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Assembling, Amplifying, and Ascending

Recent Trends Among Women in Congress, 1977–2006

Organizational Efforts

After the dean of women in the House, Leonor Sullivan of Missouri, retired in 1977, momentum for a women’s caucus developed rapidly. Sullivan had energetically opposed the formation of a caucus, fearing it would increase tensions with male colleagues and undo decades of women’s efforts to work their way into the institutional power structure. Her departure, along with the retirements of veterans like Edith Green of Oregon and Julia Butler Hansen of Washington, removed the greatest roadblock to forming a caucus. Organizers acted quickly. Among the core founders were Elizabeth Holtzman of New York, Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts, Shirley Chisholm of New York, and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. The Congresswomen’s Caucus convened for its first meeting on April 19, 1977. Its primary purposes were to 1) inform Members about women’s issues, 2) identify and create women’s legislation, 3) follow floor action and support caucus legislation by testifying before committees and 4) monitor federal government initiatives affecting women.8 Holtzman and Heckler served as the first co-chairs, imparting the bipartisan cast the group would retain. Fifteen women joined the caucus. Three women—Marilyn Lloyd of Tennessee, Marjorie Holt of Maryland, and Virginia Smith of Nebraska—initially declined membership because they felt their constituents would disapprove but later joined the caucus. The group also received a boost from important noncongressional entities, winning the enthusiastic endorsement of advocacy groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), which had long sought a forum to convey policy ideas to women Members.

The Women’s Caucus waged its first battle in 1977, obtaining an extension for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The statute proposing the amendment passed Congress in March 1972, pending that three-quarters of state legislatures, ratified the amendment within seven years. By the end of 1973, 30 states had ratified it. Five more states approved the amendment between 1974 and 1976. In the meantime, four of the states that had approved the ERA indicated their intention to rescind support. Thus, in 1977 the ERA was still short of the 38 states it needed for ratification before its expiration in 1979. In October 1977, Holtzman introduced legislation to obtain a seven-year extension. The Women’s Caucus campaigned to win support for the measure when it was taken up before the House Judiciary Committee. In the end, the House voted 230 to 189 to extend the deadline for ratification three years to June 30, 1982. The Senate concurred, 60 to 36. However, the ERA lapsed, failing to obtain approval in any other state, and was not incorporated into the Constitution.

The Women’s Caucus experienced a transition several years after its creation, as ideological differences emerged among Members and several key Members left Congress. In 1979, Millicent Fenwick of New Jersey resigned when the organization accepted outside contributions at a fundraiser for the Women’s Research and Education Institute (WREI), which provided resources for education and outreach for the caucus and published the caucus newsletter, Update. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for Members of Congress to form a group and get deductibility for contributions made to that group,” Fenwick said later.9 Congresswoman Holtzman, one of the founders of the caucus, left Congress in 1981 when she lost a bid for a U.S. Senate seat from New York. In addition, Representative Gladys Spellman of Maryland, the caucus secretary and an important mediator among Members, suffered a heart attack in late 1980 and slipped into a coma from which she never regained consciousness.10

Caucus membership stagnated as the four Congresswomen elected in 1980—Lynn Martin of Illinois, Marge Roukema of New Jersey, Paula Hawkins of Florida, and Bobbi Fiedler of California—initially refused to join. Senator Hawkins asserted, “I don’t believe in a women’s caucus, black caucus, or any special interest caucus.”11 The conservative Hawkins also objected to key items on the caucus agenda. She called the Equal Rights Amendment “irrelevant” and “oversold, vaguely worded and ambiguous.”12 Hawkins added, “As women we’re all for equality—or superiority. But there are better ways to attack the problems which have come to be known as women’s issues. Elect more women to the United States Senate. It’s women’s fault for not running for office.”13 Other potential caucus members were disturbed by the fact that Schroeder, an outspoken liberal, had informally assumed the role of the group’s spokesperson. “The dues were too high, and I don’t need to pay that for a Pat Schroeder show,” Lynn Martin said.14 The four Republican women initially distanced themselves from the caucus to avoid the political costs of alienating the new Ronald Reagan administration and its large constituency. Eventually, four other conservative women—Beverly Byron of Maryland, Marilyn Lloyd, Marjorie Holt, and Virginia Smith, all among the least active caucus members—resigned for the same reason. By late 1981, only 10 of the 20 Congresswomen belonged to the Women’s Caucus.

