Ripples Throughout Society

By KURT ANDERSEN

How putting Ferraro on the ticket opens big new possibilities

CONVENTION. Why did a campaign announcement, a tactical move, send shivers up and down the spines of so many American women, so many American men? Why, on Thursday, July 12, 1984, did a jolt run through American society, one that caused men and women to stop one another on streets and in offices across the country to discuss the news, one that generated bursts of good feeling--and nervous glances? Because a political taboo of two centuries' standing had finally been abandoned: a woman, at last, is an election away from being a heartbeat away from the most powerful job on earth. Because social structures and cultural norms had been forever amended: the notion of a woman's place, still deeply ingrained despite the long struggle of feminism, would never again be so limited, so confining. Because history had indeed been made.

Feminism has scored no more spectacular triumph since women won the right to vote. Even with universal suffrage, American women had enjoyed, until last Thursday, nothing more than the right to elect a man to the White House. With one swift stroke, however, the Democrats have made it possible for women to enter the final phase of their enfranchisement. Win or lose in November, Geraldine Ferraro is now emblematic of the truest, purest facet of the American dream: that every citizen is entitled to an equal chance. In this version of the dream, the idea is that every child can grow up to be President. Her immigrant father, Ferraro recalled last week as she stood alongside Walter Mondale in St. Paul, made her believe that "in America, anything is possible if you work for it...American history is about doors being opened, doors of opportunity for everyone, no matter who you are, as long as you're willing to earn it." Standing in the glare of television lights, excited and exciting, the woman from Queens made the platitudes seem powerful and true.

In large, stable democracies like the U.S., political landmarks are seldom so crisply delineated, so easy to pick out from a cluttered backdrop. Even the most circumspect observers around the U.S., ordinarily careful to qualify their generalizations, saw the news, whether it heartened or disturbed them, as profoundly significant, even revolutionary. The choice, said G. Mermen Williams, Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and the state's former Governor, "is at the cutting edge of history. Sexual equality is overdue by a generation. Changes like this have given courage to the fainthearted to do what they wanted to do anyway and has convinced those not favorably disposed that failure to progress will no longer be tolerated."

Ferraro came close to the mark when she spoke of "a sense of new possibilities and pride." A generation ago, for a fifth-grade girl to dream of becoming President was barely thinkable, but last week that was certified as one of the post-Ferraro "new possibilities." As Dr. Carol Nadelson, the Incoming President of the American Psychiatric Association, pointed out, male children will learn the new rules too. "A fifth-grade boy," she says, "also has a view of a woman as being in a kind of role. This change expands his view of women."

The high-pitched hopefulness coursed through every social realm, not just that of national politics. "Any time a woman reaches a revered status, it is easier for the secretary in an office to have a better sense of her self-worth," said Faye Wattleton, President of Planned Parenthood. "That secretary may not want to be President of the U.S., but she may want to be president of her company."

Is the choice of Ferraro merely symbolic? Is she only a token? Symbolism is one of the important currencies of politics; symbols, when they are well wrought, express and so help realize a society's best intentions. As for tokenism, said Democratic National Committee Political Director Ann Lewis last week, "your token is my pioneer." Gender barriers in national politics had to be breached, and some woman had to be the first. Jackie Robinson had been carefully chosen by the white men who ran baseball when he arrived in Brooklyn 37 seasons ago as the First Black Major League Player, and he became not a token but a pioneer.

What makes Ferraro's selection so resonant is that it is not an isolated political maneuver. It is, rather, another major step in--although not yet the culmination of--a historic movement. It derives its heft and momentum not from the petty particulars of the campaign but from the past decade and a half of feminist determination, from the years of difficult personal pathfinding undertaken by millions of American women. In 1970, only 699 women graduated from medical schools and 801 from law schools; just over a decade later, there were 3,833 graduating from medical schools and 11,768 from law schools. The proportion of women in state legislatures tripled between 1971 and 1983, and the number of cities (of populations over 30,000) with female mayors went from seven to 76. Of the eight women who have held Cabinet offices, six were appointed during the past ten years. "This was the appropriate next step," says Hunter College President Donna Shalala, "not something out of the blue." Sexism will no doubt linger like a chronic pain for years and decades. Ferraro's nomination does not mark the end of discrimination against women in corridors of power. But it may be the beginning of the end.

The impact will probably be clearest, and perhaps most immediate, in the narrow confines of politics. "One woman isn't going to change the character of Government," says Historian Barbara Tuchman, "but this is important because it will stimulate a massive influx of women into all levels of Government--the bureaucracy, the courts, Congress and the Cabinet." Female politicians seem to sense most acutely, even ecstatically, that a new era has begun. "Just to have a woman in a key position is very meaningful to all of us," says Sacramento Mayor Anne Rudin. "The power potential is very heady." Joan Specter, a Philadelphia businesswoman, gets politics day and night: she is a member of the city council, and she is married to U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. Like her husband, she is Republican but finds the Democrats' choice "very significant, because it will give women a role model. Now young women will say, 'Yes, there is a chance for me.' Lots of women will see themselves as Gerry Ferraro. Lots of women will be encouraged."

Women have had the right to run for office for most of this century, of course, but for decades they were effectively shunted off into a kind of political ladies' auxiliary. "We've certainly proved we can take on the overworked, underpaid jobs in local government," says Ann Evans, the $3,000-a-year mayor of Davis, Calif., "but this raises the ante. It is a symbolic acceptance of women in leadership positions." Declares Eleanor Smeal, former NOW President: "Never again will women embark on a major campaign without being taken seriously. No longer will women be the sideshow. The women's movement has at last entered the main ring of professional politics--not least in our own eyes."

