Women's Impact Felt on U. S. Public Policy Agenda, Priorities

By Judith D. Trunzo
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- "Women make a difference in the public arena," says Kathy Whitmire, former mayor of Houston, Texas and currently Senior Fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

Arguing that women have different priorities for action, Whitmire says that it is important for women to take their place in public leadership. "Women look out for needs of women and children, the elderly and the poor," she adds.

These concerns are reflected, she says, in the agenda of U.S. national legislators who are members of the Women's Congressional Caucus. Their legislative focus includes women's health, violence toward women, and family leave. One of their goals is to make public policy "fair to all."

"It is not that men disagree" with these issues, the former mayor says, "but it is a matter of the priority men would give them" in the timing of legislative proposals, the trade-offs necessary to push a measure, or the decision to exert one's influence.

Whitmire said President George W. Bush's appointment of four women to his cabinet indicates his awareness and appreciation of the unique contributions that women make to public service.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first woman to hold the American foreign affairs post, made global issues such as trafficking of women "more overt" and raised their profile, according to Whitmire.

She points to the fact that "women around the world bear disproportionately the burdens of poverty, domestic violence, illiteracy, and illness. Perhaps that is why," she concludes, "we care so much."

Women's Movement Inspired Whitmire

Whitmire sees the focus of women's movements in the 19th and 20th centuries as being the same: "to change the role of women in society and to achieve equal participation." As a practical step, the first effort was to win the vote for women. The second phase was enhanced by the calls in the 1960s for civil rights for American minorities amid the protests against the Vietnam war.

Organizing efforts by women soon led to the creation in 1972 of the National Women's Political Caucus. The group held its first meeting in Houston the next year, and its activist agenda became the base for Whitmire's first steps into politics. She had had "first-hand experience of being discriminated against because of gender" while working in the business world as a certified public accountant in Houston and wished to counter such discrimination.

By the early 1980s, Whitmire had decided that the way for her to pursue the range of issues important to her was to present herself as a candidate for mayor of Houston, the fourth largest city in the U.S. Not all of her issues were specific to the developing women's agenda; they also included her hallmark plank of fiscal responsibility. She ran successfully and served five terms as mayor from 1982-1992.

An End to Progress?

Whitmire reviewed some of the current statistics for women in public leadership in the U.S. While women "make up more than half of the U.S. electorate and have been voting at higher rates than men since 1980," she says that the increase in numbers of women holding office is so slow that "women are the most under-represented voting group in American politics today."

At one point in the last two decades, six of the 10 largest U.S. cities had elected women mayors, but today there is only one female mayor in the 25 largest cities. Only 13 of the current 100 U.S. Senators are women, and women only hold 55 seats out of 365 in the present U.S. House of Representatives. Only three of the 50 states have a female governor as the 21st century begins. While 2,279 women ran for state legislative positions in 1998, that number was 100 fewer than the number of women who ran in 1992, she points out.

This apparent lack of progress in electing women in the United States is occurring in part because there are not adequate numbers of women candidates, not because votes for them are lacking, Whitmire cautions. An obstacle to greater numbers of women winning office comes from the difficulties of defeating incumbents, largely men, in a system where there are no term limits.

The monopoly by two large parties of the U.S. political party system is closely linked to this incumbency and further limits the opportunities for women to be recruited, she believes.

Similarly, she says, the voting system used in the United States does not encourage women's candidacies. It has a single candidate per constituency or district and the winner takes all of the votes, the "first past the post" system, as opposed to "party list" systems in other countries, which have multi-candidate constituencies. In the latter situation, says the former mayor, it is "reasonable" that women would also be listed on the list and "more recognition of the dues that women have paid is possible."

Responsible Leadership

or Whitmire, the issue of women's participation in public policy and the value of leadership are linked by the practice of responsibility.

he developed a course on public leadership while participating in a visiting scholar program at Harvard University in 1997. She then began working with a center for political leadership at the University of Maryland in 1999.

With major funding from the Kellogg Foundation, the Maryland center was renamed the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership. Its focus is to develop an academic field of leadership studies where students can learn about qualities required to exert leadership and to prepare themselves. Women account for 60 percent of the academy's 700 students.

Whitmire defines leadership as "action that causes progress or things to happen." The key is "to take responsibility for one's surroundings." In Whitmire's case, she believed that she should use her experience in business and finance to improve Houston's city government.

One may argue about leadership styles and whether leaders should have a "grand vision or empower others to develop such a vision," says Whitmire, but leaders "create an environment where change for the better can occur." She is convinced that women's recognized style of leadership, that is, a more collaborative approach, has benefits for male as well as female constituencies.

U.S. Speaker Program in South Asia

Whitmire spoke about her approach to leadership during her June 2000 trip to South Asia on the State Department's U.S. Speaker program. She told audiences in Dhaka, "while the magnitude of issues [confronting Houston] was more than I had anticipated, I found that once I agreed to take responsibility, I was able to attract the dedicated help of people from all sectors of our community. I believe this is the essence of leadership - accepting responsibility for the outcome, and sharing the work and the credit with others."

She cites the impact on her career of the "encouragement from the National Women's Political Caucus" and says, "we must ask young women today to accept the calling of leadership for the public good." Declaring that "we must not leave the process up to chance or personal ambition alone," Whitmire pledges her "commitment to encourage the next generation of women to take our places as leaders."

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)