Women And Political Participation : Cultural Change In The Political Arena - 97 edition

This book about women's political participation in the United States focuses on the effects of cultural change on gender roles and the impact of role perception on women's political attitudes and political behavior.

In many ways, the story of women's political participation is the story of cultural change. This point is well-illustrated by one woman's description of her awakening political interests. Barbara Boxer was not politically active until spurred by the assassination of Robert Kennedy but won election to the U.S. Senate two decades later. She remarked: ''[My husband] must have felt like he married Debbie Reynolds and woke up with Eleanor Roosevelt!'' (1)

At any point in our history culture influences our perceptions of women in part through the presentation of images. Any culture presents a variety of images of women, and these images affect people's thinking. A culture can present no images of women as leaders, thus sending a message that women cannot lead; or it can present images of women as religious leaders but not as political leaders, suggesting that some areas of leadership are open to women but not others.

However, cultural images evolve, often reflecting the confusion that results when society experiences change--such as in popular notions of what women can and cannot do. For example, the ''waif look,'' which was popular among fashion models in the early 1990s, suggested that women are childlike and frail--the opposite of the image evoked by the women who attained positions of power in the congressional elections of 1992. The ''waifs'' may have been a cultural response to women's increasing involvement in political affairs. The image may even have served as a safety valve for some of the dissent and anxiety surrounding such a major cultural change. What is clear is that this image of women coexisted with, rather than replaced, the newly emerging image of women as political activists.

In this book we explore women's political participation in the context of cultural change; we believe that this context is critical to understanding women and political participation. Chapter 1 is an introduction to women's status in a liberal culture and a survey of women's political participation from colonial times to the 1920. Women's notions of gender role, appropriate behavior, and gender identity are the subjects of Chapter 2, which includes a discussion of childhood and adult political learning, with particular emphasis on acculturation and political socialization. In Chapter 3 we examine the gender gap in political attitudes and historical trends in women's political attitudes. Chapter 4 is an analysis of the relationship between trends in women's political attitudes and in their social attitudes, the influence of changing cultural images of women, and changes in people's political attitudes. In Chapter 5 we consider the gender gap in voting, historical trends in women's voting behavior, and the effects of changes in women's roles on their turnout to vote and their vote choice. Chapter 6 focuses on the cultural construction of images of women as political leaders (as members of political parties, in political campaigns, and as officeholders) and the implications of these images for women's political leadership. The impact of women's participation on politics and public policy is assessed in Chapter 7.

This book will be of interest to students of American politics and women's studies. We hope it helps to strengthen a movement, begun in the 1970s, to make gender a serious subject of study in political science, for academic discourse contributes to the cultural construction of images of women. Gender has always been a politically relevant subject, even though political scientists have sometimes ignored it; and American women have always been politically involved, even when political scientists ignored them. Although political science as a discipline no longer overlooks women, relatively little has been published about them. From 1906 to 1991, the American Political Science Review, for example, published only twenty-four articles pertaining to women. (2)

An effort has been made to make the material in this book accessible to students, with suggestions for further reading for those who wish to pursue particular topics. Since often the academic literature lags behind the media and the culture in identifying cultural change, we have included stories from real life to demonstrate that cultural change can affect individual lives often before it is recognized as a trend by analysts.

Some of the data used in this book were made available by the InterUniversity Consortium for Political and Social Science Research. The data for the American National Election Studies were collected by the Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, under grants from funded by the National Science Foundation. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the Consortium bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

M. Margaret Conway gratefully acknowledges the research support provided by the Robin and Jean Gibson Term Professorship, College of Liberal Arts, University of Florida, during the 1995-1996 academic year.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of Brenda Carter and Talia Greenberg of CQ Press to the completion of this project and of Lydia Jean Duncan, an outstanding manuscript editor.

We would also like to thank Barbara Norrander, Nancy H. Zingale, and an anonymous reviewer, whose comments helped us revise the manuscript.

NOTES

1. Barbara Boxer with Nicole Boxer, Strangers in the Senate: Politics and the New Revolution of Women in America (Washington, D.C.: National Press Books, 1994), 69.

2. Rita Mae Kelly and Kimberly Fisher, 3An Assessment of Articles About Women in the 'Top 15' Political Science Journals, PS: Political Science and Politics 26, no. 3 (September 1993): 544.

Conway, M. Margaret : University of Florida

Steuernagel, Gertrude A. : Kent State University

Ahern, David W. : University of Dayton

''Women and Political Participation is an excellent, comprehensive treatment of a wide range of political and policy issues. The authors bring together several important elements of womens' political lives to present an overall portrait of achievements gained and battles yet to be won.''

-- Kathleen Dolan, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

CQ Press Web Site, October, 2000

Chapter 1. Women, Culture, and Political Participation

Eleanora's Story
Women's Status in a Liberal Culture
Women and Cultural Change
Women's Political Participation Colonial Times to 1920
Women's Political Status Prior to Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment
The Struggle for Women's Rights and Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 2. Women, Culture, and Political Socialization

Cultural Change and Gender Role Expectations
Gender Role Expectations and Political Socialization
Cultural Change and the Agents of Socialization
Family
School
Workplace
Implications of Cultural Change for Agents of Political Socialization
It's a Man's World, but Times Are Changing
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 3. Gender Differences in Political Attitudes, Beliefs, and Policy Preferences

Possible Explanations for Gender Differences in Political Orientation
Gender Differences in Political Attitudes and Beliefs
Gender Differences in Public Policy Preferences
Opinions on Policy Issues
Measures of Political Orientation
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 4. Differences Among Women : Does Group Identification Explain Political Orientation?

Patterns of Group Consciousness
Relation of Feminist Orientation to Political Attitudes and Policy Preferences
Support for Federal Government Programs
Abortion Policy
Sexual Harassment
Assessing the Political Implications of Differences in Policy Preferences
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 5. Women's Political Participation

Patterns of Political Participation
Voting
Other Forms of Political Activity
Explanations for Patterns of Political Participation
Educational Attainment Level
Type of Employment
Political Involvement
Social Circumstances
Feminist Consciousness and Patterns of Political Participation
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 6. Opening the Doors to Political Power : Women as Members of the Political Elite

Women, Power, and the Political Culture
Gendered Notions of Leadership
Women's Political Participation : A Closer Look
Women's Political Involvement, 1840-1970
Types of Political Women
Breaking Down the Barriers to Political Participation
Women as Officeholders
Women in the Judicial System
Women in the Legislatures
Women in State and Local Governments
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter 7. Women, Politics, and Cultural Change

From the Past to the Present
The Outlook for Women : Positive Signs, Negative Portents
The 1994 Congressional Elections and Their Aftermath
Women's Key Role in the 1996 Elections
Political Elites and Policy Making
Making a Difference : Two Paths to Politics

Index