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THERE’S SOMETHING
to this idea of a New Boston. Changing demographics
undoubtedly helped usher in victories for Andrea Cabral
in last year’s Suffolk County sheriff race and for Linda
Dorcena Forry in last week’s special state-representative
elections. The strong showing by Stacey Monahan, one
of Dorcena Forry’s opponents, also demonstrates that
women are connecting with voters with more and more
frequency. But for all that, oddly, New Boston’s momentum
has yet to sweep through the Boston City Council — a
traditional launching pad for Massachusetts political
careers.
How’s this for
glacial progress: in 80 years, only nine women have
been elected to the city council, according to As
Tough As It Gets: Women in Boston Politics, 1920-2004
, a report released Thursday by the Center for
Women in Politics and Public Policy (CWPPP) at the University
of Massachusetts Boston. Right now, two women serve
on the 13-member body; and they, like their predecessors,
are white.
The report, which
is the first to provide a comprehensive history of women
on the council, shows that far fewer female candidates
than male ones run for city council — and that they
face significant hurdles when they do. That’s not to
suggest women are absent from City Hall or other high-profile
city posts: City Clerk Rosaria Salerno (a council alumna),
Police Commissioner KathleenO’Toole, Massachusetts Department
of Correction commissioner Kathleen Dennehy, Department
of Neighborhood Development head Charlotte Golar Richie,
and the city’s chief financial officer, Lisa Signori,
to name just a few, spring to mind. But those are all
appointed positions.
To be fair, the
city council’s dramatic gender imbalance is not entirely
the fault of city voters, who have, at one time or another,
sent strong female candidates such as Marie St. Fleur,
Marian Walsh, and Dianne Wilkerson, as well as Dorcena
Forry and Golar Richie, to the state legislature.
As it turns out,
according to the CWPPP report, the dearth of women on
the council results from several factors:
• Women in
general are simply less likely to decide, on their own,
to run for office. "Women are less likely
to step up to the plate — they really need to be recruited,"
explains Mary Fifield, president of the Massachusetts
Women’s Political Caucus, an organization that works
to get more women elected to office, among other goals.
"It really is sort of a latter-day version of sixth
grade. You know, girls and boys get to the sixth grade,
and boys are still thrusting their hands up in the air,
all the time, with the answers. If they don’t have the
right answer, they’re still comfortable taking a shot
at it. Girls stop putting their arms up."
That’s why women
with a "kinship network," or pre-existing
political connections, have fared so much better, says
report co-author Kristen Petersen. They have mentors
to nudge them forward and guide them, as well as the
support to get past political hierarchies traditionally
dominated by men.
To create that
kind of political foundation, experts advise getting
involved in neighborhood associations, ward committees,
other political campaigns, or state-party organizations.
• Boston’s
c ity-government structure is not conducive
to women’s dipping a toe into the political waters.
"I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest
that Boston is a city whose diversity in its politics
was hindered greatly by the elimination of an elected
School Committee," says Senator Wilkerson, suggesting
that female candidates often get their foot in the door
as a result of their interest in their children’s education.
In addition,
the strong-mayor/weak-council relationship has historically
allowed Boston mayors to perform a "key gate-keeping
role in determining who can and cannot win a city council
seat," according to the report. (Seth Gitell, a
spokesman for Mayor Thomas Menino, says this mayor has
never played a gate-keeping role for either male or
female candidates.)
• Political
organizations interested in promoting female candidates
need better coordination and more-effective strategies.
"You have to build an infrastructure, and
you have to consistently field candidates that are credible,
and to whom that infrastructure can become attached,"
Sheriff Cabral says.
This type of
infrastructure, attentive to organization and strategy,
doesn’t really exist for women on the municipal level,
and therefore the benefits of creating a "farm
team" of city candidates (who can later be funneled
up through the state legislature and even on to bigger
posts) are too often elusive. However, recent signs
suggest that political organizations are getting "smarter
about strategy," Wilkerson says. "I think
there’s a piece missing: the opportunity for sitting
elected officials to mentor," she adds. "We
have not done all that we could to cultivate and encourage
from an internal perspective."
• Women
must be more creative in their fundraising strategies,
especially if they don’t come up through the party ranks
with family support. Women aren’t as adept at asking
for money, the report says, and, interestingly, unless
they "do business in town" they are less inclined
to give to political candidates. That said, women also
lack access to built-in networks and informal venues
such as the golf course.
