A composite of all available images of the 365 women who have served in Congress since 1917. Compiled using a search of pictures available via the Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Historian, United States House of Representatives.

The Year of the Woman

A History of Women in Congress

05.10.19

Today, 131 women serve in the House and Senate, making Congress the most female and most diverse it’s ever been.

But women in politics continue to face an uphill battle. Even after their election, Congresswomen such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have faced criticism for their choice of clothing and language. One radio commentator in Atlanta even suggested Lucy McBath should “go back to the kitchen.”

We look at the history of “women in Congress,” how much progress we’ve made and how much work lies ahead.

Election of 2018 (midterm); U.S. Congress; women in politics

Open Episode Transcript as PDF

Segments

Women in Congress, Then and Now

Debbie Walsh tells Joanne about the long history that led up to November’s breakthrough election, the trailblazing congresswoman of the past and the barriers that still need to be broken.

Music:
Yellow Line by Podington Bear

elections; political campaigns; women’s history

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Nathan Connolly: Major funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Joanne Freeman: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

Joanne Freeman: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Joanne Freeman.

Brian Balogh: And, I’m Brian Balogh. If you’re new to the podcast, we’re all historians. Along with Ed Ayers and Nathan Connolly, each week we explore a different aspect of American history.

Joanne Freeman: When the 116th Congress was sworn in this past January, a historic number of women took office. Today, 131 women serve in the House and Senate making Congress the most female and most diverse it’s ever been.

Speaker 4: We did it!

Rashida Tlaib: So, I think it’s official that I am Congresswoman-Elect Rashida Tlaib.

Deb Haaland: Tonight, New Mexico, you are sending one of the very first Native American women to Congress.

Alexandria O.: Despite the fact that we were running against a 10-term incumbent, despite the fact that it was your first time running for office, despite the fact that we didn’t have the money, despite the fact that I’m working class, despite all those things, we won.

Joanne Freeman: But, women in politics continue to face an uphill battle. Even after their election, congresswomen such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have faced criticism for their choice of clothing and language. One radio commentator in Atlanta even suggested Lucy McBath should, “Go back to the kitchen.” Today, on the show, we look at women in Congress. How much progress we’ve made, and how much work lies ahead.

Joanne Freeman: Debbie Walsh has been studying the role of women in American politics for over 20 years at Rutgers University. I spoke to her to better understand the long history that led up to November’s breakthrough election. So, what was it like for her to watch a record number of congresswomen being sworn in this year?

Debbie Walsh: I had a mixed reaction. One was very positive, which was, obviously, seeing the largest freshmen class of women in Congress in history. To see 36 new women elected in one cycle, unprecedented. At the same time, being cautious, which is a little bit of what we do here, which is to put a little bit of a reality check on all of the progress. While we did see this tremendous growth, we are constantly being reminded and reminding others of the fact that women are still less than a quarter of all of the members of Congress. While there is much celebration about all of the new women, we’re still at less than 25%.

Debbie Walsh: Also, that this story really was pretty much exclusively on the Democratic side. Of all of those newly elected women that we saw, only one new Republican woman was elected this time. We are now down to 13 Republican women in Congress. We haven’t seen numbers that low since Bill Clinton was in the White House. So, we’re not going to get to gender parity if only one party is electing women. It makes me celebrate on one front, and mindful of the continuing work that needs to be done on the other.

Joanne Freeman: Let’s look back a little bit in time here. Who were the first women to enter Congress, and how was it that they ended up getting there?

Debbie Walsh: Well, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman, a Republican woman, who came into Congress, and she actually got there before there was national suffrage. Many of the Western states granted women the right to vote earlier than the national right to vote was granted. She served for one term then was out, and then came back again. She has the distinction of having been the lone vote in Congress to vote against the U.S. entering each of the World Wars. So, she voted against. She was a pacifist, and she voted against the U.S. going into World War I, and against going into World War II.

Debbie Walsh: In general, early on, we saw some women who got elected to office, but an awful lot of them in the early days were women who came in to fill a vacancy. Often times, it was their husband who was in office who died, and then the party would need to put somebody in there to be a placeholder. Then, they would serve out that term. It was an easy way of doing it. It made sense. This woman probably knew much of what her husband was working on in Congress. It wasn’t a jarring thing for the public. It was, this is the best person to carry on the former member’s legacy until an election could be held.

Debbie Walsh: Some of those women actually then went on to have long and illustrious careers in Congress themselves. One of the most famous of those is Margaret Chase Smith, who filled her husband’s seat in the House, and then went on to run herself multiple times for re-election. Then, was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Maine. She was the person who made the famous speech on the floor of the Senate condemning Senator Joe McCarthy, and she put her hat in the ring for the presidency, as a presidential candidate on the Republican side.

