Pundits had confidently promised “The Year of the Woman” before this, only to find that the real political gains never quite matched the hopeful expectations of women’s advocates. By most measures, however, 1992 has come closer to living up to the advance billing than ‘88 or ‘90 or even ‘72, when a Life Magazine cover story featuring Bella Abzug opened with the proviso “It may not quite be the year of the . . .” Four freshwomen will enter the Senate in January (half full), bringing the grand total up to six (half empty); 24 new women will join 23 veterans in the House (full), accounting for 11 percent of the votes (empty). Emily’s List, the Democratic women’s fund-raising group, fed approximately $6 million into House and Senate campaigns this year, making it the biggest congressional PAG-a clear victory in a process where nothing confers influence as much as money in the (very full) war chest.
Judging the meaning of ‘92 merely in terms of winners and losers or dollars and cents, however, may ultimately be another way of not getting it. The fact is, women’s issues dominated political discourse in a dramatic new way. The sexual assaults at Tailhook might have been dismissed as the peccadilloes of boys being boys, but-in the year of the woman-they instead triggered one of the worst scandals in naval history. Susan Faludi’s “Backlash” (page 31), a feminist call to arms, and Gloria Steinem’s “Revolution From Within” rode the best-seller list. When Marilyn Quayle stood before the GOP convention, lecturing women about their “essential natures,” she proved how out of touch the GOP was with the reality of their lives. Soon it was payback time: female voters, says “Megatrends for Women” author Patricia Aburdene, “elected Bill Clinton.”
There are certain events whose historic significance emerges only bit by bit. Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat on the bus was one such seminal moment; the rioting at a Greenwich Village gay bar called Stonewall was another. Last fall’s Judiciary Committee hearings transfixed the public; but given the nation’s soundbite attention span, it was by no means clear that Hill’s testimony about Clarence Thomas would have such an extraordinary shelf life. Yet it not only has continued to matter, it is a still-evolving event: a NEWSWEEK Poll last week found that 51 percent of the women surveyed now believe Thomas sexually harassed Hill, compared with only 27 percent in October ‘91. Carol Gilligan, a feminist psychologist at Harvard, believes the image of Hill and those men will define this age the way Nick Ut’s searing photo of a napalmed child captured the Vietnam era.
If Hill’s witness had come at another time, her legacy might have been confined to consciousness-raising-and ‘92 might have been just another year that wasn’t. But the election season was moving into high gear, and women like Carol Moseley Braun in Illinois were quick to capitalize on the deep outrage over Hill’s treatment. In an attempt to mine public disgust with politics as usual, some women made much of their outsider status. But while female candidates were able to seize the moment, many-notably Senator-elect Dianne Feinstein of California-had been toiling in local vineyards for decades. “These women did not jump full blown on the political stage,” says Ruth Mandel, director of the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers. “This [was] a year when opportunity [met] preparedness, a well-deserved reward after 20 years of work.”
The candidates weren’t the only women making history: for the first time, women voted the gender line. As recently as 1984, women sent Geraldine Ferraro contributions and little notes saying, “I don’t want my husband to know, but I’m supporting you.” Then, on Election Day, says Ferraro (who lost her bid for the U.S. Senate this year), they “voted the same as men.” But in the 1992 primaries, all the women winners except Feinstein owed their victory to a disproportionate number of female votes. “Women were gatekeepers,” says political consultant Ethel Klein. “This was an election where women said, ‘We’re going to respect ourselves-and we’re going to demand that you respect us’.”
The message got across, partly because the terms of the debate had changed so drastically. In other elections, Democratic presidential candidates had to prove they could push the button as well as any Republican. Since the fall of communism, there was no button. Instead, voters wanted to know what the candidates were going to do about unbalanced budgets, education and health insurance-“soft” issues often associated with women. So 1992 wasn’t the year that the electorate abandoned stereotypes about who was fit to handle the nation’s problems. Instead, says California pollster Mark DiCamillo, “gender stereotypes worked to [women’s] advantage.” Patty Murray of Washington state ran for the U.S. Senate as the “mom in tennis shoes,” a slogan suggesting she knew all about schools, medical expenses and, of course, supermarket scanners.
