It's Our Turn

By MARGARET CARLSON

At last, not being one of the boys looks like an advantage. It's the boys, after all, who are responsible for the federal deficit, nuclear waste dumps and the savings and loan debacle, to name but a few of the disasters proliferating in the national In basket. Women politicians, who suffered from not being insiders, are benefiting from having been outsiders while the mess was made.

Cleaning up messes has long been relegated to women's work, as have certain other issues that have suddenly risen to the top of the political agenda, like worrying over the young, the aged, the sick and the environment. Surveys show that women are perceived to be better than men on these issues, as well as to have higher ethical standards and greater honesty. "Our stereotype," says Democratic Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, "is finally in." Pollster Mervin Field goes further, predicting that the 1990s will be the "decade of women in politics."

The decade is off to a fast start. In 1990 women entered races in record numbers, even exceeding the rush of 1972, when Senate passage of the Equal Rights Amendment gave women the incentive to run. This year 11 were candidates for Governor, 87 for Congress, eight for the Senate, and hundreds more for local office. Compare that with the paucity of female officeholders before Election Day: three women Governors (in Vermont, Nebraska and Arizona), 28 of the 435 Representatives in the House and just two of 100 Senators.

In California alone, 14 women jumped into campaigns: for Governor, lieutenant governor, state treasurer and insurance commissioner, and the mayoral races in Berkeley and San Jose. Five women ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and two for California secretary of state. Says Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus: "Women have been helping men get elected for years. We just decided to do it for ourselves."

The explosion of office seekers in California may have been due, in part, to the state's low threshold for boredom. "A woman candidate is automatically more interesting," says William Schneider, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, "a flash of fuchsia in a sea of gray." Pollster Field says when people sense that "politically, things are going to hell in a hand basket," a woman candidate becomes more appealing: "By not being part of the problem, she comes across as part of the solution."

Thus, when Houston became overbuilt, its freeways impassable and its streets filthy, voters picked their first woman mayor, Kathy Whitmire. "When people are frustrated and saying something needs to be done," she says, "they are willing to turn to somebody different." After the Texas economy went bust in the '80s, an unprecedented number of women were elected to straighten things out, including the mayors of Dallas, San Antonio and Corpus Christi. This year Ann Richards, who became the first woman to hold statewide office in Texas in a half-century when she was elected state treasurer in 1982, hoped for the same voter response in her knock-down, drag-out battle for the governorship.

Just as ERA was the galvanizing force in 1972, a major impetus for women this year was the Supreme Court's Webster decision in July 1989, which opened the way for states to pass laws restricting abortion. Of the 76 women still in congressional and statewide campaigns after the primaries, only three -- Governor Kay Orr of Nebraska, who was seeking re-election; Joan Finney, running for Governor of Kansas; and Senate candidate M. Jane Brady in Delaware -- did not offer themselves as pro-choice candidates.

"Women run on women's issues, like abortion," says Sharon Rodine, president of the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC). "It's the way in." As a rule, they don't cross over to the male power center once elected. For example, a solid majority of women in the Congress stood behind Democratic Representative Barbara Boxer of California in 1989 when she took on Illinois' powerful Henry Hyde in an attempt to restore Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for victims of rape or incest. The Boxer amendment passed both houses of Congress, but was vetoed by the President. Although they were unsuccessful, fully 70% of the women Representatives voted to override the veto, in contrast to just 54% of the men. Similarly, it is in legislatures with very few women, like Pennsylvania and Louisiana, that some of the most restrictive abortion laws have been passed.

When women candidates suggest that they should be trusted more on an issue they know about -- for instance, reproductive rights -- men cry foul, despite the fact that for years they have been touting their war records as a way to show how much they can be trusted on national defense. During the primary campaign for California's Democratic gubernatorial nomination, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein said that as a woman she would be more steadfast in her support of abortion than her pro-choice male opponent. For that temerity, she was called sexist. The New York Times editorialized that such stereotyping was "precisely the kind of bias that women have fought against for years." (Unsuccessfully, the paper should have added.) One might think that women could be forgiven for taking advantage of bias when it finally works in their favor.

While abortion has been a galvanizing issue for women candidates, it is far from the only one: these days, there are plenty of problems to go around. Lots of men care about education, health care, pay equity, child care and parental leave, of course, but in a theoretical, not a life-altering, way. As Schroeder puts it: "Most Congressmen come from Leave It to Beaver families and go back to the district and talk to Leave It to Beaver fathers at the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, in other words, to people just like themselves. Women's issues aren't on the radar screen." In addition, powerful men want to project power. Fighting for the right to take time off to care for a newborn or an aging parent is not the read-my-lips image that wins elections.

