Women and Representation: Self-Government and Role Change

• Author: Sarah Slavin Schramm
• DOI: 10.1177/106591298103400105
• Published date: 01 March 1981
• Date: 01 March 1981
• Subject Matter: Articles

WOMEN
AND REPRESENTATION: SELF-GOVERNMENT
AND
ROLE CHANGE
SARAH SLAVIN SCHRAMM
University of Delaware
FTER
PASSAGE of the suffrage amendment in 1920, American gov-
ernment became virtually based on the consent of women as well as
~
of men. Yet, prior to 1920 there had been no constitutional bars to
women’s participation as either elected representatives or appointed officials.
Potentially women could occupy the role of representative, but they seldom
did. It was as if women were spontaneously disqualified because their sub-
ordinate traditional roles were incompatible with superordinate representa-
tive roles. Even after suffrage, women’s representative roles differed from
men’s. The goals of this study are to explore what women’s roles have been
and how and why they have developed as they have.
Political decision-making positions have rarely been occupied by women.
Women in general have been described as occupying minority group status
and as lacking the bargaining resources on which power relationships are
based. Women are said to be increasingly aware and resentful of that status.2
2
However, this designation of women as a status-deprived class has been
challenged by those who point out that women are so demographically di-
verse as not to share the characteristics binding minority groups such as
blacks.3
3
Some studies have concluded that women lack the ambition to seek
political office.’ Women have nonetheless substantially increased their mass
political activities One study finds that female political ambition is better
discussed in terms of the ends to which it is directed: family-work roles and
feminism are shown to influence the styles of activism displayed by female
partisan elites .6 Political voluntaryism and service are typical of women oc-
cupying traditional family-work roles and responding to traditional gender
ideology. Presumably such women are aware that females who occupy repre-
NOTE: An earlier version of this paper was presented to the 1978 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, New York City. The author wishes to acknowledge
Robert Darcy’s contributions to the premises of the paper. Callie Gass’s useful editorial
suggestions, and the research assistance of Linda Racioppi. The comments of Ellen
Boneparth, Irene Diamond and Mary Lepper, and of two anonymous reviewers, were also
very helpful.
’See Jessie Bernard, Women and the Public Interest (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971), p. 237; see
also Else Frenkel-Brunswik, "Interaction of Psychological and Sociological Factors in
Political Behavior," American Political Science Review 46 (March 1952): 44-65.
2 Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Masculine/Feminine or Human? (Itaska: Peacock, 1974), p. 146; Helen
Hacker Mayer, "Women as a Minority Group: 20 Years Later," in Who Discriminates Against
Women? (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1974), p. 125.
3
Robert N. Stern, Walter R. Gove and Omer R. Galle, "Equality for Blacks and Women: An
Essay on Relative Progress," Social Science Quarterly 56 (March 1976): 644-72.
4
See for example M. Kent Jennings and Norman Thomas, "Men and Women in Party Elites:
Social Roles and Political Resources," Midwest Journal of Political Science 12 (November
1968): 491.
5
Maureen Fiedler, "The Participation of Women in American Politics," paper presented to the
1975 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco; Susan
Welch, "Women as Political Animals? A Test of Some Explanations for Male-Female
Differences," American Journal of Political Science 21 (November 1977): 711-30.
6
Virginia Sapiro and Barbara G. Farah, "New Pride and Old Prejudice: Political Ambition and
Role Orientations Among Female Partisan Elites," Women and Politics 1 (Spring 1980):
13-36.

