Women’s History Month: Spread Feminism and Raise Women in Politics

 

Step up to feminism.  Feminism lifts up women’s social status.  Feminism lessens a male dominated society.  Since the seventeenth century England, organized feminist movements have formed in U.S. and Britain.  In the mid-1960s, women lobbied for legislation that favor women.  Late 1960s gave birth to radical feminism giving rise to women’s liberation. 

 

 

Radical feminism believes that sex is a major division in society well above class and race.  Sexual division of labor underpinned by a male dominated society has created patriarchy.  Asian and Latin American societies are predominantly patriarchal.  African American society is matriarchal.  Only in an African American family would you find a woman running the household.  Physical and social factors make up sex differences.  Since then, feminism has created a subculture or space in lifestyle or theoretical inquiries. 

 

 

Marxist or socialist feminists respond and shape feminist revival.  British women’s movement demonstrates socialist feminists.  They start with a Marxist premise and seek to reconcile through activities based on feminist ideas. 

 

 

Politics is social.  Politics allocates and distributes limited resources in society.  How people influence the distribution of resources is measured by their political participation.  Politics can be defined in two ways:

 

(1)   Activity resources are allocated to people

(2)   Articulation.  Working out relationships in a given power structure. 

 

In the recent decades, the latter has become prevalent in politics.  Power relationships within society are politics. 

 

 

Men dominate.  Women are oppressed.  Positions of married women suffered their lowest ebbs during the sixteenth and seventeenth century.  Then women’s role improved in feudal England where societies fortified households ruled by feudal lords.  Women’s roles were higher in Saxon times before Roman rule.  In primitive societies, Mbuti pygmies and Iroquois, women have more say but do not equate to men.  Women in Iroquois have economic and political power but are denied central roles as chiefs. 

What does male domination mean?  Male power over women.  Women are subjugated.  Women’s materialistic gains are at their helm.  Women are subordinated.  Men hold the reins and bridle over economic production.  Beginning in primitive societies, an overwhelming majority of men held the upper positions in society.  Radical feminists say that men hold sway over physical forces in society. 

  

Two theories delve into male domination.  Human biology and economic byproduct and cultural/social imperatives underlie male domination.  Look at primitive societies and male dominated role in them.  Men go hunting.  Men go hunting for survival.  Evolution has given birth to male domination.  Men form hierarchical bonded groups out of natural selection.  Men are allowed to go “philandry” to top their offspring to the n^th degree.  Like social Darwinist in the nineteenth century, men hunt to survive. 

  

Have women been downgraded based on our biology?  Feminists say so.  Millett argues otherwise.  Reproduction of man-female-infant unit is unequal.  Women depend on men for child-rearing and giving birth.  Reproductive differences are the cause of sexual division of labor and power.  To thin the line in sexual division of labor, revolution of women seizing control of production must take hold.  Women who produce are within means to wreck male domination and sex distinction.       

  

Radical feminists go on further to explain violence on women.  Violence on women is men's exertion of his power over them.  Men commit violent acts on women not out of desire but for power.  He wants to exert his power onto a subject, a woman.  Mary Daly in “Gyn/Ecology” explores litany of ways in which men have assaulted women —“suttee” or widow-burning in India; foot-binding in China; mutilation of female genitals in Africa.  Brownmiller justifies male arousal in anatomy of human copulation.  Karen Homey explores beyond “penis-envy” in her post-Freudian values. 

  

Female Genital Mutilation in Africa

Cross-cultural variation carves out sexual division of labor.  Culture and nature ties in together.  Ideologies mold women's role.  Neo-Marxist Louis Althusser understands Freud's psychological development in children in a patriarchal social order.  Juliet Mitchell argues that the phallus symbolizes and embody male power.  Why would men and women protect each other?  Lacon further develops the role of kinship.  Levi-Strauss explores marriage of men and women based on kinship.  In the kinship system, men have certain rights in the female kin; likewise women have certain rights in the male kin.         

Economic Production

Male dominate the economy.  In game theory, you wager from weighing your gains and losses.  Women pursue a strategy of not risking losing.  Women also acquiesce to their oppression.  Economic production facilitates 3 main social activities:

(1)   Produce as a means to satisfy needs

(2)   Create new needs

(3)   Reproduction of species

Natural division of labor has been set so that women stay at home while men procure food outside.  Men’s prevailing division of labor authorizes them to appropriate surplus. 

 

 

Picture Brides

Men have bought women.  Brides have been bought.  Wives and children have been properties.  Male dominance does not stem from biological differences or technical division of labor but based on their production and reproduction of existing surplus.  Male control the material means of reproducing productions and women’s reproductive functions.  Male control of child-bearing and child-rearing are unquestionable.

In light of advanced capitalism, women’s domestic labors are seen as infertile:

 

Not producing commodities for exchange

No surplus value for capitalists

 

Women's Domestic Labor

In capitalism, women’s domestic labor is unprofitable.  Domestic labor has been criticized as inefficient —not subject to value or capitalist's profit-making.  However, feminists argue women’s domestic labor contribute to surplus value by freeing men from housework making them available for wage labor.  In the mid-1970s, feminists placed capital values on women's domestic labors.  Male dominance can be traced to biological differences —physically stronger and aggressive controlling women’s reproductive powers. 