Male politicians may not see the hundreds of Roseannes out there, or the thousands of pregnant women with no prenatal care, but female candidates do. * Since Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin introduced a maternal and infant welfare bill in 1918, women have often been instrumental in passing the kind of legislation overlooked by men. Women in Congress have been the sponsors of bills that set up the network of veterans' hospitals, assisted middle-income families in financing homes, reformed pension laws and funded education for the disabled.

Running against a woman is still something of a novelty. White men in blue suits know how to run against other white men in blue suits; they've been doing it for years. But throw a woman into the mix and, to some men, it's like putting cleats and a helmet on a cheerleader and sending her onto the field. Does this mean he can sack her? Says Michele Davis, executive director of the Republican Governors Association: "It's a new game, and men haven't cracked the code yet."

Maybe so, but some men have decided that gridiron rules do apply: if she can run, he can tackle. In his vice-presidential campaign against former New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, George Bush went easy at the beginning to avoid looking like a bully. But then, apprehensive about appearing to be a wimp, he overcompensated toward the end with his "tried to kick a little ass" remark. Female candidates have been called "cute," "debutantes," "an honorary lesbian," desirous of being crowned "queen" and other reductive terms to make it seem that their place is anywhere but at the top of a political ticket. Says Richard Shingles, who is writing a book on gender and race in politics: "It's risky, but an opponent will often try to reinforce a lingering image of a woman as the weaker sex, make her seem childlike or frivolous."

When this happens, responding in kind can be politically fatal. An aggressive woman is quickly perceived as a bitch, while an aggressive man is, well, an aggressive man. Pollster Celinda Lake conducted studies in which observers were asked to rate men and women reading the same text at identical decibel levels. "Women are almost always described as more aggressive, louder and in the end shrill," Lake says.

But go too far in the other direction -- display vanity, get emotional, or, worst of all, cry -- and a woman has reinforced the most damaging stereotype of all: that she is, as Dr. Edgar Berman, Hubert Humphrey's personal physician, said in a letter to a Congresswoman, a victim of "raging, hormonal imbalance of the periodic lunar cycle." Women must be careful not to be seen gesturing with their hands, blinking in any way that could be construed as eyelash batting, giggling or looking in a mirror. When the NWPC lightly suggested that women candidates ignore the wine at fund raisers not only because it might affect their motor skills but also because it has calories, the group was inundated with indignant letters. Says spokeswoman Chung Seto: "There was outrage that we would acknowledge that appearance counts for something." Meanwhile, a multimillion-dollar political consulting industry has organized itself around just how politicians should look and act on TV, right down to the choice of a power tie.

In women's campaigns, money remains as serious a problem as sexism. "There is no money in women's issues," says Schroeder. "There isn't one PAC organized around the Women's Health Equity Act." Raising money, since women have less experience at it, is also harder. Says former Republican National Committee co-chairwoman Maureen Reagan, an indefatigable fund raiser: "Women still feel they ought to say thank you for their paychecks, so it's hard to get them in the habit of making campaign contributions and doing it for more than spare change." Nonetheless, fund-raising operations -- notably EMILY's List (Early Money Is Like Yeast), the Hollywood Women's Political Committee and the Women's Campaign Fund -- are slowly changing the gender deficit. EMILY's List, founded by Ellen Malcolm, has raised more than $800,000 in 1990, in contrast to $650,000 two years earlier. Special-interest groups like the National Abortion Rights Action League have formed political-action committees that contribute heavily to pro-choice candidates.

Money follows power, and as women accumulate more of it their treasuries will grow. According to Jane Danowitz, executive director of the Women's Campaign Fund, when women run for the big-ticket offices in which Big Business has an interest, "gender is no bar. Money takes notice, as it did in gubernatorial races in California and Texas, and the Senate race in Hawaii."

If female qualities are slowly becoming a political plus, Geraldine Ferraro may eventually be remembered as the first woman vice-presidential candidate, not as the only one. And the next presidential bid by a woman will not just be remembered for having ended in tears, as Schroeder's did in 1987. Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan, author of In A Different Voice, a landmark study of gender differences, argues that women have greater moral strength, a stronger ethic of care and overriding concern for making and maintaining relationships -- all qualities of a good politician. She has even said that feelings -- and, yes, tears if it should come to that -- have their place in a man's world. Meantime, the NWPC tackles crying head on by recommending that women talk about a tear-inducing subject for so long that it loses its poignancy, or, failing that, take deep breaths or change the subject. The women now entering politics may justly consider weeping a phony issue, but it is a sign of improving times that at least the question is on the table.