Again, the woman's vote

...Women, excluded from the beginning from the electoral process, made their gains and exerted their influence through what could be called movement politics...

...Women candidates for the first time were getting substantial campaign contributions from individual women and their organizations...

...At the same time that women were misdirecting their energy, however, they were learning...

...There are, of course, historical reasons...

...Women are numerous enough at the lowest level of politics - in the precincts, at the party picnics, getting out the vote, doing the telephoning, collecting the dollars - but remarkably scarce at the upper levels where decisions are made that affect the life of the community, state, nation...

...This difference showed up significantly in the national election in 1980 for the first time...

...It was Mrs...

...She pointed out that in that year no women held the highest political or appointive offices and that "few of them have even attempted to enter the decision-making bodies of government either to articulate the special interests of their sex or to participate in making policy for the community...

...The numbers of women with practical political experience on school boards, town councils, in county commissions, legislatures and the Congress were increasing...

...It has seldom been noted but it can be argued that one reason for the failure of women to achieve power in politics is the strange failure of women leaders to move into the electoral process via party politics...

...And they were women on their own - not women who succeeded fathers and brothers...

...Before Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was so much in the public eye Basic Books published her study entitled Political Woman...

...But the best part is that even as women are learning how to get power, and how to use it for their own special interests, they are also still using it for the benefit of the community, the state, the nation...

...Women were learning also how to raise and use money for political purposes...

...Access to education, especially to that in the professional schools, was the result in part of cultural change but it was only made readily available to women by law and the laws were made as the result of political pressure...

...Frankly, I know of no better way of getting politicians' attention than by building a massive campaign war chest and unleashing hundreds of dollars in critical state races," wrote the president of one feminist organization to her membership...

...Pollsters call it the gender gap...

...Kirkpatrick's conclusion that for women to achieve de facto political equality, to enter political life in the same numbers as men - "both a cultural and social revolution is required...

...Their bent also was for single-issue movement politics and its techniques...

...They, too, were the products of movements - the civil rights and the peace movement...

...Even today, the most important and interesting question about women's political role is why that role is so insignificant...

...They culminated at last in the suffrage movement...

...In that year, 1974, she could write with no gainsaying...

...Fifty-three women ran for seats in the House of Representatives this fall, three were running for the Senate, and over 1500 were running for positions in state legislatures...

...Women are still at the bottom of the economic ladder, still paid less than men for the same work, but - and it is an important but - the occupations of profit and status are now open to them...

...That fact marks the easing of the physiological role, and cultural constraints - all of which have been under steady attack by the women's movement - but it also proves that the most important changes for women come now, as they have in the past, through access to education...

...Party politics was suspect Party politics seemed too pragmatic...

...The result is that candidates this year sought not only for the voting support of women but for their financial support...

...Is that revolution on its way...

...Certainly there have been changes...

...For the leaders of the new wave of feminism party politics was also suspect but for somewhat different reasons...

...They were learning how to support other women and how to form networks...

...As pollster Pat Caddell puts it, they stake out the first positions, whether it's on quality of life or nuclear power, and it is the men who seem to be moving toward them...

...There were, she said, four hypothetical constraints - four explanations - commonly given for that state of affairs: 1) physiological constraints, 2) cultural constraints, 3) role constraints, 4) and male conspiracy...

...President Reagan received fewer votes from women than he did from men and the same difference seemed to be showing up this year in House and Senate races...

...All these movements were highly moral in tone and seldom appealed to enlightened self-interest...

...Instead an incredible amount of energy went into lobbying by exhortation, demonstrations, and public relations efforts...

...The arguments, even for suffrage, were not based so much on the rights of women as on how the public interest and the level of culture and morality would be served by the unselfish contribution of women admitted to the public sector...

...It is a pattern "of enormous political significance...

...Not only is that so, but the difference in women's political stance vis-a-vis that of men has become a source of concern to politicians...

...In addition, they saw party politics as the instrument of man, the enemy who conspired to deny them power...

...After women gained the vote they found it difficult to move into the reality of party politics...

...The techniques of these movements were not the techniques of single-issue politics, of persuasion through public rallies and numbers, of public relations and demonstration...

...Had the ERA movement concentrated its effort and money on electing friendly representatives - men or women - to office in only a few legislatures ERA would be in the Constitution today...

...The abolition movement, the temperance movement, the social reform movement of pre-World War I days - these were their schools...

...And this fifty years after the vote was won by women...

...Even such citizen education groups as the League of Women Voters, in eschewing any identification of its officers with party, in effect made party politics seem beyond the pale...

...They are in law schools, medical schools, and schools of business administration in signficant numbers...

...Each graduating class numbers as many women as men in its top third...

...Now, not quite ten years later, women are seeking power in unprecedented numbers...

...In relation to the last she noted that women have never been excluded from breadwinning roles but only from occupations of profit and status, and that "men do not bar women from taking part in politics, but only hamper their efforts to participate in power...