the whole feminist/women's movement is so over/unnecessary. Today in the
New York Times, Susan Faludi begs to differ:
August 26, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Second-Place Citizens
By SUSAN FALUDI
San Francisco
MUCH has been made of the timing of Hillary Clinton¹s speech before the
Democratic National Convention tonight, coming as it does on the 88th
anniversary of women¹s suffrage. Convention organizers are taking advantage
of this coincidence of the calendar &lsqauo; the 19th Amendment was certified on
Aug. 26, 1920 &lsqauo; to pay homage to the women¹s vote in particular and women¹s
progress in general. By such tributes, they are slathering some sweet icing
on a bitter cake. But many of Mrs. Clinton¹s supporters are unlikely to be
partaking. They regard their candidate¹s cameo as a consolation prize. And
they are not consoled.
³I see this nation differently than I did 10 months ago,² reads a typical
posting on a Web site devoted to Clintonista discontent. ³That this travesty
was committed by the Democratic Party has forever changed my approach to
politics.² In scores of Internet forums and the conclaves of protest groups,
those sentiments are echoed, as Clinton supporters speak over and over of
feeling heartbroken and disillusioned, of being cheated and betrayed.
In one poll, 40 percent of Mrs. Clinton¹s constituency expressed
dissatisfaction; in another, more than a quarter favored the clear insanity
of voicing their feminist protest by voting for John McCain. ³This is not
the usual reaction to an election loss,² said Diane Mantouvalos, the founder
of JustSayNoDeal.com, a clearinghouse for the pro-Clinton organizations. ³I
know that is the way it is being spun, but it¹s not prototypical. Anyone who
doesn¹t take time to analyze it will do so at their own peril.²
The despondency of Mrs. Clinton¹s supporters &lsqauo; or their ³vitriolic² and
³rabid² wrath, as the punditry prefers to put it &lsqauo; has been the subject of
perplexed and often irritable news media speculation. Why don¹t these
dead-enders get over it already and exit stage right?
Shouldn¹t they be celebrating, not protesting? After all, Hillary Clinton¹s
campaign made unprecedented strides. She garnered 18 million-plus votes, and
proved by her solid showing that a woman could indeed be a viable candidate
for the nation¹s highest office. She didn¹t get the gold, but in this case
isn¹t a silver a significant triumph?
Many Clinton supporters say no, and to understand their gloom, one has to
take into account the legacy of American women¹s political struggle, in
which long yearned for transformational change always gives way before a
chorus of ³not now² and ³wait your turn,² and in which every victory turns
out to be partial or pyrrhic. Indeed, the greatest example of this is the
victory being celebrated tonight: the passage of women¹s suffrage. The 1920
benchmark commemorated as women¹s hour of glory was experienced in its era
as something more complex, and darker.
Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton¹s candidacy, not merely a cause in
itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other
ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American
law, its retinue was turned away.
In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women¹s
voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the
women¹s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor
inroads into elected office, and women¹s advocacy groups found themselves at
loggerheads. ³It was clear,² said the 1920s sociologist and reformer
Sophonisba Breckinridge, ³that the winter of discontent in politics had come
for women.²
That discontent was apparent in a multitude of letters, speeches and
articles. ³The American woman¹s movement, and her interest in great moral
and social questions, is splintered into a hundred fragments under as many
warring leaders,² despaired Frances Kellor, a women¹s advocate.
³The feminist movement is dying of partial victory and inanition,² lamented
Lillian Symes, a feminist journalist.
³Where for years there had been purpose consecrated to an immortal
principle,² observed the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, her
compatriots felt now only ³a vacancy.²
Even Florence Kelley, the tenacious progressive reformer, concluded,
³Keeping the light on is probably the best contribution that we can make
where there is now Stygian darkness.²
The grail of female franchise yielded little meaningful progress in the
years to follow. Two-thirds of the few women who served in Congress in the
1920s were filling the shoes of their dead husbands, and most of them failed
to win re-election. The one woman to ascend to the United States Senate had
a notably brief career: in 1922, Rebecca Felton, 87, was appointed to warm
the seat for a newly elected male senator until he could be sworn in. Her
term lasted a day.
Within the political establishment, women could exact little change, and the
parties gave scant support to female politicians. In 1920, Emily Newell
Blair, the Democratic vice chairwoman, noted that the roster of women
serving on national party committees looked like a ³Who¹s Who² of American
women; by 1929, they¹d been shown the door and replaced with the compliant.
The suffragist Anne Martin bitterly remarked that women in politics were
³exactly where men political leaders wanted them: bound, gagged, divided and
delivered to the Republican and Democratic Parties.²
Male politicians offered a few sops to feminists: a ³maternity and infancy²
bill to educate expectant mothers, a law permitting women who married
foreigners to remain American citizens, and financing for the first federal
prison for women. But by the mid ¹20s, Congress had quit feigning interest,
and women¹s concerns received a cold shoulder. In 1929, the maternity
education bill was killed.
Meanwhile, male cultural guardians were giving vent to what Symes termed
³the new masculinism² &lsqauo; diatribes against the ³effeminization² that had
supposedly been unleashed on the American arts. The news media proclaimed
feminism a dead letter and showcased young women who preferred gin parties
to political caucuses.
During the presidential race of 1924, newspapers ran headlines like ³Woman
Suffrage Declared a Failure.² ³Ex-feminists² proclaimed their boredom with
³feminist pother² and their enthusiasm for cosmetics, shopping and
matrimony. The daughters of the suffrage generation were so beyond the
³zealotry² of their elders, Harper¹s declared in its 1927 article ³Feminist
&lsqauo; New Style,² that they could only pity those ranting women who were ³still
throwing hand grenades² and making an issue of ³little things.²
Those ³little things² included employment equity, as a steady increase in
the proportion of women in the labor force ground to a halt and stagnated
throughout the ¹20s. Women barely improved their representation in male
professions; the number of female doctors actually declined.
³The feminist crash of the ¹20s came as a painful shock, so painful that it
took history several decades to face up to it,² the literary critic Elaine
Showalter wrote in 1978. Facing it now is like peering into a painful
mirror. For all the talk of Hillary Clinton¹s ³breakthrough² candidacy and
other recent successes for women, progress on important fronts has stalled.
Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its
proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state
legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women¹s
share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since
2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86
percent male.
Women¹s real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress
in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably
since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions
on women¹s ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in
managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.
Women¹s numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive
management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major
motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as
half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk,
maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929
for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20
percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers
and their children uncollected.
Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of ³new
masculinist² misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton¹s campaign coverage). Again, the
news media showcase young women¹s ³feminist &lsqauo; new style² pseudo-liberation &lsqauo;
the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist
generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so ³beyond gender² that they
don¹t need a female president.
As it turns out, they won¹t have one. But they will still have all the
abiding inequalities that Hillary Clinton, especially in defeat, symbolized.
Without a coalescing cause to focus their forces, how will women fight a foe
that remains insidious, amorphous, relentless and pervasive?
³I am sorry for you young women who have to carry on the work in the next 10
years, for suffrage was a symbol, and you have lost your symbol,² the
suffragist Anna Howard Shaw said in 1920. ³There is nothing for women to
rally around.² As they rally around their candidate tonight, Mrs. Clinton¹s
supporters will have to decide if they are mollified &lsqauo; or even more
aggrieved &lsqauo; by the history she evokes.
Susan Faludi is the author, most recently, of ³The Terror Dream: Myth and
Misogyny in an Insecure America.²
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