Unknown Speaker  00:03
First, I have to start out by apologizing to you. Unfortunately, our two big names scheduled speakers were unable to make it. They had originally agreed to participate, providing that they weren't called away to more important things. Unfortunately, there a referendum was announced in Russia and halfling Frankovich was summoned to cover that to assist in the coverage of that for CBS News. She's a news producer there and director of polling there. And I think it's quite understandable that that's more important than this particular session. Mandy Grunwald had promised to attend, provided that she wasn't called to the White House to because of some crisis. Or some other thing unfortunately, she phoned yesterday to say that she was summoned to the White House and Bill and Hillary we're in need in need of her services. We're fortunate today, however, to have one replacement speaker, Professor Leonie Huddy from University of New York, New York State University at Stony Brook, who's an expert on public opinion, public opinion, and women in politics. And in fact, in a lot of a lot of ways, having Leonie speak with to us today, actually may provide us more information about the state of women, women's attitudes toward policy issues and other things even more so than what Kathleen Frankovich and Mandy Grunwald might have had to offer. On the other hand, in all fairness, Kathleen and and Mandy Grunwald would have had a lot more insight about how women's attitudes and other aspects of public opinion are treated and perceived by the mass media and by the insiders in Washington. My name is Bob Shapiro, I teach in the political science department at Columbia, and I'm ostensibly an expert on American public opinion, and politics and policymaking. I was first sort of taken aback by the title of today's session, what women want. The main reason other than the fact that I'm not a woman, the reason I was taken aback was normally when questions are asked of the sort. What do blacks one, what do women want? The one the one response that arises? Well, you know, it depends. I mean, not women don't may not all want the same thing. African Americans may not all want the same thing. And this, there's some problems with framing your question in that way. And maybe that's something we could talk about. After Leonie, and I give our brief presentations. In the old days, 4050 years ago, that question would perhaps might not have been deemed as a legitimate question, because the answer that a lot of academics who studied public opinion, and the answer that a lot of public opinion analysts gave would give to that question would be something like, Well, women want the same things that men do. And oftentimes, it could be predicted Well, public opinion analysts sort of expected that women would take would have the same attitudes and opinions of their husbands, either through processes of self selection, or processes of being influenced by one's husband. Subsequent politics changed all that. events, like events, changes in political movements, like the women's movement, and other events led people to think differently about women's role in politics and women's attitudes toward politics. In addition, perhaps the big event, and you only can correct me if I'm wrong, that made people more sensitive to differences in political attitudes of men versus women was the gender gap that that was noticed in the case of Ronald Reagan's election, the fact that more women have fewer women. Smaller Portions of women voted for Ronald Reagan, and then voted for the Democratic candidate. And a lot of political scientists and others, including Kathleen Frankovich, who's who's not here, made efforts to study that further. And Kathleen Frank that wrote wrote a famous article, academic article that attributed much of the gender gap to women's differences in men's versus women's attitudes toward force and violence issues, in particular use of force and violence in international affairs. That is part of the gender gap was due to Ronald Reagan being perceived as more hawkish in foreign policy and women not fully appreciating that particular kind of political position. And subsequent to that there were articles that actually showed that in fact, men and women did differ substantially in their attitudes toward the use of force abroad. In addition, men and women differ in attitudes toward force and violence in a domestic context. Women were less likely to support capital punishment than men were women were more supportive of gun control than men were.

