Their Sacrifices and Successes Make Life Better for Women and Families
 by Nancy Schatz Alton

In 1991, when Christine Gregoire was asked to run for attorney general in Washington state, she studied the idea, and then decided against it. “My husband and I sat down with our two daughters and I said I wasn’t going to run for [their sake]. My older daughter – she was about to enter her teenage years – left the table and stomped up to her room,” Gregoire says. “I asked her what was going on and she said to me, ‘You’ve always said there’s nothing I can’t do, except now: If I have two daughters someday, I can’t run for office.’ I said ‘Let me think about it.’ Two weeks later I decided to run.”

Serving three terms as Washington state attorney general, Gregoire is now the Governor of Washington. Her daughters again had a direct impact on her bid for office. She wasn’t willing to run for the U. S. Senate or the Washington state governor’s office until her daughters completed high school. Up until now, she felt she needed to be more readily available than she could be from Washington, D.C.

In a world where a woman’s daughter urges her to run for office, it’s easy to say “We’ve come a long way, baby.” In Washington’s progressive political climate, girls believe they, too, can be politicians when they grow up. Washington state leads the nation in a number of areas: In 2001, we were the first state to have two women senators in the U.S. Senate: Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. In 1998, U.S. Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn was the first woman to run for House majority leader. Our state legislature is among the highest percentage of seats in the country filled with women, at 32 percent. One third of King County’s suburban mayors are women, and five out of nine Washington Supreme Court judges are female.

Washington state history has created a political climate that is more apt to include women. As a result, Washington’s women politicians have been put in decision-making positions that positively impact women in the United States. Still, the complicated nature of women’s lives and the 24/7-work schedule of an American politician make the decision to run for office a tough call for a woman. Although other states look at our statistics with envy, our state legislature has reached a 10-year low when it comes to the number of women on its floor. A survey of 10 Ballard High School female seniors by the Ballard News-Tribune newspaper showed that none of these young women wish to become politicians, nor do they believe it’s important to have women represent them in political office. Why do women shy away from the political life, even in a state where it’s clearly not unusual to see women on the ballot?

 

Electing Women

Washington state has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to women and politics. When the state was a mere territory, a motion to enfranchise white women lost by just one vote in 1853. In 1910, women secured suffrage a whole decade ahead of the national ratification of the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote on a national level. In 1926, Seattle elected the first woman mayor of any major American city, Bertha Knight Landes.

“We were on the cutting edge of women’s rights early in the state’s history,” says Paul Berendt, the Democratic state chairman for Washington. “We’re a pioneer state. I believe in the West in general, the contributions of women to family income came sooner and their place in society has always been celebrated more than in other locations.”

The progressive movement at the turn of the 20th-century – which spearheaded major reforms such as the regulation of railroads and a state constitutional amendment to authorize citizen initiatives – also made our political climate more receptive to women, says Professor Lance LeLoup, a political scientist at Washington State University.

Cathy Allen, who runs the Connections Group, a political consulting firm based in Seattle, believes women’s success in our state lies in the marketplace. “Women here were equal sooner in the marketplace. It was a matter of economic power,” she says. “Out West, you were more likely to find women moving into business. Women have been moving and shaking out here longer.”

Still, Gregoire’s decision to wait to run for governor until her daughters graduated from high school gives a glimpse of the difficulties women face in politics. An Idaho study of potential candidates found that 37 percent of men basically woke up one day, said, “I’d be a great legislator,” and decided to run for office. Thirty-seven percent of the women had to be asked multiple times to enter the political fray. In another study of men and women who have comparable qualifications, 57 percent of the men said they were qualified for office while only 36 percent of the women felt the same way.

It’s a proven fact that when women run for office, a higher percentage of them win, as compared to men running for office. So, why aren’t more women running for office? Women often wait for the “right time” to run for office: They feel they aren’t prepared yet, they need to get this degree first or finish that job, or their children aren’t the right age. On average, it takes a woman two years and two months to decide to run for office, according to Allen. “Women are filled with myths: I can’t raise money, we’re not as smart as guys, I won’t be able to get the party endorsement, I’ll never win,” she says. “Women are always in need of erasing tapes that say they can’t and rerecording ones that say they can.” Both the Connections Group and the Women’s Political Caucus train women to run for office. The most important work they do is building up a woman’s self-esteem and her own courageousness.

