We have just had our quadrennial political extravaganza. With the inauguration over and both the President and Congress rolling up their sleeves, as promised in the campaign, we should start seeing some excitement. Some of the most interesting things to watch are the reactions of America to the influx of female type politicians. As these women invade the political turf, changes are inevitable.
The Senate, which for several years has had two female members, does not even have a ladies' room in the Senate cloakroom. Now there are six women Senators, four of them new and full of the exhilaration of hard battles won. Among all the other goals they may have, they are probably going to insist on some improvements in the plumbing situation in the Capitol.
The House of Representatives had 29 women members last year. This year it has 49. Under the tutelage of Den Mother Pat Schroeder the women members have been meeting together since shortly after the election and who knows what influence they will eventually have on government.
This year women will be far more visible in important appointive offices than they have ever been.
The first woman to serve in the Cabinet was Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt and there have been very few since then. Now President Clinton, keeping his promise to "make his Cabinet look like America" has appointed several women. The final bean count by gender, according to the National Women's Political Caucus is: Male 11, Female 5. That is a record, and already reams of criticism have been written and spoken suggesting that those five women were appointed only to fill a quota. This is insulting both to the President-elect and to the women involved. There is also a racial and ethnic bean count, but that is another story.
We're still judging the women by a different set of standards. We no longer accuse them of getting their jobs by sleeping with the boss. Now we say they got them because of quotas. Sure, some of the women will fall on their figurative faces but some will be very successful. That's the way it is in high stakes politics. Neither sex has a lock on perfection.
The criticism of the women appointees doesn't come right out and say, "You're a woman and therefore you can't do the job." It is much more sophisticated. Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is much too liberal, "a whirling dervish of activity and ideas," not the staid somewhat stuffy persona expected of a Cabinet Officer. Carol Browner does not have enough experience at the federal level and is an environmentalist, a questionable qualification for head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Zoe Baird is not well known, her experience has been in the private sector and she is too young and inexperienced to be Attorney General. Besides, she is pretty. Hazel O'Leary, Secretary of Energy, is criticized simply because she got the job many Coloradoans wanted Tim Wirth to have.
We have always been a politically diverse nation. There was a time when the diversity was geographic. We had to be sure to balance east and west, north and south, rural and urban. There was a time when the diversity was religious. Not until Jack Kennedy, was a Roman Catholic elected President. Today I have no idea of the religious affiliation, if any, of the new Cabinet members and I don't know what part of the country they grew up in. Those distinctions are no longer important. Today the diversity is gender, race and ethnicity.
In a way, though, it is reassuring. As Ellen Goodman says, "Critics say that claims of diversity are splintering America, dividing and subdividing us into our warring parts...Yet Americans have become less conscious of region, religion, nationality. It can happen with race and gender as well. As we are included, we stop counting."
Meanwhile, let's give the women a break. We need all the brains in government we can get, whatever their shape or color.