the men are going to pay attention to us." Republican Congresswomen Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine said that even the White House had begun to take notice. Not a moment too soon. The fourth member of the group, Democrat Barbara Kennelly of Connecticut, had brought both Republican and Democratic delegates to their feet cheering when she pronounced President Ronald Reagan "hopeless" on women's issues.

The hostility to Reagan prompted San Antonio City Councilman Van Archer to complain: "There's just no way in the world I can understand how 200 women who don't shave their legs can claim to speak for the women of America." His remark suggested a poor eye for legs as well as for polls. The women of America, in every social, economic and racial group and in every geographic region, have consistently given President Reagan a poorer performance rating than have men. A New York Times/CBS News poll revealed that among Republicans the discrepancy between men's approval of Reagan and women's is a startling 21 percentage points. Pollsters, politicians and academicians attribute that gap to several factors: women's increasing sense of being economically disadvantaged and their more humanitarian views on social welfare; women's anxiety about war and resistance to military spending; and women's increasing desire for equality and a new independent determination to vote for politicians they consider responsive.

"It all goes back to the realization that women view the world differently from men," says Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, a Democrat. "Women see the whole picture. The economic issues encompass all the traditional women's issues, but doing something about women's poverty won't make the gender gap disappear. Women will still worry that unless we change the old caveman rules, we will all be blown up." If the gender gap turns out to be more permanent than a temporary reaction to a President who is perceived as sexist, then the split could signal a significant change in American political life. Women now constitute 52% of America's voting-age population. In the 1980 presidential election, for the first time, the percentage of women reporting they voted was slightly higher than that of male voters. Women voted significantly differently from men and cast nearly 6 million more ballots.

The distinction between the voting patterns of women and men could, in a close race, determine the next presidential election. Apparently in recognition of that fact, the five Democratic candidates who went wooing in San Antonio displayed all too overt signs of catchup consciousness raising. "I am a feminist," declared Walter Mondale rousingly. A nice thought, but a panel including such leaders of the women's movement as former Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Eleanor Holmes Norton, former head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, pressed for specifics. What, for instance, did Mondale and the other candidates plan to do about curbing defense spending, appointing women to federal posts, enforcing civil rights laws, improving women's economic conditions and ending U.S. involvement in Central America? Diligently liberal responses from all the hopefuls failed to stir much enthusiasm, although Hart managed to provoke the convention's wrath by refusing to observe its time limits. By and large, as Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman observed, the candidates "hardly fire the imagination."

President Reagan inspired both fire and brimstone, with the sharpest attacks coming from two Republican speakers. Caucus Chair Kathy Wilson called the President a "dangerous man" and urged him not to run again. Said Patricia Bailey, a Republican member of the Federal Trade Commission: "Benign bewilderment in response to the women's revolution is a license for bigotry at every level and in every quarter of the land, and that is the lesson of the last three years." In the corridors of the San Antonio Convention Center, where the session was held, women wore buttons reading I'M A REPUBLICAN AND I WANT MY PARTY BACK.

How did a nice man like Ronald Reagan manage to annoy so many women? Pretty easily. He ran on a platform that abandoned the Republican Party's traditional support for the Equal Rights Amendment. He enraged working women when he suggested that part of the nation's unemployment problem was owing to the increase of women in the work force. He consistently lent support to the effort to make abortion illegal. The depth of women's resentment on that issue alone was dramatized in San Antonio at a lunch at which Republican Senator Robert Packwood was praised for his opposition to a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Some women suddenly found themselves weeping over baskets of fried chicken, as they expressed relief that except for a few still stormy skirmishes, the Supreme Court's decision upholding freedom of choice probably means that wrenching battle is finished.

The kindest explanation for Reagan's gender gap comes from those women who, like Congresswoman Snowe, try to see it as a generation gap. Says Snowe: "He's just not capable of understanding the problems of today's women." But groups like the Women's Truth Squad on Reagan of the National Organization for Women take a harsher view, with their detailed indictments of Reagan's positions on women's issues. NOW cites Reagan's plans to reduce affirmative-action requirements and equal-employment regulations, his opposition to programs designed to produce educational equity, and his cuts in social welfare programs. Women, along with children, constitute a disproportionate number of the nation's poor.

The White House publicly rejected the message from San Antonio. Faith Ryan Whittlesey, Assistant to the President for public liaison, said the N.W.P.C. is "clearly not in the American mainstream." Whittlesey argued that the Administration's gains on the economy are especially beneficial to women. She wondered, not without reason, "why the Democrats are not holding meetings to find out why they are losing male voters." However, White House sources admit that women's issues have become a matter of high-level concern. Responsibility for dealing with the gender gap has been turned over to Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Deaver with orders, say sources, to "blunt it--by substance and symbolism."

Both were evident last week. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler testified on Capitol Hill for a bill providing for enforcement of child-support payments. A group of Republican Congresswomen met with White House staffers to discuss child-support and pension reform. Schneider called the meeting "a significant signal that the White House is serious" about portions, at least, of the Economic Equity Act. This is a complex package of legislation on pension reform, tax relief, insurance discrimination and child-care issues developed by the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues.

Democrats should not begin rehearsing Happy Days Are Here Again, warns Ann Lewis, political director of the Democratic National Committee. "The gender gap is just an opportunity. It doesn't mean women have given the Democratic Party their proxy, and the gap will exist only as long as women perceive there is a real difference between parties."

Another message of San Antonio is that for either party, promises are no longer enough. Women are looking for a commitment not only to women's issues but also to women candidates. Women's organizations are now stressing that the gender gap will be an opportunity lost unless women back up the opinion polls with their votes, and that message is getting across. Last April a coalition of some 40 major groups, including the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women, announced a major drive to register women voters. Will the gender gap translate in the next election into increasing votes for women themselves? Nobody knows yet, but that is certainly what politically active women have in mind. In 1971, there were 15 women in Congress, 362 women in state legislatures and seven mayors of cities with a population of 30,000 or more. Now, the numbers are 24 in Congress, 992 in state bodies and 76 mayors. Women are no longer ready or willing to swoon into the arms of the nearest male defender, Democrat or Republican. "What's different now," says Schneider, "is that we are looking to ourselves."

--By Jane O'Reilly This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.