Stepping Up to Power

What do women want? Why, careers in public office, or so says one believer in the cause.

When Harriett Woods, former president of the National Women's Political Caucus, recently visited Washington to promote her first book, Stepping Up to Power: The Political Journey of American Women (Westview Press, $25, 256 pp), she received a little help from her friends. Visitors to her book party, hosted by literary agent Audrey Wolf, included Sarah McClendon, doyen of the White House press corps, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who ducked in quickly on her way to the opera) and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala (the only guest there without a name tag). "I'm an old friend of Harriett's," explained Shalala.

Woods, 72, has many old friends in Washington -- she wielded considerable influence during the Clinton administration. In fact, Woods describes in her book how backroom politicking in the closing weeks of 1992 persuaded a reluctant Clinton to ratchet up his female appointments to 40 percent, including six women at Cabinet level.

The former lieutenant governor of Missouri, Woods was the first woman elected to statewide office there, in 1984. She also ran in two unsuccessful U.S. Senate races against male candidates in Missouri. The first, against former senator John Danforth, a Republican, was a near-miss -- Woods earned 49 percent of the vote, losing by 27,500 ballots. Her showing was surprising, considering her status as a pro-choice, Reform Jewish Democrat in a rural state with a large conservative Christian constituency.

Woods' losing campaign had one winning aspect: It inspired an initiative called EMILY's List -- for "Early Money Is Like Yeast" that makes the dough rise -- that would provide money for future pro-choice female candidates. Later, as president of the National Women's Political Caucus, Woods dubbed 1992 as the "Year of the Woman." With the help of $6 million from EMILY's List, a record 213 women ran for House seats that year, with 106 of them getting their party's nomination, and a record number elected.

That infusion of estrogen helped liberal legislators push through several pro-choice measures, including the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances bill. It also sparked a response from conservative women who founded the Susan B. Anthony List, a political action committee raising funds for pro-life women. The committee helped elect seven conservative women to Congress in 1994, candidates whom Woods calls "fervent ideologues in pursuit of a hostile agenda."

But by 1994, liberal women were losing key races and fewer were running for state legislatures. "We've leveled the playing field," she says about female participation in politics. "People can run but they don't want to. They have this perception that politics is mud wrestling and they think, `Why enter this when I can be a law partner or a social worker?'"

Woods left the National Women's Political Caucus in 1995 at the age of 68. Today she teaches a course on women in public life at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. She has reason to hope that some of her students will enter politics, especially in light of the Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Rodham Clinton candidacies.

Woods was disappointed that Dole quit her presidential aspirations without reaching the primaries. "I wanted her to stay in," she says. "Whether I agreed with her or not, it would've been such a benefit to have seen her on the screens in New Hampshire and Iowa. Think what this means for young women to see an all-male lineup again."

As for Clinton's efforts in New York, Hillary "is overqualified, if anything," says Woods. "The question is whether New Yorkers are comfortable with her. People wonder: Is she doing this for us or herself? It's the ambition issue. Now, there's nothing wrong with ambition. Right now, people are holding off, not feeling that commitment and enthusiasm. But I don't think women's success rises or falls on whether Hillary wins."

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning