Queens of the hill: will the newly empowered women lawmakers clean up Congress?

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 2007 by Clara Bingham

Nancy Pelosi, who has served as San Francisco's Democratic congresswoman since 1987, is about to become the most powerful woman in elective office in American history. As Speaker of the House, the 66-year-old mother of five and grandmother of six will be third in line to the presidency. But despite the obvious newsworthiness of Pelosi's ascent, it may not be the most significant gain made by women these midterms.

Nor is the fact that more women were elected to office this year--two new female senators and 10 new congresswomen. That brings female representation in both houses to 16 percent, which is respectable, but not so impressive compared to, say, Rwanda (where 49 percent of parliamentary representatives are women), and Sweden (47 percent).

More noteworthy is that the female newcomers belong almost exclusively to the incoming Democratic majority--both new senators and eight of the 10 congresswomen. In the Senate, the women make up just under a quarter of the Democratic caucus, and comprise 21 percent of the Democrats in the House.

But what truly marks the 2006 midterms as a watershed for women in politics is the astounding degree to which women in both the House and Senate are now moving up into positions of power, in the leadership and at the head of key committees and subcommittees. Democratic women appear finally to have broken through what Pelosi calls the "marble ceiling." Women will not just be represented in the new Congress--to a remarkable extent, they will be running the place.

The last time that women made big gains on Capitol Hill, they changed the institutions they served in and re-defined the policy debate, particularly among Democrats. It's too soon to say how this year's class of female lawmakers will make their mark, but it's possible to glean some hints from their actions so far, and from a look at their relatively brief history in Congress.

Anita Hill's skirt-tails

Historically, congressional women have had to trade feminism for power. Margaret Chase Smith was a classic example. From 1949 until 1973, the Republican "lady from Maine" was the only elected female senator. She operated, however, more like one of the boys, achieving seniority on the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees mainly by turning a blind eye to the sexism surrounding her. "I never was a woman member," she told one reporter. "Had I been one, I wouldn't have been elected." Former Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado fared similarly when she became the first woman to sit on the House Armed Services Committee in 1973. F. Edward Hebert, the 72-year-old Democratic chairman (who boasted that his office had an "adult" and an "adultery" room) told her: "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, and I am the Lord. You'll do just fine on this committee if you remember that."

Nor were women accepted in the inner circles of power within either party. Schroeder worked on leadership races for colleagues Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine Ferraro, and Mary Rose Oakar in the 1970s and 1980s. "There is a secret ballot and boys can lie," said Schroeder. "All of them lost, of course. When we went around asking for votes, the guys told us they'd vote for us, but they didn't."

Nothing much changed until 1991, when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. Anita Hill, a Yale-educated law professor, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Thomas had sexually intimidated and embarrassed her when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The image of 14 white male Senators interrogating and humiliating the young black woman on national television incensed female viewers, symbolizing the lack of representation for women and their interests on Capitol Hill.

Back then, women made up only 6 percent of the 435-member House and 2 percent of the Senate--and no women served on the Judiciary Committee. In fact, there had never been more than two women senators at any one time, and Barbara Mikulski was the only Democratic woman senator ever elected in her own right (in that she was not filling the seat of her deceased husband). There wasn't even a women's bathroom anywhere near the Senate floor. An iconic 1991 photo shows then-Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), and five other congresswomen climbing the white marble stairs to the Senate chamber to protest Hill's treatment by the Judiciary committee. Known as "the women's Iwo Jima," the photo encapsulates their standing in Congress--principled, but powerless.

Thomas was ultimately confirmed, but the hearings inspired an unprecedented number of women to campaign for office, and the 1992 election year was dubbed the "Year of the Woman." In January of 1993, when the freshman class of the 103rd Congress arrived in Washington, 24 women representatives and five women senators swept into office on Anita Hill's skirt-tails. A new breed of congresswomen--unapologetic feminists--had not only a voice, but strength in numbers (plus a newly built bathroom near the Senate floor).