The amount of money we pay our legislators is another concern. In 2004, a Washington state legislator made $34,227 a year; many women can’t afford to take the pay cut needed to be a politician. Others aren’t willing to expose their families to the personal attacks that come with running for office. Add to this campaign fundraising, and the political life looks a little bleak. “I spend far too much time and energy on raising money, which is very frustrating. I would rather spend my time listening to people about what needs to be done,” says Gregoire.

Senator Cantwell believes campaign finance reform will lure more women into running for office at a national level. “There are groups like Emily’s List [which gives money to national Democratic candidates who are pro-choice] that have made it easier,” she says. “Certainly at the national level, the amount of money spent on campaigns is a stumbling block.”

Perhaps the number-one reason women shy away from political office is the workaholic nature of a political life. This is one of the reasons Congresswoman Dunn decided to retire this year. “This is a job that’s all-consuming. You are literally schizophrenic. You spend 60 percent of your time in D.C. and 40 percent at home, and when you’re at home, on weekends you’re working,” she says. “I’ve done that for 12 years. Maybe I’ll have some weekends free for a change.” She also looks forward to giving back in a different way, perhaps by serving on a corporate board. This mirrors how many women feel: There are a million easier and quite rewarding ways to give back to one’s community without running for political office.

That said, women have been part of Washington’s political life since it was a territory, and voters have been electing women to office in record numbers since the 1960s. Washingtonians vote for women over men for many reasons: Women are perceived as more honest, as better listeners and as people who will get the job done. Women are seen as not part of the status quo, which is often a good thing in a voter’s mind. Republican women are more likely to cross over to vote for Democratic women and vice versa. “Women are more believable talking about the issues that are important to our state: education, healthcare, pocketbook issues, tax fairness and choice,” says Democratic State Chairman Berendt.

Senator Cantwell jokingly says the water here is the reason women garner so many votes. “Actually, I think we have a very progressive make-up of Washingtonians who want change and definitely feel that government should be more open and responsive,” she says. “There’s a lot of independence, and people who want reform in government think women will clean up government more than men.”

Governor Gregoire feels the key to a woman’s ballot success is her ability to listen to her constituents. At a recent national governors meeting, she talked with the women governors from other states (the United States has nine women governors, an all-time high). “They went and listened [to their constituents] and they set about addressing those issues,” she says. “[Their campaign issue were a] reflection of what they heard and they came up with good new ideas. People thought they were honest about issues and that they would go and get it done.”

Women’s Work

When the most recent Washington women arrived on the national political scene, women at that level were still a novelty. When Senator Murray was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, the number of women jumped from two to six. “When six women were elected, I think the [male] senators really wanted to go out of their way to make sure we were treated equally and got good assignments,” says Murray, who was placed on the Appropriations Committee as a freshman senator. “Few people were ever put on the Appropriations Committee [as freshman senators], which gives me tremendous seniority now. It helped to be a woman then.”

Congresswoman Dunn, who was first elected in 1993, seconds this opinion. “Since women were unusual, we were often given special responsibilities,” she says. “I was the only freshman to serve on the high-profile Congressional Reform Committee.”

In the U.S. Senate, there is now a woman on every committee. “It makes a difference when you hear from a woman; your perspective is really important,” says Senator Murray. “When I was appointed to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, we had an increasing number of women in the service and the committee didn’t reflect that before.”

Senator Cantwell was the third woman ever appointed to the Judiciary Committee. “Think about how many rights for women are decided by this committee and yet, we’ve only had three women in the history of this country on this committee,” she says. “We’ve come a long way – we all get together once a month – but we have a long way to go to make sure those women’s voices are heard.”

Congresswoman Dunn says women still don’t belong to the “boy’s club.” “We don’t have access to the same informal network that men have, such as going to the gym and playing basketball together. That’s a downside,” she says.

