Is a Woman's Place in the House?

On a crisp October morning, Geraldine Ferraro is frying eggs for her family.

Like many other housewives in the New York borough of Queens, she prides herself on being a good mother and wife, cooking breakfast each day for her husband and children and always trying to be home for dinner. But Ferraro is spending her time between meals these days doing something that few women in Queens--or elsewhere--have considered: running for Congress.

She lives in the "Archie Bunker" district, so called because it includes the streets lined with stucco houses that are shown at the beginning of All in the Family. The mostly working-class district is populated by Irish, Italians and Germans, along with pockets of blacks. Last spring Ferraro, 43, quit her job as an assistant district attorney, hired a campaign manager and opened her headquarters. Says she: "I wasn't going to run this campaign over a kitchen table." To help finance her race for the seat vacated after 32 years by the retirement of Democrat James Delaney, she dipped into her savings for $115,000. Although Democratic leaders supported a man in the primary, she won and now stands a good chance of beating Republican Alfred DelliBovi, 32, in next week's election.

Her husband John, a real estate executive, has been, she says, "kind of like the Rock of Gibraltar." If she wins, she will rent an apartment in Washington. He will continue to live in Queens with Daughter Laura, 12. Donna, 16, will be away at college; John Jr., 14, will be at prep school.

Geraldine Ferraro is one of only 47 women nominated for the House and Senate this year, a startlingly small number after a decade of feminist attempts to break old stereotypes. Indeed, in 1962 there were 20 women in Congress--18 in the House and two in the Senate. But next week women will probably win only 18 seats in the House and none in the Senate. Says South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Nominee Nancy Stevenson: "If there's any movement, it's been backward."

Many women are heartened, however, by the gains at the local level. Connecticut's Ella Grasso, the first woman to win a governorship in her own right, says these victories will percolate women into office in a few years. Adds Georgetown University Politics Professor Jeane Kirkpatrick: "Women just are not able to start at the top, where the prejudices haven't disappeared." But the number of women winning local elections is not inspiring: women now hold 9% of the seats in state legislatures, 2% of the state judgeships, 3% of the county commission offices, 8% of the mayoral and local council offices and two governorships (in Connecticut and Washington).

Why are there so few Geraldine Ferraros? Women have definite assets as candidates--for example, voters generally regard them as more honest than men. But a bevy of obstacles keeps women from competing on an equal footing with men for support from party leaders and, more important, from voters. Says Sarah Weddington, Jimmy Carter's new assistant for women's issues: "It is very discouraging to look at the number of women who will be serving in the next Congress."

Chief among the women's problems is getting their fair share of the mother's milk of politics--money. Women are less likely than men to make large donations. Sharon Sharp, Republican nominee for Illinois secretary of state, was approached after a speech by a woman in an expensive suit and flowing fur coat who excitedly thrust a check at her. It was for $5. Jane Eskind, who has the uphill task of opposing Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker in Tennessee, has had to rely on her own money ($100,000 so far). "Men are more comfortable contributing large amounts," she says. "They also have access to it."

Nor are women tuned in to the unions, business political-action committees or the old-boy network, which help men candidates raise sizable chunks of money. It becomes a catch-22 situation: women find it hard to attract heavy contributions because they seem less likely to win than male opponents, and women are less likely to win because they cannot raise big money. Audrey Sheppard of the Washington consulting firm of Rothstein/Buckley reports: "Where women were able to raise the money and run adequate campaigns, they were very competitive."

The old-boy network hurts women further by excluding them from power. "When those smoke-filled rooms open," says New Jersey Republican Congresswoman Millicent Fen wick, "there's hardly ever a woman inside." As Susan and Martin Tolchin wrote in their book Clout--Womanpower and Politics, "The smoke-filled rooms, bour-bon-and-branch-water rites and all-night poker games exclude women from the fellowship and cronyism that seal the bonds of power." Says former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug:

"Most women who do get backing are running in districts that the party feels are impossible to win. If the race begins to look winnable, prominent male politicians move right in." This happened to Massachusetts State Representative Elaine Noble, who was running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Edward Brooke. When revelations about his finances made him suddenly look vulnerable, three men entered the primary against her, and she wound up last.

Women also have less access to the bastions of ward-level power --the corner bar, veterans' club or Rotary-type organizations. Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado says that almost all the forums she attended in her last race were in front of clubs that barred women as members. Says she: "You felt like you were contaminating the food or that you ought to pop out of a cake. It's not like you're one of the boys; you feel like a hunk of meat." Louisiana Democrat Lindy Boggs succeeded her late husband in Congress, but to keep the seat for the past six years, she has had to win acceptance as one of the regulars at places like the Half Moon oyster house and Parasol's Bar, where politics is played in New Orleans' Italian and Irish neighborhoods.