Debbie Walsh: You also have women like Lindy Boggs, Cardiss Collins, Lois Capps, women who came in a little more recently, but who then went on to have their own strong and important careers in Congress. Really, starting in the 70s, we started to see more and more women running on their own and getting elected. We saw the first women of color coming in, Patsy Mink, Shirley Chisholm. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who just retired, was the first Latina to be elected to Congress. So, it has been a slow and evolutionary process, but it has shifted from women being a complete novelty, women largely being there as placeholders for their husbands, to women getting elected in their own right, to now the point where they are well over a third of the Democratic caucus on the House side. So, it has been a process of evolutionary change.

Joanne Freeman: What would you say were some of the foremost, ground-level, working challenges that those early women in Congress would have faced?

Debbie Walsh: Well, I think it’s everything from being completely marginalized from leadership and on the floor, to literally things as mundane as not having a bathroom that you could use. It was a very male institution. To be the first women in those spaces would have been really a challenge, really difficult, not being taken seriously. Women were not chairs of committees. I think the first woman to chair a committee was done almost as an insulting joke, but there was a House beauty shop, and that was what the woman got to chair.

Debbie Walsh: These women were not taken as seriously as their male colleagues by any stretch of the imagination. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to walk into a place like the U.S. Congress and to be one of four or five or three women in the whole entire institution.

Joanne Freeman: Right, just the strength of character that that would have taken is remarkable to think about.

Debbie Walsh: Absolutely. Honestly, when you think about it, what would it take for you to think that at a period where women had only fought for and earned the right to vote maybe five years ago and to have the strength and the sense of self to say, “I should actually be in Congress.” It’s quite extraordinary to think about.

Joanne Freeman: Exactly. Obviously, there are other kinds of diversity that bring other perspectives, but what’s your sense of how introducing those voices really is going to change the broader conversation?

Debbie Walsh: We have found that women are more likely than their male counterparts to have their policy agenda priorities reflect the interests of women, families, and children. It doesn’t mean that all the women on both sides of the aisle, again, are agreeing on the same approach, but that those issues matter and come to the forefront for those elected officials. That’s different. We’ve also found that women are more likely to believe that government should be operating more transparently in the open and that women are more likely than their male counterparts to believe that they have a responsibility to represent voices of folks that normally aren’t at the table. So, not just women, but also people of color, low-income people, people who don’t necessarily have the same kind of voice and the same kind of access. They tend to be more inclusive.

Debbie Walsh: We also have seen that women seem to be more able to … and, the women say this about themselves … a little more able to work across the aisle, which, I think, these days, is significant and important because we see such gridlock and such partisan rancor, that to have more people who can figure out ways to reach across the aisle would really make a difference.

Joanne Freeman: Oh, absolutely, right? It’s about personal engagement. It’s about being able to converse. It’s about good faith.

Debbie Walsh: It’s about knowing a little bit about each other, the human stories. What’s going on with your kids? What’s happening with your older parents? All those kinds of things that make them human to each other, so that you can’t demonize each other, you don’t write each other off, you have those personal relationships. It makes a big difference.

Debbie Walsh: The women in the Senate for years now have been coming together across party lines to have dinner together. This started with Barbara Mikulski, who was the first Democratic woman elected to the United States Senate in her own right, and she would organize these dinners. They have continued today, even though she’s no longer serving. Again, these are women who really span the ideological spectrum, but the fact that they have built some kind of personal relationship is hugely important in politics. It allows you to have some conversations and to find some middle ground.

Debbie Walsh: A fun example of this is that the men and the women in Congress do have these baseball teams/softball teams, and the men play each other, the Democrats versus the Republicans, as a fundraiser. The women in the House, the way they operate, is the women play together, Democrats and Republicans, on the same team, and they play the women in the press corps.

Joanne Freeman: Wow!

Debbie Walsh: They, even in that small way, have figured out some ways to work together. Again, it seems why is that such a big deal, but those personal relationships really matter in politics.

Joanne Freeman: Are there ways that you think social media shaped what women could or couldn’t do in this campaign? This is generally fascinating to me to think about the ways in which social media changed the way the politicians engage with the public.

Debbie Walsh: I think that one of the things that we saw in 2018 is the kind of authenticity that these women showed. They talked about their strengths, but they also were willing to talk about some of their vulnerabilities, and, in fact, I think turned their vulnerabilities into strengths. We saw candidates this time around talking about their own personal Me Too stories. We saw women talking about the fact that they had grown up in families and homes where there was an abuser. They grew up in homes where they had a parent who was a substance abuser addicted to drugs. We saw folks talking about their military experience. We saw them talking about the fact that they were gay.

Debbie Walsh: They talked about all the aspects of their lives and turned it into strength. I do think social media is a piece of that, that we are all used to now people being much more transparent about their lives. I think there’s some of that expectation now that we all have that you will be your real self. I think with that authenticity, women can be much more real and much more relatable. It was not that long ago that a woman who had young children would be encouraged by her political consultant to not really talk about your young kids or to show them in a brochure, or on your website. Because, in fact, people would ask you, “Well, who’s going to take care of your kids if you get elected?” Not a question that young male candidates would be confronted with.

Joanne Freeman: Right. In the research that you’ve done and the data that you’ve collected, what does it tell you about the ways in which women politic differently from men?

Debbie Walsh: Well, one of the things that we have asked women and men who serve in state legislators over the years in surveys is, when you first ran for office, did somebody suggest this to you or did you run on your own? You’ll be shocked, but the men basically wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and say, “I’d be a great state legislator,” and they just run whereas women need to be recruited. There is that sense of entitlement that, frankly, we should all feel. We are all entitled to be elected officials, but women have not been raised that way.

Debbie Walsh: I think that’s changing. I think that’s one of the changes we saw in 2018. A lot of the women who ran did not run because somebody asked them. They ran, frankly, in spite of their party. There are a number of examples of women who are now in Congress who they were not their party’s choice. In fact, a couple of them, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated incumbent members of their own party for those seats. They were not waiting to be asked. They were not waiting their turn. They stepped up, and they ran.

Joanne Freeman: Debbie Walsh is the Director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

The Toothpick Congresswoman

Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there was Elizabeth Holtzman. Brian talks to Congresswoman Holtzman about her surprise 1972 victory, becoming the youngest congresswoman in history at the time at only 31 years old and taking on the political establishment.

Music:
Delphi by Podington Bear

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Elizabeth Holtzman; political campaigns

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Brian Balogh: She toppled a powerful, long-time, New York City incumbent, and her grassroots campaign sent shock waves through the Democratic political establishment. Nope, I’m not talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’m talking about Elizabeth Holtzman, whose surprise 1972 victory when she was only 31-years-old, made her the youngest congresswomen in history at the time. I caught up with Holtzman and asked her what led her to get involved in politics and decide to run for office in the first place.

Elizabeth H.: One real motivating factor was my experience in the South as an intern in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. I was interning for a black civil rights attorney in Southwest Georgia. I had no idea in 1963 of what life was like in the South for blacks. It wasn’t until I got down there that I realized the horror of Jim Crow. It was so bad that in rural areas, black people had to get off the sidewalk when a white person was walking down the street. The indignities and the misuse of the criminal justice system to stifle protests against these horrific, discriminatory conditions under which people lived was horrifying to me, but I saw what determined efforts could do to bring down a system like Jim Crow. That gave me an optimism about the ability to make changes in our society for the welfare of people, the benefit of people.

Elizabeth H.: My second experience was being asked by a fellow student at Harvard Law School to come down and work in the Lindsay administration. I had no experience with government.

Brian Balogh: This is Mayor John Lindsay, mayor of New York.

Elizabeth H.: Correct. When I got there, I got a close up look at elected officials. I said, “If these people can get elected, I can get elected.”

Brian Balogh: Good for you.

Elizabeth H.: Armed with the sense that I could do good in government and that it was possible to get elected if these people could get elected, I tried … I noticed that my congressperson, a man called Emanuel Celler, who was 84-years-old, who was a strong supporter of the war in Vietnam … I was a major opponent of the war, and he wasn’t around in the district.

Brian Balogh: Well, you pulled it out against one of the true institutions of the Democratic party in Congress at the time. How long had Manny Celler been in Congress?

Elizabeth H.: He’d been in Congress for half a century, and the political machine in Brooklyn was supporting him. So, it was not only against the congressional institution, so to speak, but against the whole Democratic apparatus in Brooklyn. I just want to put this in context. Brooklyn had what was called a political machine, which meant that the Democratic party was controlled by political bosses who acquired their power by winning elections and then dolling our patronage and other goodies to people who supported them. It turned out to be a very corrupt system, and it’s a system that I ran against. I defeated the Brooklyn machine in every single election that I won. They never gave up running against me, and I never gave up fighting them.

Elizabeth H.: They threw everything they could at me. Of course, they didn’t take me seriously. Of course, we had no money. We didn’t even have a poll, but we were able, nonetheless, to win.

Brian Balogh: But, you were the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time, and, more importantly, you were a woman. What was it like to run as a woman?

Elizabeth H.: I was 31, just 31. Since we had no money for TV or newspaper ads or radio ads or anything, we did a lot of shoe leather, and I campaigned constantly at subway stops and the bus stops and wherever more than one person was congregating. You stood out from the crowd. There were no other women running for office. I think also, the image was … Because I was running not just against Celler and not just against the War, but against the machine politics of Brooklyn, people felt that a woman would be more attentive, more honest, more caring, harder working. Those stereotypes worked in my favor in that race.

Brian Balogh: Surely, there must have been some comments direct or indirect about your presence as a woman.

Elizabeth H.: Well, my opponent denigrated me. He said, “My race was like a toothpick trying to topple the Washington Monument.” Implicit in toothpick trying to topple the Washington Monument was the idea was, what is this young woman? Just what business does she have running for Congress? Of course, a toothpick is not the Washington Monument, so toothpick isn’t going to win. A toothpick doesn’t deserve to win. Well, he was wrong.

Brian Balogh: Tell me about some of the cultural folkways about Congress. How did things go when you showed up at the gym?