Women are further divided in social class and income.  Poverty is predominant in women households.  If she is married, her social position is identified with her husband's job either in working or middle-class. Limited access to formal education and skills can further restrict their job choices.      

Women’s Political Behavior

 

 

Public policy and states have oppressed women.  Women faced severe privatization to gain voting rights in U.S. and Britain.  Women gained voting rights in 1972 for Switzerland; voting rights in 1986 for Lichetenstein; moreover, no voting rights stand on a national front in Saudi Arabia.  

Women's suffrage

Women’s voter turnouts fall short to men.  From western democracies to Scandinavian —Norway, Sweden, Denmark —women vote less than men.  The disparity is even wider in developing countries —Latin American countries like Columbia and Brazil but less so in Argentina and Chile.  Women are less active than men —membership and attendance in meetings, involvements in electoral campaigns.       

Sex is not the most important predictor of political involvement.  10% women and 11% men in Denmark make up party members.  39% men and 31% women are involved in political activities.  But sex is most important in Norway. 

 

 

Women make up 40% of Britain’s Labour Party; on the contrary, women make up 51% in Conservatives.  Women make up 30-40% of Christian parties in Nordic countries.  Women are more than 50% in the Finnish Liberal People’s Party.  Membership is lower in Western Europe.  But France has 27% Socialists and 36% Communists.  In West Germany, 25% are in the Socialist Democratic Party; 23% of women are in the Christian Democratic Party.  New democracies have the least women members particularly in Spain and Portugal —40% are in the Portuguese Socialist Party and 30% are in the Spanish Centre Democrats.

 

 

Trade unions represent women in small percentages.  Memberships have increased in recent decades in western industrialized countries.  31% union members and 30% work force in the United Kingdom.  Trade members have increased in Nordic countries —40% in main federations, 33% in Norway’s Federal Trade Unions, 50% increase in professional civil service and federal unions.  25% women are trade members.  More than a third is in Australia.  Eastern European countries have higher rates:  59% in Soviet Union.  Third World notably Muslim and Latin America form only a small minority.

 

 

Ad hoc politics are short-lived political campaigns —pickets, squats thrown at makeshift organizations.  Ad hocs are protest activities against a regimen.  They tackle issues —local or community.  In Norway, 49% men and 47% women are involved in ad hocs.  Protest politics skew out illegal or violent.  Australia pinpoint women in the subcategory of protesters.  Sex-based, they side with conventional politics.                        

Women have made progress in revolutionary movements — 17^th century Britain, French Revolutions in 1789 and 19^th century, and Russia.  Socialist movement in Russia spurred agrarian reformers to the Bolsheviks.  Women fought in the streets of Red Revolutions.  Women took part in revolts and urban guerrillas in Argentina and Brazil.  Women banned together for an uprising against the Shah of Iran.  In Chile, women were found in three battlegrounds of Resistance —underground, prison, and exile.    El Salvador’s political military organization FPL had a higher percentage of women at 40%.  Nicaragua’s National Liberation Front had 30% women members by its final office.  

Women in Resistance

Women have taken part in national movements.  Africa has many.  Algerian women in Front de Liberation Nationale, a war of terror against the French joined forces for full insurrections —smuggling arms, planting bombs.  Women actively upheld a war against British in Yemen.  Women formed brigades during the nationalist movement in Zambia, Kenyan Mau Mau, and resistance to the French in Ivory Coast.  Zimbabwe had women freedom fighters.  National resistance formed in Namibia and Entrea.  Women’s role have extended in combat in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Nicaragua.     

Generally, women have taken auxiliary roles in movements.  Women served as messengers during war times.  (Fun Fact:  Audrey Hepburn served as a bike messenger during WWII.)  Women have made up terrorist wings of movements —Baader Meinhof, Symbionage Liberation Front, and Palestine Liberation Organization.  Federal German Republic sought 60% women terrorists.  Women suffered privations from regimes —Tsarist Russia in 1850-90 sentenced women to prison.  A third of Spanish political prisoners were women.  Turkey had women arrested and tortured under Martial law.  Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina had female political prisoners that were tortured and degraded. 

  

Women’s ad hocs contrast to conventional politics.  Women have been active in peace movements.  Women fall into protests groups in Britain where membership is less sectional and organization is looser than other interest groups.  Women make up 40.7% of 358 members in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).  In 1982, women held peace campaigns in Greenbaum protesting against cruise missiles.  30,000 women took part in their first big demonstration and 11 camps were established after.           

 

Women’s associations have formed in preindustrial and industrial societies.  West Africa women’s associations meet to discuss community politics.  South Nigerian villages mark political significance.  They hold regular meetings, elect officers, settle disputes, regulate local markets, lend money, and impose effective sanctions on transgressors of its rulings.

