Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (36 page)

The
Women’s Review of Books
8 months later devoted four pages to the June 1990 NWSA Akron conference. The unquestioned assumption of all the articles was that NWSA was in fact unalterably racist, that the employee was a victim pure and simple. Numerous pieces by women of color made it clear that their gut reaction to any such charge was to believe it, to find denials by white women painful and racist, and to turn to the comfort of an association with other women of color. Sociologist Barbara Scott wrote, “Now when I think of NWSA and Akron in 1990, I think not so much about white women and racism but of home. With women of color I feel something very familiar, very nostalgic, very spiritual and something very protective and safe that reminds me of home—a place where I can be me. This feeling of coming home is at most almost orgasmic and at the very least far less painful and masochistic
than my previous attempts to ‘fit in’ to white organizations.”
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The burden of providing a “home,” a sisterhood of sameness, was probably too much for any organization to bear but certainly was incompatible with the realities of a professional association. Over the course of the 1980s NWSA had increasingly become two organizations, one bearing the political legacy of its founding as a branch of the women’s liberation movement the other drawn increasingly to the powerful possibilities of actually being “at the table” in the world of higher education. For many there was more comfort on the margins than at the center.
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The battle within NWSA mirrored numerous others across more than three decades of feminist activism. The forces of disintegration—antileadership, suspicion of structure, personalism, ad hominem attack, and the stresses of diversity—continued to be powerful. The context had also changed by 1990. For one thing, NWSA as an expression of women’s culture was increasingly at odds with the institutionalization of women’s studies in most colleges and universities, where several generations of women had undergone the rigors of tenure and assumed positions of institutional power and responsibility. Women’s studies as a field was not as marginal as it had been when NWSA was founded. Second, the debates over race sounded increasingly anachronistic. The controversy within NWSA about race and racism echoed its roots in identity politics with the claim of one group to speak for all women of color (presuming racial solidarity that was not, in fact, the case) and their insistence on posing the problem as a stark choice between good and evil. Yet many of the very same academics involved were busy teaching and writing about race as a “social construction,” a meaning that human beings give to difference rather than something essential or intrinsic. Younger generations of feminists by this time were waxing impatient, insisting, for example, on their right to claim more than one racial heritage, claiming multiculturalism as central, not marginal, to their understanding of feminism, and taking lesbianism and bisexuality for granted in ways that did not necessarily link them to a unique women’s culture.

T
HE REMOBILIZATION
of women in the 1990s occurred despite a conservative political climate, driven by the persistence of change and the normalization
of perceptions once seen as extreme. The attack on abortion rights energized young women who had begun to take it for granted, and sexual harassment turned out to be another issue about which most women, even the conservatives, had come to agree, although many men remained oblivious to the shift in norms. When these perceptions clashed in the high drama of a congressional hearing, thousands of women were suddenly motivated to make themselves heard.

The fall 1991 Senate confirmation hearings on President Bush’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall were not expected to provide a flashpoint for feminist resurgence. A civil rights leader who had argued the landmark civil rights cases, Marshall had been the only African-American to serve on the Court. His proposed replacement, Clarence Thomas, was a conservative AfricanAmerican and former director of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. Civil rights and feminist leaders were strongly opposed to Thomas, who had been an outspoken opponent of affirmative action and comparable worth, but they had little expectation that they could do more than place a few objections on the record.

Then on October 6, 1991, Nina Totenberg on National Public Radio and an article in
Newsday
revealed that the committee had suppressed testimony alleging that Thomas had engaged in sexual harassment. The next day Anita Hill, an African-American law professor from Oklahoma, held a press conference to confirm these charges. Suddenly, the fault lines of gender became chasms. Men generally shrugged. African-American men perceived racism in the sensationalism that surrounded the charges. Women, by a substantial proportion but in differing degrees by race, were outraged that the testimony had been covered up. On October 8, Democratic congresswomen marched from the House to the Senate and demanded an investigation. Their angry confrontation was high drama for the media. Airwaves were filled with women calling to say, “They just don’t get it, do they?” In short order the Senate Judiciary Committee changed its mind and extended its hearings to incorporate public testimony from Anita Hill.
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For 3 days, the nation stopped to watch hearings in which a committee of eight white men grilled a genteel African-American woman
lawyer. Anita Hill’s quiet dignity contrasted sharply with her interrogators’ palpable discomfort and ineptitude. They made light of this “sexual harassment crap” and dwelled on salacious details. Critics of feminism like Camille Paglia showed no mercy: “I’m sick and tired of Anita Hill and women like her being excused for yuppiness. She had a choice of toadying up to the boss or speaking up, and she chose the career track.”
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Many, many women, however, were neither amused nor dismissive.
The Wall Street Journal
predicted in October 1991, shortly after the hearings, that “The seeds of fear and hope planted by Anita Hill’s sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas will grow in America’s offices for years to come.”
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In July 1992 the
New York Times
reported that sexual harassment complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had risen sharply, and Congress and the administration “responded to allegations of sexual abuse in the military in ways that would have been unimaginable nine months ago.”
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From private homes to political campaigns, the debate, once ignited, catalyzed a new wave of activism.