Elizabeth H.: Well, I never showed up at the gym because the gym was closed to women and congresswomen actually decided not to make an issue of that because we thought we’d be laughed at by the press and that we needed to focus more on issues that would improve the lives of our constituents. I do remember when I first went down to lobby to be on a House committee, one Southern … I was going to say gentleman, but I don’t think that’s the right word … said to me, “Well, Ms. Holtzman, just because you’re a Jew and a woman, don’t worry about being in Congress.” I said to myself, “Now, I’m in real trouble.”

Elizabeth H.: At one point, I think it might have been my last term in Congress when every once in a while the Speaker would give a member the gavel. A Speaker couldn’t be on the floor all the time. So, I was presiding over the House, and someone addressed me as Mr. Speaker. I looked at the person, and I said, “Now, that’s not the correct form of address.” I said, “You have to call me Madam Speaker,” and so that I think set a precedent in the House at that time. Let’s put it this way, there were a small number of women, and the system didn’t necessarily include women, although it wasn’t really hostile. My colleagues were not hostile to me. I never felt that. I didn’t know how Congress operated when I got there, but I felt that I was able to make an important contribution on behalf of my constituents, and fight for many important values.

Elizabeth H.: One of the things I was able to do, I worked with a Republican congresswoman, Margaret Heckler from Massachusetts, and the two of us created the very first caucus in the history of the United States on women’s issues. We brought all the congresswomen together, all Democrats, all Republicans, and we created a congresswoman’s caucus. That is still in existence today, and still bipartisan, still has a Democratic chair and a Republican chair. It’s one of the areas-

Brian Balogh: Do you think that they talk to each other?

Elizabeth H.: Absolutely.

Brian Balogh: I’m just teasing.

Elizabeth H.: It’s one of the areas … No, I think it’s really important that, from the get-go, we understood that there were a lot of things that could divide us, but on many, many issues of the quality of life for women and children and families, there were many things where there was a common ground. We realized that if we worked together, we had much more clout. I was very proud of having formed that with Congresswoman Heckler, and very proud to see that it’s still flourishing today, and still bipartisan.

Brian Balogh: Yes, that’s really impressive. Did it matter that you and Congresswoman Jordan were on the judiciary committee as they held the Nixon administration to account?

Elizabeth H.: Barbara Jordan and I were the first women, Democratic women at least, ever to serve on that committee in the history of the United States. The only two women to serve during the impeachment process, so I think it was really important that we were there. Barbara Jordan played an extraordinary role. She made a speech that probably will be recorded as one of the great, all-time speeches in American history, and was a towering presence, and showed that women could participate in the most critical issues of constitutional integrity in our history.

Elizabeth H.: That was really important, and I still, to this day, because those hearings were televised and because it was so unusual to see women playing a role in making such important decisions as to whether or not a president should be impeached, that I still have women coming up to me today and saying, “You know, because I saw you during those impeachment hearings, I decided to become a lawyer. Because I saw you and Barbara Jordan, I decided that I could do something different and more important with my life than I’d ever thought before.” You don’t realize that just doing your job in the right way can have such an impact, but over my life, I’ve heard, oh, I would say, hundreds of women tell me that. In a way, it’s great that I was able to do it, but it’s sad that there were so few role models for women at that time.

Brian Balogh: What stereotypes worked against you, Congresswoman Holtzman?

Elizabeth H.: Well, I would say that the stereotypes that worked against me, which became more prominent in other races I was involved in, had to do with the stereotype that a woman can’t handle a tough job, that a woman isn’t as smart as a man, that a woman should stay in the home, that kind of thing. I felt running for the legislative position was easier because the public knows, or the stereotype is that women can talk, and they don’t really understand what the job of a legislator is, most of the public. Being an executive, giving orders, being the boss, they’re very unaccustomed to seeing women in those roles, so you had to overcome a lot of stereotypes and hurdles.

Elizabeth H.: When I ran for district attorney after running for the U.S. Senate, in Brooklyn, people came up to me, and they said, “Liz, we love you. We voted for you for Congress, for the Senate, but DA, that’s not a job for a woman.” It’s too much pressure, too hard, too this, too that. There I wasn’t running against an opponent, a live opponent. Although, in fact, I was. Nobody knew who he was. He was a complete unknown, but I was running against the image of Perry Mason. That was really hard. That was one of the toughest races I ever had. I just squeaked out a victory there because I had huge name recognition and huge favorabilities, but people said, “This wasn’t the right job.” Executive positions are tough for women to win. That’s for sure.

Brian Balogh: From your perspective stepping back, what is the best example of an issue that male legislators just, either didn’t get that women got instantaneously?

Elizabeth H.: For example, the exclusion of women from military academies, we understood that was a terrible problem. Men had persisted for a long time. There were more men than women to deal with it in the Congress, the House, and the Senate. They hadn’t seen it as a problem. I would say one of the important bills that happened early on when I was in Congress that changed things was dealing with banking issues. A married woman couldn’t get a bank loan in her own name. She needed her husband’s position.

Brian Balogh: Couldn’t get a credit card.

