Speeches and Transcripts

The Rising Influence of Women on American Politics

Alexander Vershbow
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea
Career Women in Korea (CWIK)

New Seoul Hotel - March 15, 2007

Thank you, Helen Choe, for your kind introduction, and thank you to the Career Women in Korea (CWIK) board members for inviting me to speak to you today.  It is a special honor for me to address this very select audience of female professionals, particularly during Women’s History Month.  I welcome the opportunity to talk about the rising influence of women on American politics.  First, I will review the history of women in American politics.  Then, I plan to look at some contemporary women who have broken the “glass ceiling.”  Then, I will explore some areas in which women are encountering setbacks.  Finally, I will examine American policies related to promoting women’s political and economic participation around the world.  

Summary of the History of Women in American Politics

Let me begin with some comments on the changing role of American women over the course of the twentieth century.  Initially, women were not involved in the formal structures of political life, such as voting, serving on juries, or holding elective office.  They were also subject to various forms of discrimination and were essentially treated as second-class citizens.  Over the years, however, women in America moved dramatically into all aspects of public life, including politics, labor-force participation, professions, mass media, and pop culture.

Back in the 1800s, women were sidelined from politics and they began to establish voluntary associations and other institutions in response to unmet social needs.  These steps, however, required extraordinary measures.  For example, in the 1830s, when women began to speak publicly against slavery, the mere appearance of a woman as a public speaker was considered scandalous.  Likewise, when Susan B. Anthony cast an illegal vote in the presidential election of 1872, she was arrested.

In 1900, women’s legal standing was based on their marital status and women had very few rights.  In fact, a married woman had no separate legal identity from that of her husband.  This was also codified in law and according to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law, women were not considered “persons.”  However, women started pursuing education and they moved into a wide variety of professions.  This laid the groundwork for a massive suffrage movement in the 1910s, which demanded the most basic right of citizenship for women.

Beginning in the 1920s, modern women finally began to be viewed as individuals.  The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920 and women were finally allowed to vote.  Soon, they formed the League of Women Voters.  Members of this organization literally trained women to exercise their individual citizenship rights.  Then professional women took a further step in trying to eradicate discrimination by drafting an Equal Rights Amendment in 1923.  It should be noted that the U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass this amendment to the Constitution by only six votes when it was debated sixty years later, in 1983. 

Leaders such as Eleanor Roosevelt emerged in the 1930s and began to shape the political agenda.  For instance, they influenced the Social Security Act, which created the foundations of a welfare state. 

The Second World War was a catalyst for women to join the labor force in unprecedented numbers.  By 1950, it was typical for married women and women over thirty-five to be in the workforce.  In the ‘60s and ‘70s, women initiated social movements for civil rights and flooded into institutions for higher education.

Yet, as the feminist movement helped create more opportunities for women, a period of anti-feminism took place around the time of the Vietnam War, especially as issues such as domestic violence, child care, abortion, and sexual harassment became central to the American political agenda.  These issues exposed deep divisions in American society.

 In the 1980s, women began to break the “glass ceiling.”  In 1981, President Reagan nominated the first woman to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor.  In 1984, for the first time a major political party nominated a woman (Representative Geraldine Ferraro) to run for vice president; the first woman astronaut flew into space, and newly educated women flooded into professions and businesses from which they had previously been barred.  Also, it was during this era that the U.S. became a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

By the end of the century, women not only enjoyed a wide range of civic rights, but they also had made serious advances in electoral politics at the local and state levels.  Today, the possibility of a woman president is being widely discussed, something that would never have even been considered in 1900.

Contemporary Women on the Rise

Today, after overcoming tremendous odds to become credible leaders, American women are increasingly moving from symbolic to influential positions.  Consider Senator Hillary Clinton, who broke the First Lady mold by becoming a U.S. Senator and is now the Democratic front-runner in the 2008 presidential campaign.  According to a nationwide Gallup Poll taken last month, Hillary Clinton and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani have the greatest chance of being elected president in 2008 – although there’s a long way to go until the first primaries next year.  Additionally, according to a February poll conducted by GfKRoper Public Affairs, half of Americans are very comfortable with a female president and the majority believes the country will be ready to elect a woman within the next five years. 

U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) recently became the nation’s first female Speaker of the House, putting her third in line for the presidency and the most powerful woman in a U.S. elective office.  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the second woman to serve as America’s top diplomat, has become the Bush Administration’s point person on its Iraq policy. 

Other notable American women in politics include Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao; Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (who recently visited Korea to promote educational exchanges); U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab (who is spearheading the completion of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement); Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes; Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky; U.S. Representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Pat Brister; and UNICEF’s Executive Director Ann Veneman.  As of September 2006, 44 U.S. ambassadors are women and many of them are in high-level positions such as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.  And there is a new record of 87 women currently serving in the U.S. Congress – sixteen in the Senate and 71 in the House.     