Unknown Speaker  04:54
And in my view, this discovery of the of the gender gap and this difference in attitudes toward of men versus women on four Some violence issues led some public opinion analysts, including me to ask the question, well, maybe it wasn't a good idea to assume that men and women had similar attitudes toward other political issues as well, that would that these things would have to be studied further. And I and other scholars did more thorough, I think, more thorough studies of differences between men and women on other kinds of issues. It turned out to be the case, however, that in the case of these force and violence issues, the biggest differences could be found between men and women. The on average, the differences between men and women were on the order of at least, on average, about 10 percentage points, in terms of the extent to which men were more supportive of things like defense spending, capital punishment, gun control, and so forth. That's on average, the extreme in some cases, the differences between men and women were on the order of 20 or 30 percentage points, which in public opinion studies is a big is quite a big difference. The biggest differences were, in fact found on this horse and violence issues. But in addition to that, there were other differences that could be found that were quite noteworthy. And I'm what I want to do is summarize some of the differences talk a little bit about some of the possible sources of the emergence of some of these differences. And then the only, I think we'll talk a little bit more about the sort of theoretical underpinnings of this, and then how these things are related to other aspects of politics. It was also found that in the case of issues like economic welfare issues, women were on average, more liberal, not on the order of 10, or 20 percentage points put on the order of five to 10 to 10 percentage points, on average, not as enormous as in the case of the force and violence issues. But certainly noteworthy, and in a fashion that wasn't really appreciated. It wasn't discovered, but not fully appreciated before. And it might be the case that the persistence of this gender gap in voting was the result of at least today might be the result of influences beyond simply foreign affairs, and force and violence kinds of concerns. In addition to these economic welfare kinds of issues, issues like environmental regulation, and things related to to protecting society, for those for these other from these other kinds of dangers were things that women seem to be more sensitive to, than men. In addition, there were differences that were found, between men and women with respect to attitudes toward traditional values or family values, but not of a sort in which in which women were necessarily taking the more liberal positions, I mean, liberal and more popular in terms of liberalism, liberalism versus conservatism of the sort found in 1960s, and 1970s and 1980s. Discourse. I think we might debate today what it means to be a liberal and a conservative, but there was a time in recent years where if one said that, that that someone who was more liberal on a certain kind of issue was sort of understood what you know what that meant, in the case of family values, issues of the sort that were that have been debated in current politics. And in the last election, women on average, are more conservative than men were protective of the family in the home. One interesting example is one big difference between men and women is an attitudes toward wiretapping. Women are much more opposed to wiretapping than our men and for reasons that we might attribute to wanting to protect the home. One of my colleagues, Felicia facetiously said that it was something about women's attitudes and behavior toward the telephone that made them more sensitive to wiretapping. I mean, although you noticed anecdotally, it is it is the case that there's some relationship between men and women and the telephone in the sense that when splitting public opinion surveys are done, the kinds of surveys I'm talking about, from which from which data were assembled, have been of two sorts one, face to face interviews that were done at the home Gallop, gallop pollster knocking on the door, and so forth. And more commonly today, with with only a few exceptions, telephone interviews. And it is the case that in typical surveys, it turns out to be the case that there tend on average, to be disproportionately more women than men respond in slightly. And efforts to get equal numbers of men and women usually requires that the surveyors resort to methods in which they target individual particular individuals in the household. The first survey that I was involved in when I was in graduate school was one, that in order to get an equal numbers of men and women, we basically, in every interview had, when we reached a working telephone number, we had to actually ask for a male respondent, even if a woman because women disproportionately were answering, answering the phone, for reasons obviously, due to the fact I think that women were more likely to be at home, taking care of the household, even if they were working, they would, they would rush home from work earlier and be home and so forth.

Unknown Speaker  09:34
In addition to these differences on traditional values, issues, there were also differences on women's related issues, and in particular, the abortion issue. Now, the differences here are very interesting. Up until recently, in the case of attitudes toward abortion, typical national surveys would would find that that men on average, were slightly more pro choice than women, almost regardless of how the question was answered. Now by now, I say Slightly not by a lot, we're talking here on the average of maybe five percentage points, the difference is not enormous. And studies have shown that these kinds of differences have to be considered very carefully. That is, what it means for a man to be pro choice is something different. I think. And I think scholars have agreed that then for a woman to be pro choice that is, for men, this issue is more symbolic, ideological in a very non intense sense. That is tremendous a sort of a symbolic issue that they might pay lip service to. For women, it's an issue where feelings are more intense. And it's one where personal experiences and personal ramifications come to bear. It's also been found in the case of women's rights issues, men and women don't differ at all in terms of their attitudes toward things such as the Equal Rights Amendment. Basically, the Equal Rights Amendment was supported by majorities of both men and women and about equal majorities, but it was found that the reasons that men supported the issue were different than for women for women was much more personal, personal political, whereas women, so implications for their own lives in the in the rights amendment for man, it was just a symbolic issue, that if they were good liberals, they would take the, you know, they will take the liberal position. So the there was a more personal aspect of this, of this for women. A lot of things happened in American public opinion during the 1960s and 1970s. That affected these these kinds of gender differences. One very interesting finding from survey research, and it's one that's not well known. Or perhaps the one of the findings about abortion and women's rights may or may not be well known either, but one that certainly less well known. I'd be surprised if you'd heard of this, is that what public opinion researchers have found historically, that is that women have been on average, more likely to give don't know, responses in surveys, if they're asked about political issues, they would say, I don't know. The reasons for this are not clear that the two obvious reasons, I think, are one women up perhaps up until recently, perhaps actually paid less attention to politics, were busy with other things and have less time to be attentive. In addition, I think a more likely reason I think, in a more important reason has to do with the extent to which women were likely to be willing to voice their opinions publicly about issues even to an interviewer in a face to face interview or interview or over the telephone. We're actually having a conversation before the session about the extent to which women are willing to talk in classrooms in which there might be disproportionate numbers of men. And that same kind of process. The same kind of interaction might have been, you know, might have been perceived in the context of of introducing what happened during the 1960s or 1970s, that this differences in proclivity to give don't know, responses between men and women decreased. Women were more likely to offer opinions, perhaps because they were more attentive to politics were perhaps in a sense, they might have found their voice, so to speak, in a symbolic sense, yes.