Elizabeth H.: Yeah, credit card, whatever. It was humiliating. No, and then you had all the issues of sexual violence. A woman who had been raped couldn’t have the rapist prosecuted without witnesses. In New York state, there were other obstacles such as you had to put up earnest resistance. A woman had to fight back even if she was going to risk her life in order to have the action count as a rape. It was horrific.

Elizabeth H.: When I was there, it was very plain that the legislation improving the status of women generally originated with women. So, women in Congress, women in positions of power can make a huge difference for other women, but it’s not just for women only. It’s something that improves our whole society when you can eliminate these acts of discrimination and include everybody in a fair and just way.

Brian Balogh: Elizabeth Holtzman represented New York’s 16th Congressional District from 1973 to 1981. She’s the author of the book, Who Said It Would Be Easy?: One Woman’s Life in the Political Arena.

Towards An Inclusive Congress

Joanne talks to Senator Tammy Duckworth about her life of service and what it takes to change the culture of Congress.

Music:
Beautocracy by Podington Bear

Tammy Duckworth; U.S. Congress; diversity; inclusion/exclusion

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Joanne Freeman: Congress wasn’t built for someone like Tammy Duckworth. As a woman of color, a new mother, and a disabled veteran, Tammy Duckworth has had to make Congress work for her. I spoke to Senator Duckworth and started by asking her what it felt like to first enter the male-dominated space of Congress in 2013.

Tammy Duckworth: Well, it was really interesting in that we had Leader Pelosi, and so we were led by a woman, a very strong woman who had been Speaker. It was, I think, very fortunate to have that role model that you could look to someone who was very active in teaching new members, especially the women members, to speak up. One of the things she always said was when you sat around in a circle … Especially as a freshman, you’re afraid to say something because the imposter syndrome is very real. When I would go into the chambers, even though I’d served in combat, I’d often been the only woman in an all-male unit, I had this real strong sense of imposter syndrome like, “What am I doing here? There’s so and so. There’s Sam Farr,” who’s been a congressman for literally in the decades, and all of these people that I’d seen on TV.

Tammy Duckworth: It was very intimidating, but Leader Pelosi was one who she didn’t let your turn pass by without saying something, and then if you said something and then the next person … The conversation moved on, and two other people, and then somebody else, a man picked up what you had to say, she’d be sure to say, “Wait a minute, Tammy said that,” and direct it back.

Joanne Freeman: Wow.

Tammy Duckworth: She really left it on you to push yourself-

Joanne Freeman: But, she was back up, basically.

Tammy Duckworth: … but she was back up, which it was a good example to have.

Joanne Freeman: Wow, that’s powerful actually, and I would wish for that in a lot of moments in my life too.

Tammy Duckworth: Yeah.

Joanne Freeman: Now, I wonder then, thinking more recently, I know that you somewhat recently had a daughter.

Tammy Duckworth: Yes, my second one.

Joanne Freeman: How did you think about that knowing the rules that were in place at the time? What went through your mind as to how you might have to adjust, maybe changing things or hoping to change things to allow for you to bring your daughter on the floor? How did that progress?

Tammy Duckworth: I had my first daughter at 2014, so the second year of my first term in the House of Representatives. It was actually while I was on maternity leave with her that I decided to run for United States Senate.

Joanne Freeman: Wow.

Tammy Duckworth: I will say that with my second daughter, I was definitely much more of a rule-breaker. I should say, maybe I was more of a rule-follower my first term because there’s imposter syndrome, I’m new, and all of that. I actually had my first daughter at home and was out from Washington for three months, and took my maternity leave then, but I missed all those votes. Now, here we are in 2018, and I’m about to give birth to my daughter. I’m now in the Senate, and the difference in votes was two, so every vote counted. We couldn’t afford to have me out for three months.

Tammy Duckworth: If you go on maternity leave, the Senate rules say you are now allowed to vote, and you’re not allowed to introduce legislation. Whereas in the House, I was able to, but in the Senate, I couldn’t. I couldn’t officially take maternity leave, and I, in fact, had to decide to give birth in Washington, D.C. so I could be nearby for votes.

Joanne Freeman: Wow.

Tammy Duckworth: Knowing that, empowered me to say, “Well, dammit, then if these are the rules, then I’m bringing my baby when I come to vote.” In fact, when she was just 10-days-old, they needed my vote.

Joanne Freeman: Wow. So, you came with her …

Tammy Duckworth: So, I came with her, yeah.

Joanne Freeman: How did that feel?

Tammy Duckworth: It felt fabulous. Fantastic. It also felt long overdue. It was funny because I received support leading up to it that the fight to be able to bring her onto the floor from … There was definitely a lot of strange bedfellows. Certainly, the Democratic women were very supportive, but then I had some of the Republican men came forward. It was almost generational. Some of the younger members … Remember Marco Rubio, whom I don’t think I ever voted the same with him on 10% of our votes, came up to me on the floor and said, “Tammy, I hear you want to change the rules and bring your daughter onto the floor,” and I was steeling myself for what he was going to say. He goes, “I will support you. I’m backing you up, whatever you need. I wish I could have brought my children,” because his kids were young too. I was blown away.

