MEMO on Electing Women to Congress

It is now Summer, 1997. The new group "Now We Rise" is forming around the issue of creating a national campaign to elect women to Congress. There is a need for such a campaign because women still constitute only a small percentage of the membership of Congress, far lower than their percentage of the population in the nation. Women and women's issues are thus under-represented, and a shift in the makeup of Congress could be very important for altering the long-standing patriarchal structure of society and especially of the leadership. The purpose is to increase the role of women in Congress, not to increase the power of either political party a such. Therefore, this will be neither a Republican nor a Democratic group but a group that helps promote women and that encourages women to run.

The public clearly has a predisposition to vote for males, and this will need to be countered in getting more women elected. There is also some predisposition to pretend that gender, like race, does not matter, but it is apparent that both do matter to a large segment of the voting population. Our campaign will also offer a challenge to the justifying myth of American politics, a myth with a dual face: 1) women are not interested in running for office and so are not represented for this reason; and 2) men are better suited to the rough and tumble of politics, are more aggressive, and so are more successful in running for office.

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Only one of these should serve as the centerpiece for the current campaign. The issue to be selected is pornography. There are good reasons for pursuing all of these issues, but how to do so can be a difficult decision. In addition, there are reasons for avoiding one or another of these issues today. The issue of affirmative action has become problematic for women as it has for members of various minority groups. The controversy over this issue is highly divisive. In the nation as a whole, affirmative action's image depends on how it is defined. if it is defined as giving preferences, it is considered an anachronism that produces the evil it is meant to combat. If it is defined as outreach, it fares better with the public. however, in the heat of a campaign, making such distinctions real for the voters is very difficult and troublesome prospect and would undercut the general tenor of the campaign for "Now We Rise." The issue tends to split along party lines to a great degree as well and so would be divisive in a group promoting both parties equally, or at least without preference. The issue of domestic violence is not as controversial, but it is also a consequence of pornography to some degree and so can be subsume

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