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SPEAKERS: GOP STARTS ALIENATING WOMEN IN 1920s

(PAI)

SPEAKERS: GOP STARTS ALIENATING WOMEN IN 1920s

By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

            WASHINGTON (PAI)--The Republican Party’s alienation of women, which has appeared in the “Gender Gap” in elections starting at least in 1980, actually began in the 1920s, two speakers at a forum on women’s political history say.

            And female activists knew it, the speakers added.  But the activists were split in several ways: One group left the GOP and migrated to the Democrats, while another preferred to stand and fight back in a losing cause. 

            And women activists also split on issues.  The larger and more moderate group, the National Women’s Suffrage Association--ancestor of the League of Women Voters--fought for practical “protectionist” measures, such as the 8-hour day and outlawing child labor.  The smaller and more militant group, the National Women’s Party, campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment.

            Historian Jo Freeman and writer Kristie Miller discussed the complex history of the women’s movement in the 20^th century at a March 25 meeting of the Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues.  The labor movement, they added, sided with the “moderates” as it realized that the causes they fought for would also benefit male-dominated unions.   But that also meant labor opposed the ERA, they said.

            But the bulk of their talk was devoted to the history of women in politics, and to the “gender gap,” even if it wasn’t called that until the advent of Ronald Reagan--who took at least one far-reaching pro-female worker action behind the scenes, ordering agencies to review their rules for evidence of sexual discrimination.

            Miller said one group, including her grandmother, Rep. Ruth Hanna McCormick (R-Ill.), preferred to stay and fight within the GOP.  McCormick, the first woman ever elected statewide in Illinois--she was its “at large” U.S. representative at a time when larger states could still elect some reps that way--was named to the GOP’s outreach committee even before women won the nationwide right to vote.

            “But she (McCormick) quickly realized she was window dressing” for a party that wanted women’s votes but really didn’t care about their issues and priorities, Miller said of McCormick, daughter of fabled GOP political boss Mark Hanna of Ohio.

            Other female political activists, Miller and Freeman said, quickly gave up on the GOP.  Freeman added many of those who worked on specific issues were “forced to migrate” to the Democrats, especially after neither the League nor the National Women’s Party “had much success” pushing their respective agendas in the 1920s.

            Pro-worker legislation died in Congress or was invalidated by the conservative pro-business U.S. Supreme Court.  Freeman said the one measure that did make it out --a constitutional amendment outlawing child labor--was not ratified by enough states.

            “Labor unions supported those ‘protectionist’ laws, because they realized that if women could get the 8-hours-a-day law, it was the opening wedge” for everyone, Miller said.  But unions, led by then-labor lobbyist Esther Peterson, opposed the ERA because it could undermine those laws.  They did not change their stand until the 1960s.

            Bruised by those 1920s fights and an unsuccessful foray into partisan politics, the League retreated into its present stance of non-partisan information and participation, she added.   Democrats were wary of the more-militant Women’s Party political activists after clashes between the NWP and female reformers in New York during FDR’s gubernatorial terms.  “The battles occurred because they”--the Roosevelt reformers and the Women’s Party--“came out of different perspectives,” Freeman said.

            At least the Democrats paid attention to the women in politics, even if they fought with them.  The GOP was another matter, Miller added.  What happened to her grandmother was only the harbinger of its attitude.  Still, on the surface, the GOP was more pro-woman than the Democrats through the 1950s, until the civil rights revolution.   “The sea change occurred with the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Miller commented.

            That law not only outlawed racial discrimination, but also discrimination based on sex.  Though neither Freeman nor Miller mentioned it, addition of sexual discrimination to the Civil Rights Act was actually a move by its Southern foes to try to make the law more unpalatable to Congress as a whole.  It didn’t work.

            “There’s even less consensus about the last 30-40 years, but the progressive tradition in the GOP is just about gone,” Freeman said.  “And the Democrats have become the progressive party.  All of their (presidential) candidates were progressives,” including those who have dropped out of the race.

            But the splits that began in the 1920s and were accelerated by the civil rights revolution produced the electoral gender gap, the two said.

            Despite the impact of women in politics, Miller warned “it is still more acceptable to express sexist comments than racist comments” in the political arena, as elsewhere.  And she noted Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) gets them all the time on the campaign trail.  “Nevertheless, this is an historic election.  Democratic voters saw beyond race and sex to choose candidates”--Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)--“who represent classes that have never made it to the top tier before.”                         ###