Parties: United States

Political parties are less central to the political process in the United States than in Britain, and feminist interest groups such as the NWPC, NOW, and other groups

have played an important role in recruiting women for political office, providing training and some campaign support, and actively campaigning for key political issues such as abortion rights and the ERA. In the United States, the tradition of separate women's groups and the principle of numerical reservation of seats for women in the party hierarchy within the parties have largely been viewed as anachronistic. However, in the Democratic Party, women moved to mandate equal representation of male and female convention delegates via the 1972 McGovern-Fraser guidelines. The 1972 Democratic Convention had 40 percent female delegates, while the Republican Convention had 30 percent (up from 17 percent in 1968). Since then, women's task forces in both parties have pressed for women's concerns within the parties and the provision of some funding and training for women candidates (Mandel 1982:211–13). After the numbers of women delegates to conventions fell somewhat in 1976, the Democratic Party in 1978–80 moved to equalize convention representation by men and women and to provide support for such key feminist concerns as the ERA, election of more women to state and local offices, and even abortion rights. At the same time, the Reaganite Republican Party moved further to the right and away from commitment to feminist concerns. Nonetheless, in 1984, 48 percent of Republican delegates were women, as were about half of the Democratic delegates (Freeman 1987:236), an apparent response in both parties to Democratic-inspired rules reforms.

The increasing significance of feminist interest groups in the Democratic Party has been particularly striking during the past decade. Jo Freeman has pointed to the different political cultures that dominate the Republican

and Democratic parties. In the Republican Party, power flows from the top down and delegates' relationship to party leaders and loyalty to the party itself tend to be significant. In contrast, in the Democratic Party, constituencies are seen as the party's building blocks, and power flows from the bottom up (ibid., 232). These cultural distinctions help explain the important role feminist groups have been able to gain in the Democratic Party. In the Republican Party a Woman's Division was created in 1983, joining the (virtually defunct) National Federation of Republican Women, but its major functions were to mobilize, recruit, and publicize party accomplishments rather than to work as an advocacy group within the party. In fact, in the Republican Party, feminists are viewed as having competing loyalties and have been eliminated from leadership and administrative roles (ibid., 235–42). Instead, right-winger Phyllis Schlafly has become the major policy arbiter on women's issues.

In the Democratic Party, because of the different structure and mechanism for representation, feminist groups came to have a major role. Building initially on the turmoil surrounding the 1968 convention, which opened the Democratic Party to reform, feminists gained one vice chair for their ranks (one each also went to blacks and Hispanics) (ibid.). In 1976, disturbed by the falloff in female representation, feminist groups, especially the NWPC, together with the Women's Caucus of the Democratic National Committee and NOW, fought for a 50-50 rule guaranteeing equal representation to women and men. The Carter campaign, initially hostile to this idea, eventually acquiesced. Apparently Carter operatives felt that their refusal to support these feminist concerns would lead to a pro-Kennedy move. By 1980, over 20

percent of the Democratic delegates were members of NOW or of the NWPC (ibid., 230). They gained support for a proposal to deny Democratic Party funds to any candidate who did not support the ERA. NARAL, like the NWPC, had its own floor operation and lobbied successfully for the addition of another minority plank to the platform—one supporting government funding for abortions for poor women (ibid.).

Therefore, by 1984, feminists had demonstrated their political clout. NOW met with five of the Democratic presidential candidates and pressed them on their support for women's issues, female appointments, and willingness to select a female vice presidential candidate. NOW Vice President Mary Jane Collins was appointed to the platform-drafting committee and given the leading role on matters of concern to NOW (Freeman 1985). A coalition of women's groups presented a list of acceptable female vice presidential candidates to Walter Mondale (who had earlier received the endorsement of NOW and later got that of NWPC and NARAL as well). After the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro, a committed feminist, the feminist coalition had little to do at the convention itself.

At the time of this writing, it is not clear how Republican (and some Democratic) efforts to label feminism as an electoral liability—because of its identification as a "special interest" and because of the failure to deliver a "gender gap" vote on behalf of Ferraro—will affect feminist access to power at future Democratic Party conventions (Freeman1987:242).

Despite real gains in representation and support for women's issues (at least in the contemporary Democratic Party), the role of convention politics in the American policy-making process is limited and marginal at

best. In addition, numerous (if not most) women seeking political office at all levels in the United States have by-passed traditional centers of candidate support and sought other routes to elective and appointive office. This contention is confirmed by a recent study of female candidates appointed to political office in state government: party-related factors were important for less than a third, with only 15 percent indicating that efforts by state and national party leaders had been very important (Carroll 1984:102). Younger women perceived party leaders as having played virtually no role in their appointments and, in contrast to some of their older female colleagues, had almost no history of party activism or campaign activity (ibid., 103). Crucial to women candidates is a network of women's political organizations, which provide financial aid, research and information, and financial campaign assistance, and generally encourage women's active participation in the political process. Especially prominent in this regard are the Women's Campaign Fund (WCF) and NWPC (Bomafede 1986:2178).

In the United States, once a candidate is elected to political office, partisanship is only one influence that defines his or her political behavior. In Britain, only the 300 Group, an all-party organization that trains and recruits women who wish to run for political office, is analogous to the American model (especially the NWPC).

In the United Kingdom it can no longer be claimed that the women's vote is more "conservative" than men's nor that women are more conservative in their political attitudes, but neither can it be claimed that they are more left-wing. To the degree that a "gender gap" is emerging in Britain it does not represent the result of a feminist organizing effort. What it does seem to represent

is a slight movement away from the two major parties, neither of which has met feminist aspirations effectively (Norris [1988]:13; Edgell and Duke 1983:357–76; Rogers 1983:159).

In the United States, what had appeared to be a significant "gender gap" in 1980, involving female rejection of Reaganite social policy and, in particular, opposition to defense spending and support for domestic spending, was reduced in 1984 to 8 percent in the presidential race, although still providing evidence that fewer women supported Reagan (Light and Lake 1985:105). Nonetheless, despite the feminist movement's role in gaining a place for Ferraro on the ticket and efforts to mobilize against Reaganite conservatism, at the national level this strategy was not effective in attracting a majority of women voters. Feminist efforts in congressional elections and the women's vote at state and local levels in 1984 and 1986 resulted in greater evidence for the existence of a gender gap.