For women candidates with families, there is the personal and political question of who will mind the kids. Most political wives will move to Washington, but most political husbands, however supportive, are less likely to leave their own jobs. Says Illinois State Representative Susan Catania, who breast-fed her babies while attending legislative sessions: "It's just a fact of life that political husbands have not developed in as large numbers as political wives." Twelve years ago, when Margaret Heckler was first elected to Congress from the Boston area, she brought her three children but not her husband to Washington with her. Says she: "Virtually uprooting your life and moving to Washington is a serious consideration for a married woman. It can be a tremendous handicap."

Sandy Smoley, a nurse who is the Republican congressional nominee from Sacramento, tries to defuse the issue in voters' minds by mentioning in each speech that her children are grown. Says she: "Voters are concerned if I'm shirking my duty as a family woman. Those questions are not asked of men." Other women fall back on the rejoinder popularized by Pat Schroeder, when asked by a Congressman on her first day in office six years ago how she could handle being both a mother and a politician: "God gave me a brain and a uterus and I intend to use them both." Her husband and family followed her from Colorado to Washington.

Women sometimes suffer because voters assume that they are mainly interested in fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion funding and day care centers, despite the fact that on the hustings they are stressing an array of broader concerns. Maine Republican State Senator Olympia Snowe, a 31-year-old widow whose campaign for Congress has included a 250-mile, eight-week walk across her district, has focused on the fiscal problems that plague her area.

Running in a conservative Georgia congressional district, Democrat Virginia Shaphard emphasizes her promise to support a constitutional amendment banning deficit spending except in a time of national emergency. Two women already in Congress, Marjorie Holt from Maryland and Virginia Smith from Nebraska, both conservative Republicans who are being challenged by liberal Democratic women, are emphasizing the issue of federal spending.

Even when women candidates do discuss women's issues, there is no unanimity. Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Alf Landon's daughter and the Republican Senate nominee in Kansas, opposed extending the deadline for ratification of ERA. When her Democratic opponent, Dr. William Roy, came out in favor of the extension, women activists were split. After heated debate, the Kansas Woman's Political Caucus endorsed the male candidate; some other feminists however, stuck with Kassebaum.

Perhaps the most basic barrier to women's political success is outright sexism--a feeling, among women as well as men, that a woman's place is in the home, not the House. Kansas Democratic Congresswoman Martha Keys, who is married to Indiana Congressman Andrew Jacobs, has an opponent who used the slogan A MAN TO RELY ON. When Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso ran four years ago, she was confronted by her opponent's slogan CONNECTICUT CAN'T AFFORD A WOMAN GOVERNOR. Bella Abzug observes that sexism surfaces particularly quickly when voters feel a woman's style challenges traditional notions of femininity. Says she: "If I were a man, they would have said I was strong, courageous and a leader. Instead, I was called abrasive and aggressive." Washington Pollster Peter Hart finds that older women are the most biased against women candidates, younger men the least biased. Polls have shown that a good-looking woman candidate can actually antagonize a number of women voters.

All these factors clearly are hindrances, but there must be additional reasons why American women are held back. In proportion to their numbers, blacks have made more political progress than have women in the past decade. Even in Britain, where old-boyism was invented, women have been slightly better represented in the House of Commons and the Cabinet than they are in the U.S. Government; Margaret Thatcher will become Prime Minister if the Conservatives win the upcoming general election. Legislatures in most other countries have a higher proportion of women than the U.S. Congress.

Perhaps many American women are just not attracted by political careers. Other opportunities are opening in more secure and lucrative jobs. Says New York City Council President Carol Bellamy: "Politics has a terrible reputation. We're striving to come up to the level of the used-car salesman. So if you have some options, who's going to go into politics?" Why, indeed, would a career woman select a field in which she is likely to have to invest a lot of money, disrupt her family and probably end up thwarted?

Nevertheless, Geraldine Ferraro eagerly trots down the campaign trail, suffering the trials common to all candidates as well as those peculiar to women. A staff member makes a scheduling mistake, and she ends up at a marina when she is supposed to be at another boat basin; the March of Dimes bike-a-thon starts without her. As she walks down a Queens street handing out literature, one woman whispers to her husband: "She's very pretty, isn't she?" A man urges her to "get the electric chair going as soon as possible." At a housing project, a middle-aged black does not answer when she talks to him, then murmurs as she walks away, "Looking good, looking good." She watches State Senator Emanuel Gold playing touch football and gets bopped on the head with the ball. And from the podium at a rally, Queens Borough President Donald Manes says, "She'll make a good Congressman ... woman ... person ... whatever." Replies Ferraro: "I'll take it."

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