Declining enrollment and changes in the House rules forced the group to adopt new membership procedures, further altering its composition.15 In October 1981, the House Administration Committee wrote new regulations that affected all 26 Legislative Service Organizations (LSOs), including the Women’s Caucus, that operated in the institution. The new procedures stipulated that an LSO using House office space, supplies, and equipment could no longer receive funding from outside sources such as corporations or nonprofit foundations. With subscriptions to Update now defined as a source of outside revenue, the Women’s Caucus was forced to either adopt new rules for dues and membership to retain its status as an LSO associated with the House or to cut its ties with the House and fund the WREI as a separate, off-site entity.

Thus, in March 1982, the Women’s Caucus changed its name to the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues and opened its ranks to male Members of Congress. “The Congresswomen’s Caucus has gone co-ed,” reported the New York Times when the policy was first approved.16 Women paid $2,500 per year in dues, and men paid $500 per year in dues, for which they received a subscription to Update and a circumscribed role in the caucus meetings. Within months, more than 100 men had joined. The decision to allow men to join the caucus was not only financially advantageous, but also politically expedient. “We’ve known for some time that we had to broaden our base of support,” Schroeder explained. “We knew that separatism was not the way to go. We need partnership with men in the women’s movement.” She added, “The money helps, of course, but it’s much more than money we’re interested in. We need allies on changing the multitude of discriminatory and inequitable laws.”17 The caucus kept its office in the Rayburn House Office Building and dropped outside funding.18 By 1985, 110 men and 15 women were members of the caucus.19

By the 103rd Congress (1993—1995) the caucus had an annual budget of $250,000 and six full-time staff members who drafted and tracked a variety of bills related to women’s issues. The 1992 elections doubled the caucus membership as 24 new women won election to the House. However, when the Republicans gained control of the House in 1995, the GOP leadership eliminated LSOs, forcing all caucuses—regardless of party affiliation—to operate without resources from the House. The Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues created Women’s Policy, Inc., a nonprofit group that was moved out of House facilities. Like its predecessor, WREI, Women’s Policy, Inc. was tasked with providing resources for outreach and education. Men were no longer allowed to be caucus members.20 By the late 1990s, the caucus included virtually every woman House Member and had weathered its early divisions over issues like abortion. As Congress generally became more partisan, the caucus retained its bipartisanship, partly by keeping the co-chair structure, moving further from the divisive abortion issue, setting a working agenda at the start of each Congress, and pairing women from both parties to work jointly on introducing relevant legislation.

Women’s Organizations and PACs

Historically, a lack of money had discouraged many women from seeking political office. Jeannette Rankin’s 1916 campaign depended significantly on the largesse of her wealthy brother. Many of the early women in Congress—including Ruth Pratt of New York, Ruth Hanna McCormick of Illinois, Caroline O’Day of New York, Frances Bolton of Ohio, Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut, and Katharine St. George of New York—won their first elections because they were independently wealthy. Campaign funding was a source of concern even for incumbent women in Congress. In 1962, Catherine D. Norrell of Arkansas, who had succeeded her late husband a year earlier, faced reapportionment and a campaign against a powerful incumbent. She seriously considered seeking a second term but, at the filing deadline, announced she would not seek re-election due to the exorbitant cost of campaigning. The expense of running campaign commercials on television, Norrell lamented, was transforming politics into “a rich person’s game.”21 Senator Maurine Neuberger of Oregon left office after one term, citing health concerns. “But the real, actual, hard core reason I didn’t run was raising the money I knew it was going to take,” she recalled years later. “Each year it got more and more expensive, and I just didn’t have the heart to go out and buttonhole people in various organizations from New York to California to Florida and Seattle to build a campaign chest.”22 Neuberger calculated that a 1966 Senate race would have cost at least $250,000. During the next four decades, campaign costs soared because of the expense of advertising on television, radio, and the Internet and because of the expense of hiring large, professional campaign staffs.

