Stepping Up to Power: the Political Journey of American Women

Stepping Up to Power: The Political Journey of American Women. By Harriett Woods. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001, 256 pages.

Harriett Woods, the former president of the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), has written a delightfully entertaining, informative little book aimed at a general audience. It does not formally propose or test any theories; nor is the evidence offered systematically or rigorously examined. The work hardly qualifies as social science. Nevertheless, the slim volume serves as a highly-accessible introduction to the field of women and politics. The book has three goals: 1) to describe the last-half century of the women's movement; 2) to encourage the youngest generation of women to run for office; and 3) to outline the steps to power. The first chapter begins with a 1994 celebration of women's achievements in politics, especially the appointment of four women to Cabinet posts by Bill Clinton.

The text consists mainly of Woods' personal journey into politics and a corresponding chronicle of the struggles of other women leaders in the last 50 years. Woods weaves her own personal biography into the experiences of these other women. For example, she compares her futile efforts to land a position as a general news reporter in 1949 to the closed doors that recent-law school graduate Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced in 1959. Woods employs this technique throughout the text, describing the similarities faced by women across the country.

Reflecting the scholarship on women's employment and educational expectations, she suggests that many educated women of her generation either accepted the traditional role as homemaker or settled for a low-wage job in their chosen field. Moreover, most women's direct interest in politics usually arrived from some personal event. As a young mother, Woods was bothered by a loose manhole cover on the street in front of her house. Every afternoon, as she put her children down for their nap, a car would run over the cover and make a loud rattling noise that awakened them. She successfully lobbied to close off the street. She was first appointed--not elected--to the City Council of her St. Louis suburb. This route--starting with local issues you know about and gaining an appointment to an elective office--describes the typical path for early women politicians.

She climbed the ladder of political offices as a Democratic state senator and finally was elected lieutenant governor, the first woman to be elected to a statewide office in Missouri. She describes a series of put-downs she suffered as a women at the hands of various male politicians, including a intriguing showdown with then-governor John Ashcroft. In another example, when the Missouri legislature debated a gun control measure, a male legislator bestowed each female state senator with a plastic toy gun. Rather than accept the humiliating gift, Woods barricaded herself in her office. One can not help but wonder if her interpretation of these events are biased by her generation's experiences that women are treated unequally by men. Younger female politicians may not perceive these slights as evidence of gender bias. Instead, they may view these rebuffs as part of the larger game of politics and not merely because she was a woman.

Of particular interest is her comparison of her two runs for the U.S. Senate in 1982 and 1986. In 1982, she was a junior state senator from a liberal suburb of St. Louis. She defeated a strong primary challenge from a relatively unknown male banker supported by the party leaders. She was defeat by the incumbent, but her campaign was severely under-funded. This reflects scholarly work, women candidates during that period had a difficult time raising sufficient campaign funds. By 1986, she was the lieutenant governor and raised significant campaign funds from both in- and out-state sources. More recent scholarship indicates that by the late eighties, women candidates received similar amounts of campaign funds as men (controlling for party and incumbent status).

After that defeat, Woods accepted the challenge of leading the National Women's Political Caucus to get more women elected to political office. Under her leadership, the NWPC became an aggressive recruiter of potential women candidates. Moreover, their scholarly work has shown conclusively that a major reason more women are not elected is became not enough women run for elective office. Restated, women win at the same rates as men for all sorts of offices (again, controlling for party and incumbency). Clearly, the NWPC has played a leading role in encouraging women to run. However, some conservatives might suggest that the NWPC has a pro-choice, Democratic bias in its efforts to activate women candidates.

Finally, Woods questions whether social science's standard definition of power is gender-biased. She suggests that typically we define power as "an ability to get things done, to influence others to act in a way we want." Instead, she suggests women use a "different power model that is more strategic, persuasive, and collaborative." Her astute remark reflects a fundamental critique of social science: Do our most basic terms rest on a male interpretation of the world? Some scholarly evidence suggest that men and women activists have divergent goals. While male politicians are more likely to pursue self-centered goals, women politicians are more likely to seek outcomes that benefit others in society.

Gary Aguiar, South Dakota State University

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