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ENDORSEMENTS
"What a windfall of history and wisdom from the doyenne of the study of women and politics! Freeman's essays offer new information and rich insights into more than a century of history of women in party and electoral politics, policy formation, and gendered voting patterns." — Susan M. Hartmann, The Ohio State University
"Jo Freeman is the best of all possible political scientists: one committed to activism and truth at the same time. Anyone who reads We Will Be Heard is likely to get hooked on the drama of the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress, or the mystery of the missing-from-history fifty women who ran for President -- and become as fascinated with politics as a true democracy requires."— Gloria Steinem
A compelling and authoritative analysis of women in the past century of American politics. This classic study is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of how women shaped American politics and how American politics shaped women's public activism from the 1890s to the present. — Kathryn Kish Sklar, SUNY Binghamton
REVIEWS
WE WILL BE HEARD
Kristie Miller
NewsTribune of LaSalle, IL
4/4/08
Hillary Clinton’s historic run for president of the United States may look like an individual marathon.
But it is a relay race.
If Hillary makes it across the finish line, it will be because she is carrying the final baton in a long line of women who have run for elected office.
These forerunners are chronicled in a new book, We Will Be Heard: Women’s Struggles for Political Power in the United States, by Jo Freeman, a noted political scientist.
“Long before women could vote they ran for public office,” Freeman writes. In the 19th century, two women ran for president: Victoria Woodhull and Belva Ann Lockwood.
It would be 80 years before another woman ran: Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, in 1964. The election process changed in the 20th century; it became more difficult for candidates to get on the ballot.
When Smith announced her intention to run, she said one of her reasons was “to break the barrier against women being seriously considered for the presidency of the United States.” She won 25% of the vote in the Illinois Republican primary that year.
Smith did not expect to win; most of the men running that year were not expected to win, either.
Freeman notes that many female candidates, like many male candidates, run simply to have a chance to talk about issues that matter to them.
More than fifty more women have run since 1964.
The most successful woman presidential candidate until now was U. S. Representative Shirley Chisholm, an African American congresswoman from Brooklyn, New York, who ran in 1972. Over 400,000 people voted for her in fourteen primaries.
Freeman’s chapter on the fifty female presidential candidates is one of fourteen stimulating essays on the hidden history of women in politics.
Her “search for political women” begins with Judith Ellen Foster, hired by the Republican Party in 1880 to attract the new and potential female voters.
One of my own favorites is Sophinisba Breckinridge, Freeman’s “model of a political woman.” Breckinridge, who moved to Chicago in 1890, earned two PhD’s and a law degree. She then taught women’s studies at the prestigious University of Chicago. Her groundbreaking 1933 survey on women’s political, social and economic progress foreshadowed works like Freeman’s.
Freeman discusses policy as well as personalities: she explores the “gender gap” in earlier elections (women voted in significantly greater numbers for Hoover and Eisenhower); the real story of how Title VII, banning discrimination based on sex, was included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and the vexed history of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Freeman discussed her book last week at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC.
Inevitably, she was asked about Hillary Clinton’s prospects.
Freeman noted that Hillary has three hurdles to overcome, in addition to being a woman.
One, she is a wife. Traditionally, widows have been more successful than wives in running for office. Witty Alice Roosevelt Longworth observed about the early women in Congress that they had “used their husbands’ coffins as springboards.”
As a wife, Hillary “will have to deal with Bill’s baggage,” Freeman warned.
A second drawback is that Hillary is from New York, where politicians have to run left of mainstream America to get elected. While she might win the primary, Freeman said, she would likely be too liberal for the rest of the country.
Finally, said Freeman, “there is still latent prejudice against women exercising executive power.” Hillary Clinton would be in a stronger position if she had been governor of a big state, instead of a senator.
Still, Freeman is hopeful. “This is the election I have been waiting for all my life,” she said.
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