 

 

These associations are legions in urban and industrial settings.  Feminist social scientists depict associations with women’s formal political rights as reactionary.  Political scientists ignore their political potential.  By the end of the 19^th century, middle-class women associations proliferated during a period when women were not even allowed to vote in Britain and United States.   

 

 

Women's Christian Temperance Union

Social functions led up to social reform.  Women’s associations gathered social service and reform.  Federation of Women’s Reform Clubs is an example of an association.  Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1873) promoted temperance but extended to prison reform, child labor laws, and women’s suffrage.  Associations helped maintain existing social system.  They play a pivotal role in bringing attention to politicians and public. 

 

 

3 million women were in organizations in 1978.  Most present themselves as apolitical.  Women’s organizations play a political role.  Why join them?

National organizations take up political issues.

Women can achieve leadership positions.

 

Local conservative women are usually recruited for this background.  Women make up U.S. local and some state-level politics.  Women’s organizations have been mobilized to support center and right-wring parties and movements in Chile, Columbia, and Dominican Republic.  Women take part in ad hoc campaigns, protests, activities through informal, personal influence, and women’s associations. 

 

  

Women’s political attitudes have been conservative.  Conservatism entails voting for the conservative party.  In a 1983 election survey, 45% men and 42% women voted for the Conservative Party.  In 1974, a gap between male and female conservative voting took hold at only 2.5%.  Sex voting is credited to social class and voting. 

 

Death rates on class structure vary across different age and sex groups.  Women of higher social strata are ascribed to longer life spans.  Studies confirm relations between female conservatism and longevity. 

 

Older women voted conservative at same rate as men.

Middle-aged women (30-59) were 8 percentage points ahead of men in conservative voting.

Young women voted for Labour party at 11 points ahead of men.

 

Older women’s conservative voting are born out of life cycle or homologizing partisan values when Labour Party had not yet contended for national power.  In Britain, young women’s position is no less conservative than older women’s in tax cuts and social expenditures. 

 

 

Female conservatism is a banner for voting behavior in western European countries strongly tied to the Roman Catholic Church.  Women’s vote prevented communism in France, West Germany, and Italy.  Up to the 1970s, women were more inclined to vote for the conservative party for which information is available —Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands but Sweden and Finland.  This trend has fallen.  French legislature elections turned out 48% women and 43% men’s vote to the conservative party.  UDF and RPR had a smaller margin at 10-12% differential to earlier Fifth Republic.  In West Germany’s 1976 Budesteg elections, 47.6% men and 43.1% women voted for socialist SPD; meanwhile 47.2% men and 48.8% women voted for two conservatives parties —CDU and CSU.  No difference prevails in 1970s Sweden men and women’s behavior. 

 

Gender gap voting

 

Gender gap permits men to vote more Republican.  In 1980 presidential election, 45% women voted for Carter and 47% voted for Reagan; however, 36% men voted for Carter and 55% for Reagan.  1984 exit polls showed Reagan leading Mondule by 25% in men while only 10% in women.  New ways have paved in reclaiming women voters.  Gender gap also emerged in Scandinavian countries.  By 1980, women vote liberal and men conservative; 1984 conservative had 22% men but 13% women.  Australian women gave to the Conservative Liberal Party.  By 1970s it whittled down.  Women’s party membership touts political conservatism.  Australia has half the women in the Liberal Party and a quarter for the Labour Party.   

Latin America pillows women conservatism.  Chile’s 1970-71 elections and Argentina’s 1965 show that women more than men bend towards conservative votes which is also rooted to the Roman Catholic Church.  Argentina women did not support parties on the far right.  Brazil’s middle-class Catholics were swayed by impendence of communism.  Female conservatism has to meet conditions.  Female and male support for conservative party differentiates by 10%.  Secondly, political attitudes grow conservative with age.  France, West Germany, Australia, Britain conservatism features longevity.  Argentina women in urban districts vote by class lines while country residents vote conservatively than class or status.  Female conservatism may drop as isolated rural women snap out of their shells. 

 

 

Other evidence suggests female conservatism has declined.  Findings counter to women’s politically conservative behavior.  Women in Australia and Belgium not only favor conservative parties but vote for Socialist or Labour Party than men.  Is conservatism too broad to discriminate?  If it is right-wing political attitudes, then it is no less demonstrative of women to men.  In Argentina, women represent the status quo than men but not to the radical right.  Uneven numbers of men break the seesaw in Poujadist France, Neo-Fascist Italy, National Socialists Germany, Ultras in Northern Ireland.  Female conservatism compares to established political order.  Established order imply socialist —Soviet women party workers that have indoctrinated preference argue for women protest bond in traditional order.  An example is women in community action campaigns that protest against housing and neighboring conditions.  Do these thesis exaggerate women’s conservative values?  Women have shown to be less politically knowledgeable and involved than men pertaining to concepts of the right and left —Britain, U.S., West Germany, Australia, Netherlands. 