Moreover, women with political ambitions may not have to worry so much about seeming presumptuous; the uppitiness factor should fade. Maureen O'Connor has served on the San Diego City Council and as Deputy Mayor, Chairwoman of the Local Transit Board and Vice Chairwoman of a California State Housing Finance Agency. She ran for mayor of San Diego last year and lost. "Despite the fact that I was twice as qualified as my opponent," she says, "there were reservations voiced about the capacity of a woman to manage a city of this size effectively. Well, with a woman as a candidate for Vice President that makes this kind of question obsolete, doesn't it?"

The analogy most often drawn is John Kennedy's election in 1960 as the first Roman Catholic President. "The nomination of a woman," says University of North Carolina Political Scientist Schley Lyons, "will have the same kind of impact. Being a Catholic is no longer a factor. If a woman gets elected, it will make it a lot easier for future female politicians to succeed." The first Catholic nominated for President, however, was Al Smith, in 1928, who lost to Herbert Hoover; it was 32 years before another Catholic was nominated and won the White House.

Just as Candidate Kennedy made the stereotypical slurs on Irish Catholics untenable in 1960, Candidate Ferraro in 1984 seems well equipped to disprove the caricature of woman as flighty, emotional and weak. The electorate has yet to be exposed to many female campaigners--none at the topmost level--and people are able to cling to prejudice more easily in the abstract. With a real live female candidate stumping the country and getting incessant public attention between now and November, one who is unafraid of seeming both feminine and strong, a lot of half-baked, half-conscious bias should slough away. "Kennedy proved that Catholics had finally arrived in American society, that they could win any office, run any corporation, achieve any social position," says Stuart Eizenstat, a Presidential Adviser in the Carter Administration. "This shows that women are now full-fledged and equal members of society, that women can enter at every level of American life. The role of women will never be the same again."

In strictly political terms, Kennedy's election also reinforced the loyalty of immigrant Catholic voters to the Democrats. Can Ferraro's nomination exploit the gender gap in the Democrats' favor, attracting a large majority of women voters to the party's coalition for years to come? Economic and ideological divisions among women are considerable, and women are scarcely likely to vote as a bloc. Still, some analysts believe that a historic shift could be hastened by Ferraro's candidacy. "The Democratic Party by this step has clearly embarked on redefining the party," says Pollster Steve Teichner. "This is a critical development in the realignment of political parties as we have known them in the U.S."

For women, wielding power is often difficult for what amounts almost to aesthetic reasons. Men, even if they are martinets, are rarely called bossy, and there is no epithet for men that is quite the equivalent of "bitchy." "Power is a tough issue for women," says Columbia Associate Professor Ethel Klein, author of Gender Politics. "Taking power is aggressive. It's not 'nice.' " Thus, for virtually all women, suggests Klein, Ferraro's nomination "is a watershed." Such a ripple effect, buoying women who are outside the narrow channel of politics, may finally be more significant than the electoral result. "Any time competent and able women are recognized and become visible," says Psychologist Matina Horner, President of Radcliffe College, "a sense of expectation and prowess is engendered among younger women that they too can aspire to new heights."

Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio tapped into that feeling last Thursday, when she addressed a seminar of working women at a Cleveland junior college. "The excitement and the enthusiasm that we all had for each other in that room was electrifying," she says. "Here we were trying to talk about how women can attain policy-making goals, whether in office or small business or a hospital, and after Mondale's announcement, we knew we could do anything."

For some women, the sense of personal pride brought on by Ferraro's nomination seems almost metaphysical. "It somehow changes the context of my relationship to the outside world and the way I feel about myself," explains Anne Just, who leads Vermont's delegation in San Francisco this week. "It is as though the molecules had been rearranged." Said Koryne Horbal, a founder of the Democratic Party Women's Caucus: "When I walked down the street today, I felt different, I felt validated."

It is possible, of course, that something closer to hysteria than history is unfolding. The U.S., after all, is far behind other countries that have actually elected women to their highest government offices. There are or have been female Prime Ministers of Britain, India, Israel and Sri Lanka; although they may have served as useful role models, the fact of their gender did not do much to end war or poverty in their countries or to introduce new levels of compassion to their governments. "Once the hoopla is over," says Pennsylvania's Joan Specter, "it will be back to business as usual."

There is considerable risk that if Mondale-Ferraro lose the November election, some blame will be ascribed to Ferraro's gender. Risks are inherent in emotionally charged politics; expectations can be raised far too quickly and frustrated. For some Blacks, the swing in national focus away from race is a political distraction. Ferraro's nomination, says South Carolina NAACP Co-Chair Adelle Adams, "may be a breakthrough for White women, but not for Black women or Black men." Then too it has been noted that a woman has merely won a shot at the vice presidency, second place, a ceremonial job.

These days, it has become fashionable among many cynics to disparage the idea of progress as romantic and naive, a comforting illusion. The recent history of women argues otherwise, and the improvement can practically be graphed. In 1937, only a third of Americans said they would be willing to consider voting for a female candidate for President, according to a Gallup poll. By 1969, just over half said they would consider it. Last year the figure had risen to 80%. And this week the Democrats are nominating a woman for Vice President. In the struggle for equal opportunities, this is what is meant by progress. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Barbara B. Dolan/Detrolt and Elizabeth Taylor/ New York

With reporting by Barbara B. Dolan, Elizabeth Taylor