Arguably, the person who did the most to feminize political rhetoric in ‘92 was Hillary’s husband. Bill Clinton became the Oprah of presidential polities, embracing not only women’s issues but womenspeak. “It became clear at the Democratic convention that most of the good that had come to Clinton had come through women, his mother and others,” says poet Robert Bly, a founder of the men’s movement. “This is a man who got up there,” adds consultant Klein, “and told a personal story about putting himself bodily in front of a raging stepfather who was about to hurt his mother. That is at the core of the vulnerability women feel in this society.” Michael Dukakis, by contrast, supported many of the same causes but couldn’t connect emotionally-most notably when asked a hypothetical question about his wife and rape. As a result, he squandered the female franchise. Clinton, says sociologist Michael Kimmel, is “Anita Hill’s revenge.”
It is clear that women have had tremendous impact on the political process this year; less clear is the impact of the political changes on the lives of American women. Most of the respondents in the NEWSWEEK Poll believe women either made progress or held their ground in 1992; only 14 percent say women lost ground. While a majority of the women surveyed say that the men they know personally have become more sensitive to the needs and problems of women, 68 percent replied that most American men do not understand the issues that concern women most. Bill and Hillary Clinton may represent a generational shift from old-fashioned First Couple to postmodern partnership, but the sexes obviously find themselves still talking at cross-purposes.
Thanks to the confirmation hearings, there’s far less static on the line when the subject is sexual harassment. “Every time a man and a woman meet at the water cooler now, Anita Hill [is] right there between them,” says Andrea Sankar, an anthropologist at Wayne State University in Detroit. After the hearings, many firms reviewed existing sexual-harassment policies or implemented new ones. A survey in Working Woman magazine last June found that 81 percent of Fortune 500 companies offer sensitivity-training programs, up from 60 percent in 1988. According to the EEOC, where Hill and Thomas worked together, 10,522 people filed sexual-harassment complaints this year, compared with 6,883 in fiscal 1991. Following Maine’s lead, Connecticut passed a law requiring that employers provide a harassment policy and sensitivity training for workers; similar statutes are pending in several other states.
Awareness about sexual harassment may be most acute at the scene of the crime. With allegations hanging over Sens. Bob Packwood of Oregon and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, legislators are tripping over each other to demonstrate their sensitivity-while quietly praying their own dirty little secrets don’t come out. “Many senators are shaking in their boots because women are breaking the silence,” says Gloria Allred, whose Los Angeles law firm handles many sexual-harassment cases. Since last winter, many senators-including Judiciary Committee members Arlen Specter, Alan Simpson and Joseph Biden-have attended consciousness-raising sessions led by the likes of Deborah Tannen, author of the best-selling “You Just Don’t Understand.” Taking no chances, Senator-elect Murray promises to introduce a bill making Congress accountable to the same sexual-harassment laws as everybody else.
Members of both sexes are waiting to see whether Washington’s newest women will indeed bring a unique sensibility to the task of government. Clinton appointee Donna Shalala, who served as an assistant secretary of HUD under Jimmy Carter, noted that women looked at public housing differently than men. “It’s not just strategy,” she told NEWSWEEK before her appointment. “It’s that we know you don’t [put in] showers when you have little kids and need bathtubs.” After an hourlong meeting, incoming women representatives quickly settled on four priorities: fully funding Head Start, passing family-leave legislation, codifying legal abortion and rescinding Congress’s immunity to sexual-harassment laws. Will there be power in numbers? Colorado Rep. Patricia Schroeder recalls her pioneer days in the early ’70s, when she found herself changing her children’s diapers on the House floor. Now carpenters are busily remodeling the Capitol to add a ladies’ room off the Senate floor. While they’re at it, maybe they should put in a changing table-and another, for good measure, in the men’s room. Now, that would be a sign of changing times.
Has 1992 been a year in which women: 38% Made progress 41% Held their position 14% Lost ground Do you think that most men in the United States today understand the issues that concern women most? 27% Yes 68% No Are the job opportunities and pay available to you better, worse or about the same as those available to equally qualified men? 12% Better 37% Worse 43% The same Do you think that Anita Hill was sexually harassed by Justice Thomas, as she charged last year? CURRENT 10/91 Yes 51% 27% No 34% 37% In the past year have you seen the following changes in your workplace? (percent saying yes) 58% Men have become more sensitive to the problem of sexual harassment 66% Bosses have become more sensitive to the problem of sexual harassment 57% Bosses have become more sensitive to the problem of working mothers Have the men you know in your personal life become more sensitive to the needs and problems of women in the past year? 55% Yes 38% No NEWSWEEK Poll, Dec. 17-18, 1992