Tax Cuts

Women are pacifists.  3% of Britain’s women rally for armed police at demonstrations while 4% women are less likely to advocate for capital punishment.  Differences in partisanship of sexes decline with successive generations.  They come together in Labour Party’s price increases, immigration, and strikes.  Younger men and women modestly come together in attitudes joining European communities.  Younger women prefer tax cuts to social expenditures but are more critical of big businesses than men.  Both sexes’ political attitudes come together with the immediacy of the issue.   

Women personalize politics.  Take this cited example:  Women’s support for Eisenhower during 1952 elections.  In American voting behavior, sex difference is snippet.  Throughout 1952-1976 U.S. Presidential elections, women showed favor for candidate’s personality than issue or party consideration.  Few women base their votes on looks or family life in personal characteristics with added jot of political contend for perception of candidate’s competence.  Women are firstly influenced by candidate’s leadership then trustworthiness is second. 

 

Personality Politics

 

Women are pacifist on war and nuclear arms.  Women differ on war and peace from men during 1952-76.  48% men and 32% women rallied for U.S. military involvement in Korea.  More than half of men and two-thirds of women frowned upon and objected to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.  Women played a prominent role in British Peace movement.  In the summer of 1981, thousands of women marched to Brussels in nuclear arms race, a protest organized by 5 Norwegian women’s peace groups. 

 

 

Adjacent topic to nuclear arms lays nuclear power.  U.S. Gallup poll found the following:  71% men and 59% women were open to closing nuclear plants at Three Mile Island.  Swedish electoral politics make nuclear power a central theme.  46% women and 31% men opposed it.  March 1980 referendum showed 59.1% men and 41.5% women were against prohibition.  American women are part of urban reform movement of the Progressive Era.  Women in Sweden support reformism —cleaning up government and fighting against corruption.

 

 

Women's Employment, a situational factor in political attitudes

Socialisation, situational, and structural factors shape women’s political attitudes.  Situational factor that affects women:  Employment outside of home raises political participation.  Other situational factors include marital status and small children.  Political socialization is an interaction between system and individual’s predisposed skills which result in internalized political participation.  Socialised values arise out of sex roles —girls’ grouping from their immediate environment and boys’ bracketing to a wider environment.  11-year-olds broad sex-role stereotypes and sex-stereotyped orientation shaped political issues.  While more demanding political participation were attributed to paid and employed women than housewives, women focused their political participation to child and local than national politics.  College education and age can also override childhood socialization.             

Social structure is power relations that determine individual’s behavior.  Class relations and patriarchy discourage female political participation.  Sex difference in political participation is stressed by education.  Highly educated women increase their political participation narrowing the sex difference.  Sex difference in any college educated individual is marginal.  In Britain, the educated have bearings on women’s participation rates.  Highly educated Netherlanders may find their sex difference in political activism diminish as women outstrip men in voting rates.  In fact, inverse relationship exists between the difference and women’s education —Canada, Latin America, India—where female voter turnout is higher with high literacy rates.  But no significant difference exists in Denmark.  High education erodes sex differences in political concerns in Japan, Nigeria, India, and Austria but does not apply to political activism. 

  

Education affects women's political participation

Education is the most decisive influence in women’s political participation.  Sex differences in political activism are minimal in college and high school graduates that are unemployed compared to less educated and unemployed.  Other studies indicate correlation between education and employment.

 

Age is a major structural determinant of women’s political participation.  U.S. has greater sex difference in voter turnout for the elderly.  Differential is greatest in men and women age 65 or older, narrows at age 50-65 bracket, then more at 30-50 groups but opens up again at age 30 and below.  Young women’s lower voter turnout can be attributed to their responsibility to infants at home. 

 

Young women are ready to vote, participate in opinion polls, and protest.  Class aligns with conservatism.  British women voter’s conservatism is greater among the middle and upper-class women.  Argentina’s upper-class women are more conservative than both upper-class men and low-class women.  Class differ political participation in India.  Women in the middle tier hierarchy participates the most.  Poor women lack resources such as time and energy to politically participate.  Urbanization varies negatively with women’s conservatism in Childe and positively with political participation in Canada, Northern States of America, and Yugoslavia.   

Political institutions encourage or discourage women’s political participation.  Mid-1970s Egypt made it infeasible for women to join the ruling party in rural areas.  West Germany’s Social Democratic Party’s recruiting of growing numbers of men added to the sex difference in party membership.  Guinea encouraged women to join PDG because his party needed active support of underprivileged groups who had to gain from promised policy changes. 

 

Gender & Leadership

Women were recruited to mobilize women’s votes at elections —Nkrumah’s Conventional Political Party in Guinea and Malaya’s United Malays National Organization.  Parties can recruit women members at specific times —1920s Soviet Community party, WWII, and the mid-1960s.  Feminism pared down sex differences in political parties.  Growing number of women’s political participation has occurred in U.S. and European countries.  Feminism helps to shape women’s political attitudes and public politics.  But how far has it raised women’s political power?                                              

 

  

Women at the Top

 

Golda Meir

Indira Gandhi

Margaret Thatcher

Women’s political behavior may resemble men’s at the grassroots but it differs at the upper ladder.  Women are underrepresented at the top where political power is most concentrated.  Women have succeeded as their country’s political command:  Golda Meir, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Cory Aquino, and Norway’s Gro Harlem Bruntland.  Women are a slim minority at the political elites.  Different institutions make up political participation:

 

 Institutions that form a channel of numerical representation

   Agencies of interest representation

   Institution of political administration

   Judiciary

 

One person represents one vote in numerical representation.  Political administration fuses together to organize a corporate system of participation.  Communication media is informally integrated into political systems.  Political power wields from informal or direct means.   