Tammy Duckworth: Roy Blunt of Missouri, whom I campaigned against, came up to me and said, “Tammy, as soon as I’m the chairman of the Rules Committee, I will change the rule for you because I remember when I could bring my children on the floor when I was in the House and how great that was. I want that for here.”

Joanne Freeman: That’s so important to say, that as much as we’re sitting here talking about gender issues, that there’s a generational component in this too for sure.

Tammy Duckworth: Right, and yet, some of the members who were a little bit older had questions like, “Well, is she going to breastfeed on the floor?” Like that was some horrible thing, or that would be such a scandal. They asked what the dress code was going to be for the baby.

Joanne Freeman: No!

Tammy Duckworth: Yeah, yeah. Because there’s a Senate dress code. You have to wear blazers, and you have to wear closed-toe shoes and no hats. I said, “Well, she’s a baby so probably a beanie, and I’m not taking that off of her.”

Joanne Freeman: Oh, my gosh!

Tammy Duckworth: She’s probably be in a onesie. I guess I could put a blazer on her if I need to, and she’s too young for shoes, so socks.

Joanne Freeman: Wow!

Tammy Duckworth: Literally, it was the most inane questions. Why are you asking this?

Joanne Freeman: Rules.

Tammy Duckworth: Rules.

Joanne Freeman: Some people are just thinking rules. Right.

Tammy Duckworth: I did put a blazer on her that day.

Joanne Freeman: Oh, my God! I’m going to go online and find that just to see if there’s an image of that because that’s wonderful.

Joanne Freeman: I also want to say, as a woman who works in a largely male field, seeing you sitting here and talk about imposter syndrome, as you have a couple of times, on the one hand, is infuriating, and, on the other hand, is really empowering to hear you say that since I feel the same thing. I also don’t necessarily bring it up because I think, I don’t know, I guess I feel I want to have people not assume that I’m worried about that sort of stuff. But, you’re right. Actually, related to that, when you were saying that Speaker Pelosi was backup, are there ways in which you think as a woman legislator that your strategy is different in how you address or interact in Congress?

Tammy Duckworth: It’s a cliché, but I think it’s definitely consensus building, and really working a lot of those relationships. We are very fortunate in the Senate that we do have the women’s senators group, so we do support each other as much as possible, and try to back each other up across the aisle. You’ve seen there have been some images of Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins who voted on some choice issues or some things like that, where it was Democratic women senators who stood next to them to provide them with support as they were making some really tough votes that they were really being harassed for by their male colleagues. Yeah.

Joanne Freeman: Does that feel different in the Senate then it did in the House on that account?

Tammy Duckworth: It does because there were many, many more women in the House. Again, we have a female leader. In the Senate, Chuck is great, but we just don’t have that type of leadership over in terms of … We have Patty Murray. She’s the first. She’s the first woman leader over here on the Senate side, so we certainly could use more representation.

Joanne Freeman: Now, looking in from the outside and seeing the large number of women that came in in this last election … I was on the outside cheering and thinking, “Yay!” But, what I’m really curious about is, did that offer a different sense of a we to you being on the inside? Did that awareness, above and beyond the fact that we need more representation from women, did that change the ethos for you in any way?

Tammy Duckworth: I just felt like we had more center of mass. I don’t get to go over to the House side very much, as we’re just over in the Senate side. So, the total number of female senators didn’t change. I will tell you that on the House side, I was over there, I don’t know, before the State of the Union or something, and there was a waiting line for the female stalls in the female bathroom. It was the first time that had happened. There’s so many of us now, we actually have to wait again.

Joanne Freeman: Oh, my gosh!

Tammy Duckworth: I was like, “Well, then you need to change it. Get some more stall over here.” But, it was nice. We’re all standing around talking to each other, and that was really nice. There’s a lot of shop talk going on as you’re just chatting with each other-

Joanne Freeman: That’s hilarious.

Tammy Duckworth: Yeah, it was a good feeling.

Joanne Freeman: I wonder also, given what we’ve been talking about here, in looking at the historic number of women right now who are running for president, what are your thoughts at this moment?

Tammy Duckworth: I’m so proud, and I’m so proud that there’s no questions of whether or not they’re qualified as there was with Geraldine Ferraro or for the women before her. I think Hillary Clinton and all the women who ran prior who showed that women are just equally qualified … What I really like is the fact that no one has questioned these women’s ability to do this job. Maybe it’s a reflection on who’s in the White House right now, but I don’t think people look at any one of the women that are running and think, “Oh, she’s not capable.”

Tammy Duckworth: It’s definitely more how to rack and stack the various people who are running in terms of almost more experience. Some of these women are seen as having more experience as many of the men who are running who are very young.

Joanne Freeman: I guess I’ll ask one last question, and it’s kind of a goofy question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. If you were bestowed with magical political powers and could do anything right now to make the space in Congress feel more inclusive, what might you do?

