It was December 1991. President-elect Clinton was selecting his top-level appointments, and Harriett Woods was frustrated.
As the new president of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), she had presented him resumes of 600 women highly qualified for senior policy positions, and not enough of them were being chosen.
Woods tallied the appointments and totaled the numbers by gender and race. Above the list she quoted Clinton: “I want a government that looks like America.” She then faxed her counts to the White House and the press.
“There’s a moment when you have to decide,” says Woods. “Do you want to get along with everyone, or do you want to use your power to make a difference. I was there to help women get into positions of power, and the administration was lagging.”
There aren’t many today who would argue that her risk-taking and aggressiveness paid off. From the NWPC’s list of exceptional women came the appointments of a record number of women in senior policy positions, including Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“When I ran for president, the caucus was diffusing its energy,” Woods says. “The equal rights battle, then the abortion rights battle had overwhelmed and rightfully challenged women’s energies in every women’s group. I wanted to bring us back to our real mission, which was to identify, recruit, train and support women to be political players.”
This mission has been the focus of Wood’s life for the last four years, as she has commuted from her home in St. Louis to the NWPC headquarters in Washington, D.C. Tall, lean and wearing tennis whites, she looks younger than her 68 years as she talks passionately and articulately in the kitchen of her St. Louis home.
“It is my philosophy, and what my life has been about,” she says, “that you have to put yourself on the inside, where you can help to shape the decisions.”
Woods began her career on the inside as a young mother in St. Louis. In need of quiet time when her three young children took a nap each afternoon, she was annoyed by the street noise generated by a loose manhole cover and too much through traffic.
She went to city hall and said, “Fix the cover or stop the traffic.” When she received no response, she collected signatures from her neighbors and the street was closed to public traffic.
“I learned I could make a difference,” she says.
That was the beginning of political activism for Woods, who spent eight years as a city councilwoman and another eight from 1976 to 1984 as a state senator. As lieutenant governor for four years, she was the first woman in Missouri elected to statewide office. But she lost two tough races for the U.S. Senate–one to Republican John C. Danforth by 1 percent of the vote.
“I never thought I’d be leading a woman’s group,” she says. “I did it because I felt I owed something. When I ran for state senator, the party didn’t support me, the outgoing senator didn’t support me. It was the local woman’s political caucus that supported me. And in 1982 when I ran for U.S. Senate, my own party said, `You can’t run, you’re nothing but a suburban housewife.’ It was a group of women that publicized that incident and gave my campaign a shot in the arm.
“I really wanted to be a senator. I like to think I would have made an extraordinary difference. On the other hand, I would have been just one senator. I think I’ve helped to elect several.”
It is ironic that, as NWPC president, she probably has made far more of a difference than she would have as a senator. Under her leadership, the caucus, a non-partisan group, raised more money ($1.5 million) for candidates than it ever had before.
Was 1992 really the year of the woman?
“It was in the sense that 24 new women were elected to Congress and a record number of women were elected to the Senate,” says Woods. “But if you look at state legislatures, which are a better barometer over a period of time, the progress there was pretty much what it had been–an extra 1 to 2 percent every election cycle.
“Though we encouraged the term, it wasn’t the year of the woman. It was a year of extraordinary opportunity which was seized by women who were in the pipeline and who were well-qualified.
“Twenty-two of the women won in open seats, which is what I mean by opportunity. There were a lot of openings because of a major re-districting and an unusual number of retirements. The result was women won not by knocking off the men, or the incumbents, but by winning the open seats.
“And that was the result of 20 long years of women working their way up the political pipeline. They had been in state legislatures, county commissions, city councils. They were ready. If it had been a normal year and they had run against incumbents, they wouldn’t have won because incumbents have a 95 percent chance of re-election.”
The greatest problem ahead, says Woods, is that not enough women are running for office.
“There is so much competition for the time of women, and politics has such a negative aura that I’m really concerned. Only 8 percent of the women in this country want to run for office–compared to 18 percent of the men–which makes my stomach clutch.
“We did some research and discovered, even to our own surprise, that the success rates for women equal those for men, if you compare open seat to open seat, incumbent to incumbent, challenger to challenger. The notion that women have a tougher time has arisen because women necessarily run more often as challengers, and challengers don’t do well, whether they’re men or women.
“Now why so few women? Our research discovered that both men and women have the same concerns about raising money, the time taken from personal life and the negative campaigning. The one big difference was that women more than men felt a need for training or mentoring. I think most women understand that automatically.
“Men assume if they want to run for office that the system will be there for them. Ask women if they want to run for office, and many of them say, `I don’t know how.’
“The second thing women say is: `I’m not sure my boss–or husband or family–would like it.’ Women feel they need permission.”
Woods is determined to help women get past their fears. She is spending her last months with the caucus launching a massive recruitment drive to get women to run for office. For the next campaign cycle, the caucus will conduct at least 40 regional trainings to help women do their research, target their opportunities and run their campaigns.
“It doesn’t do any good to complain that we need new policies if there aren’t any women to make them,” she says, “and there won’t be any women to make them if they don’t run. Women can’t be handmaidens waiting to be asked. They have to position themselves to step forward and be competitive.”
Woods retires from the NWPC presidency in August with some regrets.
“I wish I could have built more of the grass-roots membership,” she says. “I tried, but I couldn’t find the magic. Organizations run primarily by volunteer efforts have a hard time growing.”
She says she wishes the caucus could have attracted more women of color and more Republican women. She leaves these challenges to her successor.
Has her work with the caucus motivated her to run again for office?
“No,” she says, “because you have to have a real burning in your gut. If you don’t want it enough, you can’t get other people to work for you. And I did that. I don’t know if someone appointed me to the Senate if I’d do it now. I know what it’s like. I’ve gotten to the summit, looked over it and wouldn’t spend five minutes with most of those people, if it weren’t for the political power that goes with it.”
Her feelings about leaving Washington are more ambivalent.
“There’s a trade-off,” she says. “I’ve enjoyed heading a national platform and being on all the television shows. But I’m looking forward to being hands-on again in a community. Washington is very abstract. You deal with policy as a theory. It’s in the community that you deal with the reality of human beings, and I miss that very much.”
So Woods will return full-time to University City, the St. Louis suburb where she has lived for 40 years. Clinton has appointed her to the board of Freddie Mac, a private corporation that provides, along with Fannie Mae, the majority of the secondary market for mortgages in this country. A former print and TV journalist, she is mulling offers that would use those skills.
“And hopefully,” she says, “I’ll still being useful to campaigns for women.”
One thing is certain: She’ll be playing tennis three to four times a week and spending a lot more time with her family–her husband, three sons and eight grandchildren, whose photos adorn her refrigerator. “I hate the thought that for the sake of some important national job I’d miss their childhood and all the fun we have.”