Women at the top are centered on their participation in institution of numerical representation and their role in legislature.  Women’s underrepresented status quo are recorded —British General Election June 1983 produced 23 women in Members of the Parliament or 3.6% slightly more than 19 women or 3% elected in 1979.  High point in female representation occurred with 29 women MPs in 1964 following Labour’s victory in General Election.  Since 1983 elections, 5 more women joined the House from by-elections bringing total by March 1987 to 28.  House of Lords in 1979 comprised of 39 women out of 303 total life peers which amounts to 13% and 17 peeresses less than 2% hereditary peers. 

 

 

Midterm November 1986 Congress elections turned out 23 women in U.S. House of Representatives accruing to 5.3%.  Number surged in 1984 where the numbers elected were only slightly higher up from the preceding in 98^th session with 21 women.  Before the 97^th session, women counted up to 19 and 18 prior.  Number steady climbed up from early 1960s.  87^th session between 1961-2 had 17 women elected to House but fell precipitously picking up after 1970s.     

 

 

Women after 1984 and 1986 elections had 2 in the Senate when they admitted 14 total women members.  Fewer representations occurred in national legislature in U.S. and Britain when the Second Wave of Feminism prevailed.  Women’s legislative seats in old Commonwealth countries were thin.

 

 

Canada 1980 had less than 5% in the lower house.

4.3% New Zealand’s legislature

Australia had none in House of Representatives

 

1984 federal elections had 27 women members in Canada’s House of Commons making up 9.6%.  1983 Australia had 8 women to the House of Representatives comprising 5.4%.  Women consist one-fifths of Australia’s Senate.  New Zeland’s general elections rose up to 12%.  

Western European countries do least well in countries that have adapted democratic forms of government. 

 

1984 Greece 4% national legislature

Spain 5%

Portugal 8%

1978 France >4%; 1986 5.5%

1982 Republic of Ireland 8% Dail (lower house)

West Germany 10%

1982 Bundestag 6%

1984 Netherlands 11%

1980 Italy House or Representatives 8%

Scandinavian Countries

1981 Denmark 24%

1982 Sweden 28%

1983 Finland 31%

1985 Norway 35%

 

Communist countries are esteemed with women.  1979 Russian Supreme Soviet comprised of 31% women.  Western political scientists argue that independent legislative influences of Supreme Soviet are marginal.  Yugoslavia federal assembly during 1953-70 stepped up but no significant difference in women’s participation has remained.  Women’s proportion was low in Central Committee of Communist Party.    

Women’s legislative presence is lower in Latin America and Middle Eastern countries.  Early 1970s before coups, 55 women served in the lower house and 8 in Senates of the 21 American republics, 2% total.  After 1985 federal elections in Brazil, less than 1% of new Republicans were women.  Trends towards redemocratisation in Latin America will not necessarily bring rapid changes in recruiting women legislatives.  Women have fared better in Costa Rica (5.3% 1979) and Venezuela (5.4% same year) which has been attributed to competitive party systems.

 

Women do better in upper than lower chambers.  Netherlands, Austria, Belgium have higher women members in upper chambers.  Ireland women had higher shares of seats in the Seanad than the Dail, 10% in 1986.  Australia supports more striking instance.  But that is not the case for France, Italy, West Germany, or Spain.  No inverse relationship exists between upper house and proportion of women members. 

 

Local and some regional levels have female representation that surge in lower tier assemblies.  By 1986, 14.8% of state legislatives in U.S. were women.  Women enter provincial easily than federal assemblies in Australia and Canada.  Similar pattern had been found in Central Committee membership in Czechoslavakia and Eastern Europe.  Female representation in West Germany in 1979 had 8.5% women same as Bundestag.  Provincial assemblies of Netherlands had 16% slightly less than National Parliament.  Greater female representation is clear at local level.  By 1983, women were 14.4% of England and Wales County councilors, 11.1% in Scotland’s regional councilors, 7.9% of Northern Ireland district councilors.  In 1984, U.S. women made up 8% county board commissioners.  By 1985, women made up 14% of members of municipal and township governing boards.    

 

 

Women were mayors in 4 of 100 largest cities.  High percentages of women have been elected to municipal councils in Canada.  Municipal politics  is non-partisan and not seen as a step to higher political office.  By 1974, women held 13.3% of local council seats in New Zealand.  Following 1983 local elections, women made up 14% of French counsels municipals.  West Germany in 1983 had 13% of women at all local government councils.  Nordic parliaments had high female representation.  Sweden women made up 31% of county councilors and 29% of local councilors in 1982; 1984 Norway had a third of county councilors through 24% local councilors.  