Tammy Duckworth: I would get more diversity in the staff at the highest levels because that’s not there. We’re trying very hard to do that. The staff are even, I think, in many ways less diverse than the membership, especially if you look at the House. It’s still a largely white, male workforce, and there are not very many female chiefs of staff. There’s not very many female legislative directors. These are people who are advising their representative or their senators on the bills to write, so if you have … Even though you could have a female senator, if her advisors are all white men, they’re not going to be as attuned to criminal justice reform issues, economic injustice issues, equal pay, and all of that.

Tammy Duckworth: I’ll give you an example of how it makes a big difference even though it’s not about the loss. My chief of staff, Kaitlin Fahey, has been with me from the time she walked on as an unpaid volunteer. My deputy chief of staff is a woman as well. They belong to the women’s chiefs group who get together in a bipartisan way and try to solve some of these issues, and agree to bring up some of these legislation, work together on the legislation, and nudge their bosses in the right direction. Also, Kaitlin is the one who’s been my right-hand person developing my own leave policies.

Tammy Duckworth: We have 12 weeks of paid family leave for birth of a child, adoption, fostering, also to take care of an ill family member. So, it’s open equally to men or women in my office, and this is something that Kaitlin helped me develop. Having a female chief was really important as part of that process. She and I were pregnant, and we gave birth within three months of each other.

Joanne Freeman: Oh, wow!

Tammy Duckworth: My deputy chief is pregnant now.

Joanne Freeman: On, my gosh!

Tammy Duckworth: That changes the ethos in the office because now the young men in my office sees it as perfectly okay for a woman to go have a baby, and take time off, and then come back to work. The senator did it, and the chief-

Joanne Freeman: It makes it pregnant [crosstalk 00:40:14] real-time.

Tammy Duckworth: And, it actually didn’t hurt anything. Everybody was just fine. Now, I’m waiting. I’m just praying that one of my male staff members actually has a child and takes the family leave and sets the example.

Joanne Freeman: Tammy Duckworth is the Junior Senator from Illinois.

Brian Balogh: Joanne, what is it about the executive role in politics that seems, at least, to be an even greater barrier to women than the legislative role?

Joanne Freeman: I want to say two things in response to that. One of them is, if you’re talking about electability, you have to complicate that question because the fact of the matter is, Hillary Clinton won votes. She proved that she was electable. There are larger questions here that we need to talk about, but the question of who is electable and who isn’t is a more complicated question that I think maybe we can come back to.

Joanne Freeman: Before we do that, the second thing I want to mention here has to do with the bigger reason why I think it’s hard to elect a woman president, and part of it I do think that has to of with the symbolism of the job. More than that, I think that has to do with the fact that if you’re talking about an old boys’ network, that certainly seems to me structurally, that’s going to be much more in play running for president than it is going to be running for Congress when you can have something like a grassroots campaign. You are the source of 20th and 21st-century political wisdom here, so tell me, am I making sense?

Brian Balogh: Well, I think you’re making a lot of sense, especially for the past. The ever-growing number of Democratic candidates, obviously, suggest that dozens of people feel it’s become easier to throw your hat in the ring at any rate, if not actually become president. I think some of the older barriers around fundraising and networks are changing in front of our very eyes, but I think that the other factor, which you didn’t get to, is this whole question about electability. I think it’s often code for, well, we’ve never quite down that before, or we can’t be sure of that.

Brian Balogh: My question for you is what did that look like in the 19th century? There must have been versions of that, right?

Joanne Freeman: I think I would add to your description, before I plunge into my late 18th-century example of that, I would add to that part of that same message is that person doesn’t look like what I think that position looks like, right?

Brian Balogh: I think right now, it’s worse than that person doesn’t look like what I think that position is. I think it’s, that person doesn’t look like what I think people are going to think that position looks like. That drives me crazy.

Joanne Freeman: Yes, it’s people passing judgment on what they think the ethos is.

Brian Balogh: Exactly.

Joanne Freeman: So, they’re saying over and over again, “Well, we collectively are not ready for this, even though I personally maybe … ”

Brian Balogh: Okay, take us to the 19th century.

Joanne Freeman: I’m taking you better. I’m taking you to the 1790s. This stands out in my mind because of this guy’s name. In the late 18th century, in the 1790s, in the first ten years of the government, there’s pretty much a standard elite, white, male guy in positions of leadership. Generally speaking, those people were from a certain class of society, although they wouldn’t have identified themselves as belonging to classes. People weren’t quite talking in that way yet.

Joanne Freeman: In the late 1790s, there was a fellow of slightly lower social status who had the wonderful name Swanwick. The reason why I know Mr. Swanwick existed is because when he got elected to Congress in the late 1790s, there’s this chorus of outrage that a fellow of the like of Swanwick could be elected to Congress. There are all of these letters from people saying, “Swanwick! Really? Swanwick!” We’re not talking about a vast sea of difference. We’re talking about someone who a group of elite men thought was slightly less elite than they were. Seemed like the wrong sort of person to be in Congress, and not the sort of person they wanted to be in Congress with. Certainly, who is the us and who is the them version of electability goes back to the beginning of the republic.

Brian Balogh: Well, Joanne, since I’ve been in the history business for a while-

Joanne Freeman: History biz.