U.S. women senators and congresswomen haven’t achieved a critical mass yet, where a woman’s perspective is clearly heard. Women become a critical mass at about 20 percent, creating a difference in the tone and in the equity of a [political] body, according to political consultant Allen. “It’s not that women are necessarily better. If you don’t have a body that looks like you, acts like you, talks like you, is you, then your values are not at the table,” Allen says. “Nothing is as good as being there in terms of representing issues that are your own.”

Debbie Walsh of the Center for American Women and Politics says even male colleagues believe women make a difference when they are in office. “They change not just the nature of the process of politics, they open up the system,” she said during a recent interview on KUOW’s weekday talk show The Conversation. “They see themselves as there to represent people who aren’t normally at the table. They bring the concerns not just of women but also the concerns of normally under-represented people.”

Issues and Perspectives

Women bring different issues to the table, issues that aren’t even brought up by men in office. “There’s no doubt about that,” says Senator Murray. “Breast cancer research has increased tenfold since women have come into the Senate. When I came into the Senate, health care research for women was minimal. All the studies were done with men.”

Since 1992, the national health budget for women has increased by 32 percent. “No one ever asked the question, ‘Why do we spend this research money on male studies? Why don’t we spend them on female studies?’” says Senator Cantwell.

On the Senate Transportation Committee, Senator Murray brings her perspective as a mom. “I’m coming from the perspective of making [transportation] efficient so it works for families and people in all walks of life. We [moms] don’t go to work from 8 to 5. We have to bring the kids to daycare, the cat ran out of food and we need to run out and pick some up,” she says. “We know how to make it better for our family. How do we make it better for our community as well?”

Women legislators are also more likely to work across party lines to get things done. For example, Republican Congresswomen Dunn worked with Democrats to author and pass the Amber Alert Law, which empowers law enforcement, the media and the public to combat child abduction by sending out immediate, up-to-date information.

Mitchell and the Women’s Political Caucus believe that when women are at the table where decisions are made, those decisions lead to better policies for women and families, regardless of party affiliations. Allen’s Connections Group trains women all over the world to run for office. It helped with campaigns that led to the election of the first women to the Moroccan Legislature; 35 women won. “Within months of women winning, issues such as literacy, clean water and other environmental concerns, these things began to change. In a year and a half there’s been a dramatic decrease in illiteracy in Morocco,” says Allen.

Several countries have quotas that mandate the number of women in office at a national level. In fact, the United States would like the new Iraqi government to include a goal that 25 percent of the people in the national parliament should be women. “We’re going to watch with interest to see if they meet it,” says Congresswoman Dunn, “because we need to figure out how to do that here.”

For the first time ever, the United States has fallen behind the world’s average for the number of women in office at a national level, which is 15 percent. Right now, we’re at 14 percent, and the United States ranks 59th in the world for women’s representation at the national level. We’re ranked below Angola, Botswana, the People’s Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, to name a few countries.

Both Allen and Mitchell believe we’ve fallen behind at both the national level and in Washington state because we aren’t “infilling” at the necessary levels: We aren’t training and recruiting women to run for office at the entry level, such as the school board and city council. “We need to keep those feeder crops of incoming candidates coming,” says Allen. “Now we’re back in the trenches recruiting women.”

This is good news for voters wondering when a woman will become president. Since the 1960s, the Gallup Poll has been asking if people would vote for a woman for president and the number has gone steadily up. Senator Cantwell believes she’ll see a woman president in her lifetime. “I think it’s about building up the bench. From when I was first elected in 1986, the state legislature went from about 23 women legislators to 40-something. Then when you think about the number of women governors now [a record nine], we’ve got a lot more women to pick from and women who might ascend to that role,” she says. “If you can cultivate that kind of environment – two women senators and Chris Gregoire [hypothetically] as governor – why can’t you have a woman president?”

Washington state will continue to lead the way for women politicians, and will continue to provide a fine blueprint to other states looking to elect more women to office. If electing women to office becomes the norm in every state, a victory speech by a female presidential candidate may one day become a reality.

To read more, visit Seattle Women’s Magazine at:

http://www.seattlewomanmagazine.com