Women in politics come from 3 different types of personal and professional backgrounds.

 

(1)   Male equivalents are women who have acquired political office through relations with prominent men and are expected to have trade assumptions about women’s political role.

(2)   Majority of women in modern societies are women that come into politics relatively late after bringing up their children and without political office backgrounds.  They have a range of political styles and orientations.

(3)   New breed of women in politics enters young and have a background of professional employment particularly in law who find ways to have political careers despite marriage and/or children.  Women have feminist values and are ready to face political contest. 

 

Women are more liberal than men.  Britain’s Parliamentary Labour Party during October 1974-79 had 12% women but 6% men.  U.S. state legislature has more liberal women than men.  Congresswomen that were concerned with issues like riots and civil disorders from 1968-74 were marginally more liberal than Congressmen in the same party.  Voting records of congresswomen 1969-83 in House of Representatives matched samples of congressmen.

 

 

Women’s movement

 

Women’s movement covers self-styled feminist’s positions.  Late 1960s, new radical feminists were associated with specific platforms of ‘women liberation.’  Radical feminists re women’s liberation for revolutionary feminism out of faith that revolutionary activity liberates women.  Freeman, author of Second Wave-Feminism in U.S. “The Politics of Women’s Liberation” and NOW (National Organization of Women) activist defines differences between ‘radical,’ ‘revolutionary,’ and ‘reformist’ in women’s movement.  Freemen proposes women’s liberation should include activities that radically widen the lives of women.

 

First Wave of Feminism

 

French Revolution weaved political demands for women’s rights.  May Wollstonecraft write the first treatise Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1972.  Women acquired feminist’s ideas.  Seventeenth century England‘s middle-class and aristocratic women demanded greater equality. 

 

 

Seneca Falls Convention 1848

Feminist movement began in U.S. when women joined to abolish slavery in 1830s had drawn upon their own place.  300 men and women attended the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 which adopted declarations and resolutions for women’s suffrage.  Feminists increasingly focused on women’s suffrage after American Civil War when blacks won their political rights.  Socialist feminism was a special interest to women.

 

 

NWSA merged with AWSA in 1890 to form National American Women’s Suffrage Association.  Social feminists worked to unionize women workers.  Social feminism materialized in Greenwich Village and Charlotte Perkin Gilmary’s writings.  Women’s party secured the Nineteenth Amendment that gained women’s right to vote.  Feminism subsided thereafter.

 

 

Women's Trade Union League

Feminist ideas spread across middle-class in Britain.  Feminist movement in Britain emerged in mid-1850s, a decade after America.  Small group of women based in London sought to improve women’s rights and employment opportunities.  Suffrage comes to view in mid-1860s after J.S. Mill’s attempt to get women involved under 1867 Reform Act leading up to National Society for Women’s Suffrage.  British Women’s Trade Union League founded by Emma Patterson in 1873 became successful than American initiative especially after May MacArthur took over Secretaryship in 1903. 

 

 

Suffrage movement made headway under National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).  Women’s Social and Political Union formed in 1903.  Parliament talked out the women’s suffrage bill with little resistance from ILP or Labour Representation Committee.  Feminists were divided on NWI.  Feminism still lived at the end of the war.  Suffrage granted to women aged 30 or over in 1918 but not all adult women until 1928.  Feminism grew in 1920s.

 

Striking difference between American and British movement had been noticeable.  The American Movement gained momentum early and had many more women.  Equal Rights feminists abounded in Britain than U.S.; socialist feminists played little in American feminism. 

 

 

Nordic Countries

Movements in Nordic countries had been successful before WWI.  Organized feminism developed in late 1870s-80s that catalyzed a large class of the female population.  Sweden and Denmark women campaigned for economic rights in property for marriages and employment opportunities.  Finland and Norway’s national struggles politicized women granting women’s votes before WWI.  Australia and New Zealand’s movements were smaller and ruled by temperance organization that focused on reform and suffrage.      

Feminism & Policymaking

 

Equal Rights

 

Women voters in Wake County

Major feminist activity in U.S. and Britain has campaigned for equal rights employment via Equal Rights Amendment.  Equal rights have been less of a priority in nationalist feminist campaigns.  Equal Rights feminism has been vital in the nineteenth century movements.  Second Wave feminism revived parts of equal rights.  Organizations like NOW grew demands for equal opportunity. 

 

 

Radical feminism pursues issues that raise physical basis of women’s oppression.  Socialist feminists have prepared to campaign for equal pay and advancement of women in trade unions.  Not all reformist feminists favor equal rights.  Feminism has opposed campaigns for Equal rights Amendment because it undermines protective legislation vital to the interest of working-class women.  The League of Women Voters opposed the ERA until 1972 though it is endorsed by all reformist American feminist organizations.  Women in Britain trade unions favor protective legislation. 

