Exploration of How Women Became Involved in Running for Political Office (1964)

a woman for President, and Belville Aquad received less than 10,000 votes. Now 76 years later, a woman has not yet been the American President, but women have been for over a century deeply involved in American politics. In March of this year, President Johnson appointed 109 eminently-qualified women to high federal positions. Some of the posts, Commissioner of Atomic Energy, for example, have never been held by a woman before, so that we've come a long way since President Thomas Jefferson said, the appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I. In 1961, President Kennedy convened a President's commission on the status of women. The United Nations has a similar commission. Both organizations are greatly interested in women's political roles, and so are all political parties. But how are women doing in politics today? What are their capacities? What kinds of jobs do they hold? Why do they want to get into the political picture?

And how do they do it? This is how Representative Francis P. Bolton of Ohio found herself in Washington. Well, you see, my husband was in here for nearly 10 years, and when he died, the middle of a term, his friends asked me, you better finish it out, Francis. You know more than anybody else about what he thought. And of course, I didn't tell him that I didn't know anything about what he thought. A man shouldn't bring his thoughts home. He leaves them up here. And I was very glad to come in. I thought it was rather stupid to do it, but there was a year left. And it goes by the end of the year, I was intensely interested, and I've been here ever since. That's 24 years. Not all women have gotten into politics with such beings. The early ladies walked a long, tough, and frustrating road, creating a place for themselves in the mustard world of the man.

The suffragette movement started in 1848 in Seneca, New York, at the first Women's Rights Convention. There was always something faintly ludicrous about these ladies who got out of the kitchen for the first time in history. The men said, this is an incongruous intrusion. The lady said, resistance to oppression is obedience to God. Progress was slow, yet in 1916, even before they had the vote, Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat in the House of Representatives, first woman to get there. It was a significant breakthrough in the longest political argument the country had ever seen. And the girls, marching under the banner of a yellow John Quill, coming together 10,000 strong to parade at the 1916 conventions, or a lot more tenacious than the men ever thought they'd been. And finally, in 1920, they won. Susan B. Anthony's Constitutional Amendment, written in 1875, was added to the Constitution

45 years later. Speaker Gillette and Vice President Marshall signed the bill, and the ladies emerged ultimately from the Capitol that day armed with the vote. A woman voted, found it somewhat easier to become a woman politician. Eleanor Roosevelt, she got into politics by being the eyes and ears of a man who could not walk. She went everywhere, endured years of ridicule, and emerged as the first lady of the world. Claire Booth-Luce wrote a hit play, married Henry Luce, won two congressional terms, and finally became Eisenhower's ambassador to Italy. Mrs. Eugenia Anderson is sworn in as our first woman ambassador. Dean Atchison congratulates a lady who first made a mock in local Minnesota Democratic politics, and a week later, she's in Copenhagen.

Pearl Mester, with a fortune based on very heavy machinery, entered politics as the biggest party giver of the Truman years. She wound up as minister to Luxembourg, is today back in Washington still having a ball. Anna Rosenberg came up in politics on the Long Federal Road, an RA Social Security Board, Warman Power Commission, and finally, Assistant Secretary of Defense. Today most women start their career in politics by joining something. If you're a woman, a Republican, and you live in New York City, you can join the Women's National Republican Club of New York, and you can join a class called the planning organization and conduct of a campaign. The teacher, Colonel William J. Walsh, longtime campaign manager for Fiorello LaGuardia. Now, this course is based on the proposition that the objective of all political activities should be to win elections, either currently or at some time in the future, and elections

require campaigns. When elections are lost, it is usually because of inefficiency in the planning organization and conduct of the campaigns. This is not true in every case. Many elections were lost or have been lost that could have been won by knowledge and competence in political campaign techniques. The class technique is simply to set up and run a simulated campaign headquarters, but other women join groups dedicated to action now. The former president of Seralarans College, Harold Taylor, sees this as one of the most valuable things that they can do. I don't think that women yet have learned how powerful a political force they exert, particularly on the field of human rights, where one can be more radical than one's views publicly if one is a woman, without being suspect of being just politically subversive, than one can as a man.

I think people are inclined to allow liberties of a political sort to women that they deny to men.