Henrietta Hay's Column

Politically this is the Year of the Woman. Or so we have heard. Several very strong women are running for the United States Senate, and may very well increase the percentage of women who sit in that august body, a figure which currently stands at a dismal 2%.

But for the candidates' wives, it's as though the past twenty years of the women's movement had never been. We have four cardboard women - women reduced to non-personhood by the political process.

I've lost my sense of humor over this one. I am, of course, referring to the wives of the candidates for President and Vice-President. The two parties have handled them differently, but the results are about the same. These women have been reduced to tokens in the game, pawns not queens, set up in whatever way the party bosses think will bring in the most votes. We'll never know what these women really think and feel, but for whatever reason, they are willing to take their marching orders.

The first Presidential wife I remember was Eleanor Roosevelt. She broke the mold by speaking out on all sorts of issues. She was a public figure in her own right and caused almost as many waves as her husband. She was a great humanitarian and a fine human being. Before her day, most Presidential wives had been pretty much in the background although from the beginning it didn't make them very happy. Martha Washington, who had been running a big plantation, first noticed the constraints of the position and complained that, "I am more like a state prisoner than anything else."

In the seventies came the women's movement, more women in the professions and expanded media coverage. Suddenly the wives became public figures, and this year the four are paying the price.

The vitriolic way in which Pat Buchanan hissed the word, "feminist" made me wonder what he reads with his Wheaties. Having spent the last twenty years involved in the feminist cause, I find it logical and not designed to cause the end of the world. Quite the contrary. We're talking about utilizing the brains and ability of the 51% of Americans who have been left out of the loop. But the powers that be in both parties seem to think that most Americans want their Presidents' wives to be the 1920 model.

So they have programmed Barbara Bush as the perfect grandmother figure. We know that she has a strong and fiery personality, but her image remains purely sweet and conventional. So it is interesting that she was allowed to speak her mind on freedom of choice only when Republicans for Choice needed to be placated.

Marilyn Quayle has been portrayed as domineering and caustic, but she has been pushed into the background and turned into the showcase mother. She has given up the practice of law. As a writer, however, I am impressed by the fact that there were driving forces in her that demanded expression. She has found a politically non-threatening outlet, and written a mystery novel.

Hillary Clinton several months ago was a brilliant and outstanding trial lawyer who took pride in her profession and spoke her mind. Now she has been muzzled, given a new hair-do, even forced into a cookie bake-off and is seldom seen without her daughter. She has been, for the moment at least, reduced by the party into an adoring Donna Reed.

Tipper Gore, like Barbara, chose the domestic route, but she became involved in various national causes, the most public of which was her effort to get warning labels on certain rock albums. She had a cause she believed in, but it was controversial. Now you never hear of it, and you see her only on a leash.

Four cardboard women. What a waste. As Diane Carman says, "The concept of a loving, supportive, independent wife who has a perfect mind of her own is still too radical, even in 1992, the Year of the Woman."