Presidency And Women Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Scholarship on the presidency and women was in its infancy until the 1980s. This is perhaps because the areas perceived as most visible in producing action on the part of women and tangible outcomes of research measurable through quantification (e.g., appointments) did not fully embrace the office of the presidency or women in a common or systematic direction until the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Although the field of public administration had already begun to look at women throughout the federal civil service, and historians had long taken note of the contributions of women such as Clara Barton, it was only the occasional creative political scientist who took a fresh look at the role of the president vis-à-vis women. A focus on substance of legislation and actions of the president, rather than institutional and constitutional processes, would have produced a different outcome in the political history that commonly became reproduced in books and articles.

Women Protestors And Lobbyists

Theda Skocpol’s seminal work, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992), provides a deeper understanding of the vetoes on the part of presidents beginning in the late 1880s. Skocpol notes that the vast number of vetoes had to do with private bills passed by Congress seeking relief not only for civil war veterans, but also for widows of the six hundred thousand veterans killed on both sides of that war. The issue was centrally focused on the relationship between women and the presidency in the broad area of social policy. Political scientists who focus solely on the long-term struggle for power between Congress and the presidency, and the increased and then decreased use of vetoes in understanding shared and separated powers in the Constitution, fall short in their analysis without noting the substance of those vetoes, and the major constituent group— women—affected by policy decisions on pensions.

Clear documentation exists that women have been petitioning the president as lobbyists for over one hundred years. Early photos taken in the decade after the West Wing was added to the White House prominently show women in the lines of lobbyists, documenting their role in following their First Amendment responsibilities to petition government for a redress of grievances.

Women In Government Roles

The rise of women’s organizations, with a focus on labor interests, child welfare, and workplace safety, as well as the professional interests of women, became a major concern and received the attention of some administrations. Jane Addams lobbied President Theodore Roosevelt on behalf of children. Frances Perkins—later named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the post of secretary of labor and the first woman appointed to a position as secretary in a president’s cabinet—became acquainted with Roosevelt following the tragic Shirtwaist factory fire in New York City in 1911. Roosevelt, Robert Wagner, and Al Smith were all in the New York legislature at the same time and passed legislation to create the New York State Factory Investigation Commission, later formed with Wagner as chair, and Frances Perkins as the commission’s secretary.

Structural barriers kept women from posts in the foreign service, and therefore women did not have many opportunities for involvement in foreign policy decision making until the late 1990s. Positions as ambassadors were also constrained, although presidents who drew from an appointment pool outside of the careerists in the foreign service were more likely to include women in their ambassadorial pool, and women have now been appointed as ambassadors since the 1930s.Therefore, the management styles of presidents did reflect how women were included in an administration, as well as the president’s perspective of the foreign service career. When appointments were drawn from the pool of careerists, few women would serve as ambassadors; when ambassadors came from a pool of political appointees, the percentage of women selected for the rank of ambassador increased.

There has been progress for women advancing to the highest ranks in the foreign policy decision-making apparatus of the White House. Madeleine Albright served both as the foreign policy adviser to Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign and later as the first female secretary of state during his second term of office. Condoleezza Rice served on President George H. W. Bush’s national security staff, and then as foreign policy adviser and secretary of state in the second term of President George W. Bush. In addition, President Barack Obama selected Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, and she challenged Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Nonetheless, until the 1990s, women did not make the same gains overall in serving in high-level positions in the areas of government foreign and defense policy. Women have long been actively discouraged from joining the foreign service through its examination and appointment policies, resulting in a number of lawsuits against the State Department.

The move to an all-volunteer army during the Nixon administration, coming coincidentally at the same time as the push for an equal rights amendment (ERA), created new opportunities for women and minorities to rise through the ranks. In order for an all-volunteer army to succeed with a sufficient number of recruits, a certain number of minorities and women were required. The linking of the two issues—support for equal rights for women and breaking down barriers for women and minorities in military service—eventually led to the service academies accepting applications from women, and positions long closed to women in the military began to open up. Once women gained combat experience in an official capacity, they moved up the ranks to serve in the highest posts in the Department of Defense.

With the growth of the executive branch and the establishment of the Executive Office of the President, some of the roles and activities of women within the White House became more formalized. The Office of the First Lady was established in 1978, which recognized the long-established working relationship between the president and his spouse. In addition, studies in the past ten years have focused specifically on the topic of the presidency and women, examining the broader role many first ladies played as true advisers to the president, with archival research offering much evidence of this.

Women’s Connections With The White House

Several decades ago, political scientist George Edwards, a prolific author of studies on the presidency, urged scholars to adopt a behavioral approach to their work. This led to some of the first work on presidents and women when the National Academy of Public Administration established databases on presidential appointments. As scholars continued to add to this work, some aspects became the derided “bean counters” President Clinton harped upon as the numbers of women appointed and confirmed in each administration were counted, noting the cycle of appointments made to women. Also noting women’s federal judgeships as well as titles and roles in the White House, the procedure accounted for the experience of these women in prior department or federal sector work; job experience in Washington; work on a congressional staff, interest group, or party organization; as well as lower-level posts. Another topic of studies focused on presidential speeches, along with choice of advisers and strategies for managing information.

In terms of policy, judicial scholars have begun to place attention on the solicitor general in texts on the presidency. The solicitor general, rarely the focus of presidency studies, has been highly important in setting the agenda of the Supreme Court in cases of particular importance to women in the past thirty years—such as reproductive rights, affirmative action, and equal opportunity. However, references to the bully pulpit and communications studies continue to omit an area rich in potential research. The suffrage movement and the ERA are areas in which presidential rhetoric could have some potential influence. Most studies that have focused on these topics, however, have not turned to the presidential archives for a detailed examination of the president’s role in amendment processes, which is far more limited than the congressional or state legislative role. For example, the case of President Jimmy Carter is a good one for reexamining specifically what a president could do in passage and ratification of an amendment versus the major role a president can play in the policy process in general. Questions thus arise regarding what policy options were forgone with the focus in the late 1970s on the ratification of the ERA, and whether President Carter could have done more.

Also uncertain is whether the role of the president was fully understood by the time of the 1980 campaign. This issue is one that is particularly important for political scientists to turn to as various amendment drives take hold. Even the case of suffrage should be refocused with a critical examination of the role Woodrow Wilson could have taken. This would help clarify the separation of powers and a federal system, the rhetoric of a president, and the constitutional powers and limits on a president. It would also be useful in understanding larger issues such as war powers in terms of leadership and what presidents can and cannot do, as well as how they explain their role and choose their actions, and what constitutes the essence of their decision-making process. For amendments, what policy work a president chooses to not spend time on can also be examined. With the reintroduction of the ERA in the 110th Congress, these questions are relevant for the incoming administration, and for women in particular.

Bibliography:

Borrelli, MaryAnne, and Janet M. Martin, eds. The Other Elites: Women, Politics, and Power in the Executive Branch. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1997.
Edwards, George C. “The Quantitative Study of the Presidency.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1979.
Graham, Sara Hunter. Women Suffrage and the New Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Martin, Janet M. The Presidency and Women: Promise, Performance and Illusion. College Station:Texas A&M University Press, 2003.
McGlen, Nancy E., and Meredith Reid Sarkees. Women in Foreign Policy: The Insiders. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Skocpol,Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1995.
Stiehm, Judith Hicks, ed. It’s Our Military, Too: Women and the U.S. Military. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

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