"If our
process is weeding out people who don’t have means,"
Fifield says, "that’s a serious problem for democracy."
As sweeping as
the CWPPP report is, local political observers say two
other issues play a role in the gender disparity. One
of them was invoked by Harvard president Lawrence Summers
in his controversial speech on January 14: forcing women
to choose between professional and family goals may
chase them away from the political arena. National statistics,
which show that 86 percent of elected officials younger
than 35 are men, suggest that many women wait until
after they have children to run for office.
"We have
to take into account these things that slow women down
in other career sectors as well," says Patricia
White, who ran for an at-large council seat in 2003,
lost, and is trying again in 2005. "Why don’t we
have more female CEOs? Why don’t we have more women
in senior roles in business or media or otherwise? The
larger issue here is work-family balance. With politics,
we haven’t figured that out yet." But, she adds,
"[Women] shouldn’t have to make that choice."
(White, it should be noted, will be a walking experiment
in perfecting the politics-family balance during this
campaign — she’s due to have her first child in July.)
The report didn’t
even consider another factor: "Women have better
things to do," one political observer says, pointing
out that women today have more professional careers
from which to choose than their predecessors did. "There’s
lots of options available for women. And then they make
the decision — if they can make a six-figure salary
doing x, y, or z, why should they be in the city council,
getting phone calls in the middle of the night when
the snow isn’t plowed?"
IT WILL never
work differently if we don’t try to do something about
it," says Rosaria Salerno, who ran for city council
in 1987 without any traditional political connections
— and won. Salerno is still in City Hall, serving as
Boston’s first female city clerk. "It’s going to
be tougher for women, and they have to prove themselves
a hundred times more than men do."
"You cannot
be thin-skinned," agrees Maura Hennigan, whose
famously thick skin has protected her through more than
24 years of rough-and-tumble city-council politics,
and who announced last week that she will finally take
on Menino in the 2005 mayoral race.
While Hennigan
still describes the council as "kind of a male
club," she’s excited about what women can accomplish
once they land a seat at the table. "Women often
tend to approach things differently," she says,
an opinion echoed by many high-powered female — and
male — officials who spoke to the Phoenix for
this article. "They’re consensus builders. They’re
not back-room-deal types."
In 1993, Hennigan,
Peggy Davis-Mullen, Diane Modica, and Maureen Feeney
(who, unless another woman is elected in 2005, will
be the last one standing after Hennigan leaves) were
dubbed "the Kelly Girls" when they served
simultaneously and formed something of a voting bloc.
With a united front, the four councilors were able to
make advances on issues such as easier access to mammography
services and day care.
Still, the two
high-profile female candidates who are bound to make
waves this fall — Hennigan and city-council candidate
White — refuse to tie their candidacies to their gender.
Instead, both strive to highlight their records and
their passion on issues such as housing and education.
According to As Tough As It Gets , many female
candidates start out in politics by getting involved
in the issues that most closely affect their daily lives
and communities (hence the importance of the School
Committee).
"You can’t
say, ‘I’m running to be the first woman,’ "
says Carol Hardy-Fanta, CWPPP director and study co-author.
"But you can ... within yourself and your supporters,
highlight what a woman can bring to the office that
a man might not be able to bring."
To get there,
however, much work needs to be done. Organizations such
as the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, the Massachusetts
League of Woman Voters, and CWPPP itself have all taken
steps toward promoting the political participation of
women of all ages and parties. Such support networks
are important to have, especially in the fledgling stages
of a candidacy, when deciphering paperwork, fundraising,
and campaign operations can seem daunting.
In the end, nothing
is more effective than experience. "I don’t think
attending a workshop is going to prepare you to run,"
White says. "It’s not going to help you run for
office. What you have to do, you have to plan — it’s
really not that different than when men run for office
... Take [former councilor] Rosemarie Sansone, for instance.
She listed off what she had done, over the years, to
prepare herself for a candidacy, for office."
With a combination
of New Boston energy and well-prepared candidates on
the ballot, there’s a good chance the city could make
strides toward council diversity — and that’s a worthy
goal.
"You can
have people who will be strong and champion causes for
other groups," Golar Richie says of some male colleagues.
"But there’s nothing like having that person, herself,
standing up there as a role model."
Deirdre Fulton can be reached at dfulton@phx.com
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