Norrell’s and Neuberger’s contemporaries outside government soon began to organize political groups to raise public awareness about women’s issues and to generate the resources to field more women candidates. On June 30, 1966, the National Organization for Women was created at the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women. With Betty Friedan as its first president, NOW committed itself “to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.”23 The group organized mass rallies and protests, lobbied government officials, and initiated class-action lawsuits and other forms of litigation. Among its major aims were to champion women’s reproductive freedom and economic equality, as well as to combat racial injustice and violence against women. NOW figured prominently in debates during the 1970s about the ERA and about a woman’s right to seek an abortion. It became a powerful political and educational force, enrolling more than 500,000 members in more than 500 chapters nationwide by the first part of the 21st century.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s women’s political action committees (PACs) played a critical role in raising money for candidates.24 No single PAC surpassed the achievements of EMILY’s List (an acronym for “Early Money Is Like Yeast” [it makes the dough rise]). Frustrated with Democratic women’s lack of progress in gaining and retaining congressional seats, 25 women founded the group in 1985, culling their first donors from their personal contacts. EMILY’s List raised money for pro-choice women candidates, whose numbers in the House had declined since the 1970s. Under the leadership of founder and president Ellen Malcolm, the group provided its membership with information on selected candidates and encouraged donors to contribute money directly to their campaigns. “Money is the first rule, the second rule, and the third rule” of campaign success, Malcolm observed.25 In 1986, EMILY’s List raised $350,000 from its 1,155 members to help Representative Barbara Mikulski of Maryland become the first Democratic woman to win election to the Senate without having her husband precede her. By the 2004 elections, more than 100,000 members had raised $10.1 million and EMILY’s List had become America’s largest PAC.26 During the 1990s, the group went international, with EMILY’s List UK established in 1993, followed in 1996 by EMILY’s List Australia.

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Footnotes

  1. Irwin Gertzog, Congressional Women: Their Recruitment, Behavior, and Integration (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995): 186. For a detailed analysis of the Women’s Caucus that extends into the late 1990s, see Gertzog’s Women and Power on Capitol Hill: Reconstructing the Congressional Women’s Caucus (Boulder, CO: Rienner Publishers, 2004).
  2. Lynn Rosellini, “Dues Plan Divides Women’s Caucus,” 16 July 1981, New York Times: C13.
  3. Gertzog, Congressional Women: Their Recruitment, Behavior, and Integration: 200—202.
  4. Rosellini, “Dues Plan Divides Women’s Caucus.”
  5. “Paula Hawkins,” Current Biography 1985 (New York: H.W. Wilson and Company, 1985): 176.
  6. Elizabeth Bumiller, “The Lady Is the Tigress: Paula Hawkins, Florida’s Pugnacious New Senator,” 2 December 1980, Washington Post: B1; Jo Thomas, “Mrs. Hawkins, the Battling Housewife, Goes to Washington,” 7 November 1980, New York Times: 18.
  7. Gertzog, Congressional Women: 204—205.
  8. Ibid., 209—212.
  9. Majorie Hunter, “Congresswomen Admit 46 Men to Their Caucus,” New York Times, 14 December 1981, New York Times: D10.
  10. Hunter, “Congresswomen Admit 46 Men to Their Caucus.”
  11. Ibid.
  12. Barbara Gamarekian, “Women’s Caucus: Eight Years of Progress,” 27 May 1985, New York Times: A20.
  13. Kevin Merida, “Role of House Women’s Caucus Changes,” 15 February 1995, Washington Post: A4; see also “The Women’s Caucus: Caucus History,” http://www.womenspolicy.org/caucus/history.html (accessed 28 April2005).
  14. Hope Chamberlin, A Minority of Members: Women in the U.S. Congress (New York: Praeger, 1973): 289.
  15. Maurine Neuberger, Oral History Interview, April 5 and 17, 1979; May 1, 10, 15, 1979, conducted by the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress, Inc., Manuscript Room, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
  16. National Organization for Women Web site: http://www.now.org/organization/faq.html (accessed 17 May 2005).
  17. Other influential PACs included the nonpartisan Women’s Campaign Fund, created in 1974 to fund pro-choice political candidates; WISH (“Women in the Senate and House”) List, which supports pro-choice Republican women; and the National Women’s Political Caucus, founded in the early 1970s, to promote women’s participation in the political process by supporting pro-choice women at all levels of government and providing political training for its members. In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of pro-life PACs were founded to support candidates who opposed abortion procedures. These groups included the Republican National Coalition for Life, founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1990; the National Pro-Life Alliance; and the Pro-Life Campaign Committee.
  18. Charles Trueheart, “Politics’ New Wave of Women; With Voters Ready for a Change, Candidates Make Their Move,” 7 April 1992, Washington Post: E1.
  19. http://www.emilyslist.org/about/history.phtml (accessed 13 June 2003; 28 April 2005).