Brian Balogh: … it has occurred to me that when I started, there were not a lot of female professors. Is this something that you encountered your own “electability” dilemma in? Was there a moment when you thought, “Gee, I’m interested in history, but I can’t be a history professor. I’m a woman”?

Joanne Freeman: I guess I would say it wasn’t … In a sense, it’s a cliché that you hear so often, representation matters. Representation matters and so many people say it so often that it’s easy to forget the meaning behind that. I would say in my case as a woman academic, that proved to be very true. I think it wasn’t so much that I thought to myself when I began grad school, “Huh, there’s a surprisingly small number of women surrounding me here, and my classes are all taught by men.” I don’t think I thought about it because so many things really are populated by a majority of men. I don’t think it struck me until I knew I had to get up in front of a group of people and give a lecture at a prominent institution.

Joanne Freeman: It suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t know what a woman sounded like standing up in front of a group of people with authority and talking about history. I didn’t know what that was supposed to sound like. I had wonderful images in my head of men and what they sounded like, but I couldn’t envision myself doing it. So, I actually went and found two really prominent women historians who were together on a panel, and drove … I think it was about an hour away … to sit in the audience and watch these women hold forth, which they did. They were powerful women.

Joanne Freeman: It was Pauline Maier and Joyce Appleby, and they held that room. The room was largely male. They were in control, and I just absorbed that, and I just thought, “Okay, there. Okay, now I can … If I’m Swanwick, I’ve just seen some other Swanwicks doing what I want to do, so I know it can be done.” It’s so cliché to say representation matters, but, in my personal life, I couldn’t have a more powerful example of that really shaping what I believed I could do.

Joanne Freeman: Here’s my question for you then. Obviously, you’re coming as a white guy from a very different perspective here, but you’ve had experience in your past working with legislators and female politicians. In what sense have those experiences shaped your understanding of these kinds of questions?

Brian Balogh: Yeah, I worked for City Council President, Carol Bellamy, City Council President of New York City, back in the late 1970s, early 80s. It did shape my understanding of politics a lot. First off, I hadn’t really thought very much about politics in gender terms. Superficially, when I joined Carol’s staff, I learned an entirely new vocabulary quickly because there were not mailmen in Carol’s world. There were letter carriers. I, in my first week on the job, learned an entirely new nomenclature for every government job out there.

Brian Balogh: I will tell you this felt, does this matter? I spent at least a day or two thinking, “I don’t know if this matters.” Within three or four days, it became so natural, and it became very important to me, and I began teaching other people about gender-neutral nomenclature. Now, that was relatively superficial. I’m not saying it’s not important, but the real takeaway was watching the way Carol had to avoid issues that she was passionate about and very expert at because they were associated with what women care about. Daycare, for instance, vaccinations, public health for children, all associated with women.

Brian Balogh: Carol was great at that, and she made a real difference in those areas, but she had to go out of her way to be seen doing things that are associated with guys at the time. I was her budget advisor. I probably wouldn’t have had a job if Carol wasn’t at pains to demonstrate that she was actually really expert at finance and budget, stuff that were associated with guys in the late 1970s and early 80s. So, this whole world of meaning and association and assumptions opened up for me just from working for a female elected official. I was somewhat savvy about politics at the time, but I had no idea until I actually worked for Carol Bellamy.

Joanne Freeman: That’s interesting because it drives home for me the fact that we’re talking about a two-step process here, and the first step is women getting in these offices so that they have power. But, the second step is women in those offices being able to behave in a natural manner, and be passionate about what they’re passionate about, and do what it is that they chose to do, and act as they choose to act, without trying to counteract or prove how male-like they are.

Joanne Freeman: It’s that second step that it’s intriguing to think about right now, I think, because of the very thing that you mentioned, the fact that there’s a group now of people. In that idea of a group, there’s power, and a lot of these women are aggressively stepping forward and saying not just I’m here and I’m a woman, but I’m a woman and I’m going to behave like a woman in office here. That, in an of itself, has a special strength to it. I’m really intrigued to see how that’s going to work itself through, and what’s going to be the outcome of that.

Brian Balogh: I think that’s such an important point, Joanne. You talked earlier about the importance of representation. I don’t think we get the real pay off from representation until we get to what you call the second stage, until women can get beyond demonstrating that they can do what a man can do, and are free to do what they actually want to do as a human being. Joanne, are we there? Are we in stage two? We know we’ve reached the Swanwick stage, but are we in the Freeman stage two of the political process?

Joanne Freeman: I think there are glimmers of stage two. I think I can see them, and I think I want to see more of them, and I want to see them outlast this election. I guess I can say that I certainly see more of that second stage now then I remember seeing in my time of being aware of politics during my lifetime.

Joanne Freeman: That’s it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode, or ask us your questions about history. You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org, or send an email to backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter at backstoryradio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

Brian Balogh: BackStory’s produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of Virginia, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment.

Speaker 11: Brian Balogh is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joann Freeman is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University.

Speaker 11: BackStory was created by Andrew Windham of Virginia Humanities.