Seneca Falls and other communities celebrate anniversary
Park Ranger Andrea Dekoter talks about the first wave of women's rights activists in the United States - which included (front, from left) Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglas and Martha Wright - during a tour Thursday at the Women's Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls Thursday. New York —The suffragists who 90 years ago won voting rights for women would likely shake their heads in wonder at this fall’s elections with their “mama grizzly” candidates and high-stakes woman-vs.-woman showdowns.
The women in key races include a rancher and three multimillionaire former CEOs, one a pro-wrestling magnate. Oklahoma and New Mexico each seems assured of electing a first female governor after both major parties nominated women.
Yet, in spite of celebrations marking the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920 — including today’s at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, in Seneca Falls — women’s share of high-level political power in the United States still lags behind scores of other nations.
Women hold 17 percent of the seats in Congress, well below Europe’s 22 percent and far behind the Nordic countries’ 42 percent.
Until 1992, no more than two women had ever been elected to serve in the U.S. Senate at the same time. Currently, 17 of the 100 senators are women, among them New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, who was appointed to the seat left vacant when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state.
“I think we are making progress,” Gillibrand said. “I don’t think we’re where we need to be.”
Congress is still male-dominated, she said, but there are “shining examples of women in leadership,” including the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several committee chairs.
“Syracuse is cutting-edge when it comes to women in leadership,” she said.
What about the top job in the White House? The major parties have yet to nominate a woman for president. Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2008 collected 18 million votes but fell short of victory.
“The handful of women that you see near the top is just that — a handful,” said Erin Vilardi, of the White House Project, which seeks to expand women’s role in politics.
If you go ...
What: Celebrating the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
When: Aug. 28.
Where: Women’s Rights National Historical Park, 136 Fall St., Seneca Falls.
What’s planned: Click for details
More information: Admission is free. Call the park’s visitor center at 568-0024 or visit the park website for more information.
“At the congressional level, both parties have a hell of a lot of work to do,” Vilardi said. “The culture is still very dominantly male.”
That was certainly a theme in Colorado, where Ken Buck won the GOP Senate nomination, despite criticism for saying he should be supported over rival Jane Norton “because I do not wear high heels.”
Still, among the notable developments in this year’s campaign is the emergence of conservative women running as Republicans.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List — which backs female candidates opposed to abortion — said the surge of women running as anti-abortion conservatives reflected a “war over who gets to define what feminism means.”
“There’s an unsettling of the political apple cart,” Dannenfelser said. “Sarah Palin kicked the door open, and a lot of women started going through.”
Among the races being watched:
- In California, wealthy businesswomen Meg Whitman, the ex-CEO of eBay, and Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, are the GOP nominees for governor and Senate. Fiorina is the first Republican woman to take on the Democratic incumbent, Barbara Boxer, since Boxer entered the Senate in 1992, and the race has captured national attention.
- One of the most distinctive female candidates is Linda McMahon, former CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment empire, and the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Connecticut. McMahon, who said she’ll spend up to $50 million of her own money on the race, was nicknamed “Crotch-kicker” in a statement from the Democratic National Committee.
- In South Dakota, the race for the state’s lone House seat pits incumbent Democrat Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin against Republican legislator Kristi Noem — both of them working moms who grew up on farms. Noem is one of several GOP female candidates dubbed “mama grizzlies” because of traits shared with Palin, the Republican Party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee.
- In New Mexico, Democrat Diane Denish, the lieutenant governor since 2003, is competing for governor against the GOP’s Susana Martinez, a Latina district attorney who has drawn attention for her tough stance on illegal immigration.
- And in Oklahoma, Republican U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin is favored in the governor’s race over Democratic Lt. Gov. Jari Askins.
According to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University, there have been only two other woman-versus-woman gubernatorial contests in U.S. history: in Nebraska in 1986 and Hawaii in 2002.
Worldwide, women hold 19 percent of the seats in national legislatures, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Its rankings of 186 nations — based on the percentage of women in the single or lower chamber of the legislature — has the U.S. tied for 90th with Turkmenistan.
Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, described the percentage of women in Congress as “abysmal” and said the United States should be ashamed that it’s one of only seven U.N. members — in company with Iran and Sudan — that hasn’t ratified a 30-year-old women’s rights treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.