 

 

The pursuit of equality for economic opportunity has led many to recognize campaign objectives which extend beyond legislation for equal pay and sex discrimination to women’s role in the family like child care and maternity leave.  Original goal of Equal Rights Amendment has opened up wider ramifications but feminists groups and agencies have not agreed on issues to tackle.

 

 

Equal economic opportunity has given rise to positive discrimination in favor of women that range from affirmative action programs, quota systems, and preferential hiring.  Advocates for positive discrimination argue compensation for women or necessary aim for future equal society.  Not all reformist feminists approve positive discrimination.  Some argue against the practice for men and its effective strategy.

 

 

Feminists across different countries vary in its accord on the issue.  Feminists in U.S. are most active.  Britain’s organized feminists groups toil on equal pay and sex discrimination.  However, groups such as Rights of Women and Rights for Women Unit of the National Council for Civil Liberties have been funded on it. 

 

 

Feminists across western democracies have shown little interest on the issue.  However, feminists in political parties and trade unions have pushed for more in Scandinavia and later in Italy and France during the late 1970s.  

Equal Pay Act passed during Kennedy administration 

Equal Pay Act had more impact than the Sex Discrimination Act.  One appraisal in 1979 claimed that with inflation taken into account, Equal Pay Act sizably reduced sex pay differential especially among the blue-collar workers.  EOC Annual Report in 1980 showed that female employees’ average annual earnings in previous year were 73% of men’s, a drop from 75% peak in ’77.  Women’s wages have been around this amount since.  Sex Discrimination Act made it harder to gauge improvements.

 

 

Two institutions have played a subsidiary role in enforcing the Acts —Central Arbitration Committee and Advisory Conciliation Arbitration Service.

 

 

Shortcomings have stirred lack of knowledge of the legislation particularly among trade unions and women employees.  Employers have steered around the Acts, segregating women’s work and giving little help to women by unions on the shop-floor.  Economic recession worsened the hard task. 

 

 

Sexual harassment at work is part of sex discrimination.  In July 1985, Ms. Kantara won her harassment case at an Ealing private hospital under Sex Discrimination Act.  Women Against Sexual Harassment was established later that year. 

 

 

First national Equal Pay Act in America was passed in 1963.  Equal pay has been an issue since the 1920s by equal rights and welfare feminists.  Since WW II, unions have been active in preventing women’s wages from undercutting men’s. 

 

 

Equal Pay has been a success.  Department of Labor has handled cases for violations of the Act.  Courts have interpreted the Act.  After eight years the median rate of women’s pay compared to men’s remained at 70%.  Eight years later, it increased to 72%.  Limited on equal pay policy is an absence of an effective employment policy.       

 

 

Equal pay came from labor politics; similarly, equal opportunity began as a by-product of race relations.  President’s commission on the status of women highlighted sex inequalities.  But the ‘sex’ on Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act which outlaws discriminatory employment was not a feat from feminist campaigns.  The welfare feminists of the Women’s Bureau opposed it.

 

 

Women bore the limiting border of the civil rights legislations.  Title 7 coverage excluded employment in local government and education.  It established an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that had fewer powers than the British EOC.  After congress changed the proposal, the commission lacked enforceable powers.

 

 

‘Sex’ in Title 7 comes with minimal political interest.  1 of the 5 appointed EEOC Commission was women.  Commission was inadequately funded.  Title 7 paved the way for major policy advances for equal employment opportunity for women.

 

 

Women’s liberation movement gave rise to policy advances.  Feminists in the Commission encouraged women to speak out.  They also encouraged feminist lobby organization which gave rise to NOW.  Commission was appointed as the women’s movement gained its momentum. 

 

 

Expansion of federal policies that promote equal opportunity for blacks helped advances.  EEOC had enforcing powers in 1972 which also applies to women.  President Johnson in 1965 called in Executive Order 11246 establishing an Office of Federal Contract Compliance out of worsening race relations.  Their task ensured federal contracts which forbade racial discrimination but also included affirmative action which promotes equal opportunity.  Executive Order 11375 in 1967 extended these terms covering sex discrimination.  The Order encourages equal opportunity for women in private employment and extended the same conditions to women at all levels of federal employment.  Executive Order in 1969 further detailed the new Federal Women’s Programme of affirmative action.  Affirmative action program requires employers to produce an equal opportunity policy statement and appoint someone to direct an affirmative action plan.  

Equal Rights Amendment

 

 

National Woman Party

Alike to equal employment initiative, Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed by the National Woman’s Party.  A survey showed discrimination against women in property and child guardianship.  ERA was submitted to Congress in 1923 through 1971.  Deterring protective legislation, most feminist organizations objected to the ERA —League of Women Voters, Women’s Joint congressional Committee, and Women’s Bureau.  National Women’s Party had supporters —National Federal of Business & Professional Women’s Clubs and the National Association Women Lawyers.  The Amendment was endorsed by the Republican Party in 1940 and the Democrats in 1944.  Though approved by the House of Representatives for the first time in 1945, it was opposed to go any further.  It passed through the Senate in 1950 and 1955 with the added Hayden rider which requires the amendment, “shall not be construed to impair any rights, benefits, or exemptions.”  But the ERA had a real shot in the late 1960s when feminism soared up again.

