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8. Women, Citizenship, and Public Policy in the 21st Century
- University of Michigan Press
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From the 1870s, when this study begins, through 2000, when it ends, the United States underwent profound changes in its economic, political, and social organization. War, the elimination of discriminatory laws, economic need, and changing beliefs facilitated the movement of married women and mothers into the full-time paid labor force. The interest group universe that women had played a central role in building was fundamentally reconfigured, with broad, mass-membership federations losing clout to professional lobbies with niche agendas, including feminist agendas. With advocacy by women’s groups, the national welfare and regulatory state was invented and then expanded to encompass a broad array of policies— income support and pensions, worker protections, health care research— that affected women’s lives in profound and intimate ways. In key respects, women embody the evolving relationship between Americans and the state. The case of American women also raises important questions about what these changes have wrought. On the positive side, the dismantling of discriminatory laws and antiquated belief systems has helped to free women to pursue their dreams and deploy their talents to their highest and best ends, both for the benefit of the woman herself and for the benefit of others. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, values that Americans hold dear, have become more fully available to women.To be sure, women’s lives are still limited by informal job segregation, lack of affordable child care, wage differentials, domestic abuse, racism, and barriers to reproductive eiGht Women, Citizenship, and Public Policy in the 21st Century 186 Women, Citizenship, and Public Policy in the 21st Century 187 health services, among other issues. But the large-scale, deeply entrenched systems of gender oppression—denial of fundamental privileges of citizenship , abysmal working conditions, laws that kept women out of jobs and in abusive marriages—are less pervasive than they once were. Women’s advocacy on behalf of women’s interests clearly has helped to transform many women’s lives for the better. But in achieving these gains, what, if anything, have women lost? This book has documented the decline over the second half of the 20th century in women’s collective presence in national legislative debates and a concomitant narrowing of their advocacy efforts. Particularly after the 1960s, women’s groups collectively shifted from advocacy in the public interest to advocacy on behalf of women’s particular rights and needs—what one might call women’s “special interests.” I have suggested that the focusing of women’s agendas on feminist policies contributed to the decline in their presence on Capitol Hill and hence to the diminishment of their public voice. Before investigating this unsettling claim, a brief digression on the term special interests is in order. The term carries negative connotations, particularly for women. As Nancy F. Cott (1989, 822) has observed, scholars “often identify women’s social reform efforts on behalf of other classes of persons—slaves, the poor, or children—as humane or beneficial, while seeing women’s reform efforts on behalf of women (merely half the human race) as narrow or selfish.” To my mind, there is nothing wrong and everything right with women’s or any group’s assembling to petition government for equitable treatment under law and for resources to help that group’s constituency to live healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. The feminist movements have delivered those goods for American women, for the benefit of both women and men. Indeed, as Nancy MacLean (2011) points out, most women probably would prefer to live under the rights regime, where they participate less through women’s groups, than under prior regimes, where they participated more often but with fewer legal protections. Selfless altruism is vital to any society, but no single group need be expected to shoulder its burdens in the public square. That said, the transformation of women’s organizations’ agendas and their sharply declining prominence on Capitol Hill in the last two decades of the 20th century raise important questions about women’s representation and voice, both on their own behalf and on behalf of other disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. One set of questions revolves around the apparent decline: If women’s groups are becoming less important aggregators of women’s interests and perspectives, can we conclude that women as a group [18.217.144.32] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:58 GMT) 188 the PArAdox of Gender equAlity (or aggregation of groups) are losing their influence in national policy debates? Put another way, do women...