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47
sentative roles have been perceived as aberrations and unimportant devia-
tions from the norm.~
7
One might think, then, that the prospects for political role change
among women are not promising. Yet a study by Jeane Kirkpatrick of 1972
convention delegates found women no more influenced by sex-based role
orientations than mean.8 An earlier study of women in state legislatures by
the same scholar found that these women may have had role conceptions
which differed from men’s.9 What accounts for the different findings of the
two studies?
Often, age is understood as the basis for disparities among women’s role
orientations Kirkpatrick, however, found that 75 percent of the legislators
were past 40 when they sought office; nearly 60 percent of the delegates
were over 40. The most ambitious female delegates were less than 40 years
old; but the older delegates were not all unambitious. Regardless of age,
ambitious female delegates has assertive views about the role of women in
politics. The source of such views may have less to do with the multiple
implications of aging than with the generations to which these women belong.
The concept of generation has sociohistorical implications lacking in age-
based cohorts. 11 The expansion and development of the women’s movement
throughout the twentieth century and the increasing acceptance of its impact
and analyses may have had a telling effect upon many of Kirkpatrick’s sub-
jects and upon numerous other women elites as well.
It has also been argued that crisis may provide sufficient cause for the
expansion of representative roles to include women. 12 Crisis is held to create
a &dquo;sense of urgency&dquo; to effect social change. 13 The &dquo;anchors&dquo; of traditional
expectations and identity are lost when events such as war and depression
occur. 14 While women’s reconfigurated roles will revert to more traditional
forms at the conclusion of a serious emergency, the minority status of
women will be inappropriate for the duration of the crisis.15
Whatever the effect of such dramatic crisis has been, it is apparent that
women’s role orientations have been changing. References to a &dquo;new-
woman&dquo; or &dquo;a New Wave woman&dquo; with penetrating political interests and
ambitions are often made. These women may demonstrate increased con-
sciousness of and anger with the state of politics.16 They also may have a
7
For an overview of such perceptions see Bonnie Cook Freeman, "Power, Patriarchy, and
’Political Primitives,’ " in Joan I. Roberts, ed., Beyond Intellectual Sexism (New York: McKay,
1976), pp. 251-52; Diane D. Kincaid, "Over His Dead Body: A New Perspective and Some
Feminist Notes on Widows in the U.S. Congress" Western Political Quarterly 31 (March
1978): 96-104.
8
Jeane Kirkpatrick, The New Presidential Elite (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1976), p.
422.
9
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Political Women (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 154-59.
10
See for example Kay Boals, "Political Science," Signs 1 (Fall 1975): 162.
"See Virginia Sapiro, "News from the Front: Inter-sex and Inter-generational Conflict Over
the Status of Women," Western Political Quarterly 33 (June 1980): 260-77.
12
Jean Lipman-Blumen, "Role De-Differentiation as a System Response to Crisis: Occupational
and Political Roles of Women," Sociological Inquiry 43:2 (1973): 105.
13
Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women’s Liberation (New York: McKay, 1975), p. 2.
14
David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, abr. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 282;
William Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles,
1920-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 188-95; Judith Bardwick, In
Transition (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), p. 23.
15
Lipman-Blumen, "Role De-Differentiation," pp. 116, 123.
16
Kathleen McCourt, Working Class Women and Grass Roots Politics (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1977), p. 217.

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48
&dquo;masculine&dquo; style, although this is not invariably true. 17 Among the several
reasons given for this reconfiguration is the presence of women with out-
standing credentials in the pools from which candidates for public office are
drawn. Even while pursuing a career, some women are willing to devote
large amounts of time and effort to political roles;18 and homemakers with
grown or nearly grown children have ample time to devote to elite roles.’9
The increasing numbers of women attaining law degrees may further assist
them in achieving these roles, which frequently are occupied by lawyers. 20
The presence of credentialed professional women and homemakers,
among others, in candidate pools partly reflects change in the effect on
women of family life cycle. Family life cycle takes into account the impact of
age on a person’s conjugal family status and presumes more or less systema-
tic passage from one life cycle stage to another.2’ The social roles of women
and men have varied with particular stages of family life cycle.22 For exam-
ple, the social isolation women have experienced, especially when raising
young children, has differentiated women from men in the past and has
resulted in differing political behavior.23 In recent years, however, it has
become easier to control family size; and there has been a trend...