 

 

Proposed as an Amendment to the Constitution, it originally stated, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.”  Then the wording changed to, “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”  Rallying parade to the feminist movement, the ERA would provide an effective mean to establish women’s equal rights under law. 

 

 

Property Rights of Women

No established law for sex equality exists nationally.  The interpretation of women’s rights varies not only federally but by state-to-state.  For example, some states exempt women from jury duty.  South Carolina does not grant rights to married women for matrimonial property during marriage or rights to more than a third as a widower.  Another option to ERA is the piecemeal approach by laws and court judgments which had not afforded women’s equality 150 years since when it began with Married Women’s Property Act.  Another option is to argue women’s equal rights in an existing clause in the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment which provides “equal protection,” but the courts had not interpreted the law to women. 

 

 

Sixteen states have already passed their version of the ERA.  The numbers have not been large but the results, favorable.  Amendment can be introduced by either Congress or two-thirds of the states.  Congress then must ratify the proposed Amendment by two-thirds of the votes in both Houses before it is submitted to the states.  Three-quarters of the states or their legislatures then must approve of it. 

 

 

NOW

Feminist support for the ERA stepped up to new heights in 1967 with NOW.  NOW has included equality in its program.  Other feminist organizations joined.  Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act invalidated states’ protective legislations.  State labor laws also restricted than protected women.  The Women’s Bureau in 1969 proclaimed support for the Amendment further adding to it by Kennedy’s Citizens Advisory Council in the Status of Women in 1963 and Nixon’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibility in 1969.  Women’s strike in 1970 happened at the anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, the precipice of a new feminism. 

 

 

ERA campaign pushed forward.  Women in government and over 50 national organizations including Common Cause and Americans for Democratic Action embraced feminist groups.  The House passed the ERA again in 1971.  The Senate approved of it by 84 votes in 1972. 

 

 

The women’s movement influenced public opinion with polls showing favor for women’s rights since the 1970s.  The Amendment required states’ approval.  Support for ERA in 1972 was 19 states in 3 months, 30 states in a year.  But only 35 of 38 states ratified in 1971; 3 rescinded their votes after. 

 

Nationalist feminist organizations supported the campaign.  Realizing it would not be ratified by 1979 deadline, NOW gave it a priority to go through all constitutional precedents.  NOW sought to mobilize support and 100,000 women took part in the ERA march in 1978.

 

 

ERA lobby fell short of meeting the new deadline for ratified states’ votes by June 1982.  Only 35 states ratified by the beginning of 1982.  The remaining was conservative whose attitudes had toughened even more.  American women recognized sex discrimination and 170 national organizations supported the ERA while 25 opposed.  ERA was reintroduced in 1983 but fell short of 6 votes. 

 

 

Shortfall of states’ votes had been a major setback.  Feminists continued to lobby for equal rights and equal employment rights.  Equal pay is a chief concern.  National movement for equal pay emerged in the late 1970s.  President Carter administration, EEOC, Women’s Bureau, OFCC all took up pay equity whereas OFCCP were on its rise to issue new regulation in 1980.  Then the Regan administration put if off.     

 

 

Employment equality has to be launched on a wide scale.  ‘Feminisation of poverty’ has grown and the need to address poor women has also.  Organizations compensate by providing training and re-employment programs to women or appealing to government.  Feminism has grasped on women’s employment prospects and their domestic responsibilities.  Feminists appeal to other ways of framing women’s work.  Congress and state legislature have flexi-time and part-time growth.   

 

 

Equal employment policy-making

 

 

Differences in U.S. and Britain’s party systems have been significant at the legislative stage.  Equal opportunity in Britain had been a political issue with both parties espousing on it.  Critical differences are in place in the policy’s details and putting it into effect.  Britain draws on U.S.’s as its predecessor.  For example, EEOC is a forerunner of EOC.  U.S. relies on courts to make policy by interpreting the law.   No such role play in Britain.  EEOC has gained force.  EEOC women have galvanized women’s lobby for sex equality.    

 

 

Equal opportunity is a concern to organized businesses and labor.  Labor’s support was vital in passing equal pay legislation.  Businesses or labor organizations did not oppose equal opportunity.  But business interest in U.S. countered against funding for EEOC.  Employers also opposed pay equity in the 1980s.  1980s had been a downturn for women's pay equity because of the country's heavy economic recession.  Locally, businesses and unions have not cooperated to put the legislation into effect in U.S. and Britain. 

 

Feminists had to campaign to put equal pay into effect.  American feminists have been more successful.  British women organizations had not made utilized EEC’s measures for women’s employment rights. 

 

 

Putting equal opportunity into effect is pivotal.   Legislators have underwritten laws of equal opportunity that recognizes economic interests by leaning its effect with agencies that have been exhausted.  Feminists in U.S. and Britain had varying political activity to redeem it.  Raise women's salaries and employment opportunities.  Support feminism.  Support women's rights.