The next year, the number of women who ran for national office rose sharply. It was a lucky coincidence that an unusually large number of seats were open as a result of retirements and reapportionment. Twenty-two women ran for the Senate in 1992, compared with only eight 2 years before. The first African-American woman to be elected to the Senate, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, was moved by the hearings to challenge Senator Alan Dixon, a Thomas supporter. In Pennsylvania, Lynn Yeakel gave Senator Arlen Specter a run for his money with ads showing him questioning Anita Hill. In a voiceover, Yeakel asked rhetorically, “Did this make you as angry as it made me?”
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Grassroots support for women candidates doubled and tripled. Contributions to the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Campaign Fund, and Emily’s List grew exponentially. Membership in Emily’s List went from 3,000 to 24,000 members in only 1 year, allowing it to contribute $6 million to women candidates, four times what it had raised in 1990. Almost overnight Emily’s List had become the most powerful PAC in the Democratic Party.

Suddenly the choices shifted from finding women to run to choosing
between more than one feminist candidate. In New York, two heroes of feminist politics announced that they would be candidates in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Elizabeth Holtzman had made a major splash in 1972 as a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings. She went on to be a founder and key leader of the Congressional Women’s Caucus in the 1970s.
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In 1980 she left Congress to run for the Senate against Republican Al D’Amato, losing by a narrow margin. Having served in elected positions of District Attorney and as New York City Comptroller in the meanwhile, she felt ready to take on D’Amato in 1992 and win. Then Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, announced her candidacy. Feminist political activists in general felt tortured about having to choose. Manhattan Borough President Ruth W. Messinger, who ran for mayor 5 years later, said, “It is making people crazy. They know they want a woman, and they know they want to beat Al D’Amato. But that’s all they know.” Leaders of New York NOW sent a mass mailing endorsing Holtzman. Unwilling to choose, the National Women’s Political Caucus and other feminist PACs endorsed both candidates. Ann Lewis, former political director of the Democratic National Committee, urged women to send money to both.
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Emily’s List, however, stuck to their strategy of investing in a single candidate and appointed a special committee to evaluate the race and make a recommendation. Ellen Malcolm recalled their process: “We decided that the goal of Emily’s List was to add pro-choice Democratic women to high office. When more than one woman is running, our first benchmark decision would be: do we have to choose? We concluded that we would choose if it appeared that by not choosing, neither woman would win. Our goal was to win the general election.” Because Robert Abrams was the front-runner, the committee decided that it would be necessary to make a choice. “We then did the evaluation; did our own poll of voters, met with both candidates, talked with their campaigns many times, evaluated their ability to raise money, and concluded that at every level Gerry was the stronger candidate. Polls showed more support for Gerry upstate. Holtzman had a hard time moving outside New York City. Geny had a national ability to raise
money and the kind of political charisma that was going to be necessary to beat D’Amato.”
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She looks back on that decision as a moment of maturation, the kind of dilemma produced by success. In the election, however, Holtzman’s negative ads eviscerated Ferraro; both women lost to Abrams and he lost to D’Amato in the general election.

Clearly the grassroots revival did not signal a simple victory. The 1992 election was marked by controversy over “family values,” which the Republicans made central to their campaign. Conservative rhetoric reflected not only male anxiety but also the growing marginalization of women who chose traditional roles. As one study of a Midwest city found, many of the women in the antiabortion movement were middleclass housewives who had come of age after the golden years of the feminist breakthrough. Most of their peers, whether by choice or necessity, combined motherhood with paid employment, leaving those who chose motherhood as their primary identity and occupation increasingly isolated and defensive. Some blamed feminism for their marginalization.
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When Vice President Dan Quayle criticized a popular television character, Murphy Brown, for having a child out of wedlock, he ignited a debate about single motherhood, the stigma of illegitimacy, and abortion. His wife, Marilyn Quayle, told the Republican Convention that “most women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures as women,” a pointed reference to Hillary Clinton’s difficulty responding to media criticism of her legal career.
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The polarized responses to Hillary Clinton were a measure of both the revival of feminism and the ongoing hostility to women’s changing roles. Wellesley graduate in 1970, brilliant lawyer, and activist for children’s rights, she struggled during the campaign and after to avoid being labeled a feminist (or as Maureen Dowd referred to it, “the f-word”). Careful to distance herself from aspects of what feminism “has come to mean today”—hostility to maternal values and to men—she was nonetheless tripped up by incessant press questioning about her professional activities while her husband was governor of Arkansas. When she sighed in exasperation that she supposed she could have “stayed home, baked cookies, and had teas,” the press exploded with criticism of her for disrespect toward homemakers.
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Her advisors felt
she had little choice but to join a chocolate chip cookie recipe contest with Barbara Bush at the invitation of
Family Circle
. That too invited derision, as did her efforts to adopt a more traditional wardrobe and demeanor. Some derided her for insincerity. She couldn’t win.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
described her as “looking as though she’d just swallowed some castor oil” when she asked a Texas audience to help by sending ballots to
Family Circle
. Anna Quindlen was appalled: “Here was an accomplished professional who had already changed her name, her hair, her clothes, and her comments … [now] reduced to hawking her chocolate chip cookie entry. What next? Eleanor Roosevelt fudge?”
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“Policy making [versus] cookie baking” was a double bind with no way out.
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Once Bill Clinton was elected, Hillary was both idolized and vilified for assuming a strong public role in debates on health policy and children’s issues.
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The deficits generated during the Reagan years, added to the sheer complexity of health care policy with its many “stakeholders,” had made it politically impossible to consider any dramatic expansion of the welfare state, however, and as Hillary Clinton’s health care task force’s recommendations went down to defeat in Congress, she shifted to a lower profile, more “feminine” image only to face criticism once again on that score as well.
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First ladies are inherently tricky as role models because their position rests on the husband’s election, not their own. Any policy activism on their part tends to arouse fears of a “power behind the throne,” easily framed as a failure to be properly subordinate (i.e., failure to be a woman).