American Women Lag in Other Areas

While Nancy Pelosi’s rise in the legislature is a milestone for women in national politics, women are still waiting their turn at the state level.  Less than a quarter of state lawmakers across America are women, and the share has changed little in about a decade.  Despite a slight gain in the overall percentage this year – to 23.5 percent, or 1,734 of 7,382 seats – the numbers are actually slipping in many legislatures.  Women lost ground in 20 of 50 Statehouses following the November election.  Also, as of January 2006, among the 100 largest cities in the U.S, only twelve of the mayors were women.  The reasons for these small numbers are unknown, but there is speculation that women's family obligations, particularly during their childbearing years, can be an impediment to serving.

Aside from American women lagging at the state and municipal levels, they have also been ranked rather low in the World Economic Forum’s 2006 Global Gender Gap Report.  Out of 115 countries, with 1 indicating that men and women are equal, the United States ranks 23.  This report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality:  economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival.  The top ten countries with the smallest gender gap were Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3), Iceland (4), Germany (5), the Philippines (6), New Zealand (7), Denmark (8), the United Kingdom (9), and Ireland (10).  Moreover, the U.S. is ranked only 66 for women’s empowerment with regard to women in political positions, which, contrary to most peoples’ perceptions, is not that far ahead of the Korean rating.  South Korea is ranked 84 for women’s political empowerment and even lower for inequality at 92 out of 115 countries.  As you see, both the U.S. and Korea have much room for improvement regarding both inequality and political empowerment.

U.S. Policies for Promoting Women

It is true that around the globe, women are making impressive political gains, and progress in one country reinforces progress in the others.  Three countries – Chile, Spain and Sweden – now have gender parity in Government.  Women lead governments in about a dozen countries, including New Zealand, Liberia, Germany, Chile, Jamaica and the Philippines.  In Rwanda, nearly half the members of parliament are women, and women are now holding more parliamentary seats in nations like Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia.  American women are impressed that Korea (until a few days ago) has had its first woman Prime Minister, Han Myeong-Sook, and that she and the GNP’s Park Geun-hye could become the first woman President.    

Worldwide, however, women still make up only 15 percent of ministers, members of parliament, and heads of state.  Given this situation, U.S. government policy is to mobilize concrete support for greater women’s empowerment, to promote women’s political and economic participation, to create greater awareness of gender-based violence and discrimination, and to ensure that women’s human rights are considered in the development of U.S. foreign policy.

Internationally, the United States has aided efforts to assist women around the world.  Our government provides hundreds of millions of dollars each year for concrete projects benefiting women.  Our Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, one of the most senior women in the U.S. government, said… “It is in our moral interest to make sure that women’s rights are protected, but it’s also in the interest of [other] societies, economically and in terms of modernity, that women take a rightful place and are fully contributing to the prosperity of these societies.” 

Within the U.S. Department of State, the Office of International Women’s Issues and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor are assisting women’s organizations and ministries of women’s affairs to promote women’s rights and involve women in peace-building and post-conflict political structures.  The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration is addressing women’s and girls’ education, psycho-social trauma, special feeding programs, mother-child healthcare, and protection services for refugees and internally displaced persons. 

In addition, new U.S. partnerships with developing countries place importance on women and girls.  For example, the Africa Education Initiative will train 160,000 new teachers, mostly women, and provide scholarships for 250,000 African girls.  The Global Food for Education program will provide school feeding programs for seven million children, with a particular emphasis on girls, while more U.S. development aid is supporting projects relevant to women, including maternal health, girls’ education, HIV/AIDS, micro-credit and the strengthening of civil society. 

We have also seen women make great strides in Afghanistan and Iraq, countries where just a few years ago women were denied basic rights.  Today in Afghanistan, girls are attending school.  In Iraq, women are voting in large numbers.

The State Department also runs exchange programs sponsored by the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Exchange to draw women from across the political, geographic and ethnic spectrum to learn first-hand about America. 

Conclusion

So, what kind of influence are women having on U.S. politics?  While it is unclear that there is a concrete difference now that more women are in government, it is clear that the empowerment of women makes it increasingly socially acceptable for women to participate in government.  Nancy Pelosi's election in January as the first female Speaker of the House makes people more comfortable with women in leadership positions and, therefore, during the 2008 elections, we may see a surge of women running for office at the federal and state level.

Let’s remember that in individual countries, the increase in the number of women in decision-making has not happened by itself.  Rather, it is often the result of institutional and electoral initiatives, such as the adoption of goals and quotas, political party commitment and sustained mobilization.  It is also the result of targeted and concerted measures to improve the balance between life and work.

Thank you very much for listening.  I will be happy to take your questions.