Unknown Speaker  12:48
Is the framework for this last statement, they're more likely under what?

Unknown Speaker  12:52
Oh, in a survey, in a typical survey, an interviewer will ask a respondent a question, do you favor or oppose spending more on defense? And some people will say, I don't know. And it's that kind of response that women were more likely to give. And over time that that difference between men and women decreased during this time as well. I found in a study that the difference is the gap between men and women on certain political issues, welfare issues and other issues increased at the same time, women were more likely to offer their opinions. That is, as they were becoming more likely to offer their opinions through the opinions they were offering, we're beginning we're diverging, we're coming out with more divergent from those of men. So there's been a lot of important differences in the opinions of women versus those of men on political issues that that only in the last 15 years have been given greater attention in in public in politics, and political discourse. And I attribute a lot of this to the discovery in the 1980 election in subsequent elections, that there was this difference in voting among among among women versus men. This now this this difference, however, had occurred in earlier elections, but it was only noticed more seriously, in 1980. And Leone, I think we'll talk a little bit more about that, perhaps some of the more theoretical sources of these and also other aspects, other political aspects of these particular opinions.

Unknown Speaker  14:16
What I'd like to do is sort of build on what Robert has been saying and actually step back a little bit to take a closer look, first of the question that has been posed here, which is what do women want? Take a silly critical look at that? Because I think what it does is it takes us right into the middle of what is a very provocative and I think, fractious debate among feminists today. And perhaps that's something that we can fight with each other about or argue about or discuss, after I've said a few things about this, but I think it's troubling. I get troubled constantly. I'm not quite sure where I fall down on this debate. So let me say a little bit about this in this debate, of course, concerns whether women and men are essentially alike in many respects or Whether they're really quite different, and quite different, in part has been used negatively against women, that's what stereotypes were all about. And then what always very kind of flattering towards women's competence, especially in demanding lines of work in politics and in other arenas. But lately, you may have noticed those of you who follow a little of the discourse about feminism and among feminists, that there has been a renewed pool to think of women as different. And some times people say, superior to men. So there has been a development of a line of thinking with women, and it's very tempting, you know, where women there's nothing, it's very tempting to say, well, yes, we are, we do have the moral high ground, and there are things that we're better at. So it's very seductive. And what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about some of that to say, run through some of the discussions that I see going on within academia, and sort of bring us back to this question of why we even expect women and men to be different, similar. And what do we think about all of this, because it really has implications for how we present ourselves politically, to Bill Clinton to to the nation. In terms of what we want, do we really want to say that we speak for all women, and then what happens if we really don't speak for women, but we say we do those have, I think, some some difficult and sometimes troubling implications for us in the political realm. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to first say a little bit about Carol Gilligan's work. Now some of you may be familiar with her book in a different voice. It's received a great deal of publicity. For those of you who aren't familiar with this work. She is a psychologist. And I should add that my own training is in within social psychology. So I've actually spanned both psychology and political science, I teach in the political science department. But I tried very much to keep up with the, with the literature and discussions about gender differences that go on within psychology, public has been widely received. Before I get into telling you a little bit about it. She is so well respected that in the aftermath of the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings, when the Senate has clearly didn't get it, their wives decided that maybe it was time they got it. And so they brought in a group of people to speak to the senators. And Carol Gilligan was one of the women that they brought in to discuss with them. And so this was another reason why her work has very direct impact on politics. What she basically said she, she herself claims that she was just entering into a debate within psychology about moral reasoning. So what she said is that in the past, those of you some of you may be familiar with Larry Colbert's work, but in any event, he claimed that there was sort of a hierarchy of moral reasoning and that women fell short of the ideal, and they certainly fell short of men. So that, you know, according to that argument, men were more likely to operate on the basis of rules and principles, that they internalize these laws and in their own moral behavior, we're more likely to draw upon them. And that women were less of because they were more likely to consider the consequences of their actions, and what the impact of that might be on other people. So Gilligan said, here's this difference. It's not that men are better than women, it's the difference and that they think differently about all of this. And if you those of you who've read a book, it's a very entertaining a very articulate couch. It's very intuitively appealing, it's very seductive. When you read it, it seems to have that ring of truth about it. And you think, well, there's something to this. So on the basis of her work, people have gone on to expect these differences in, for example, women's compassion. So what women really do care more about the consequences of what goes on, and how that affects other people, then maybe in the political arena, that will translate into greater concern for domestic programs,

Unknown Speaker  19:05
programs that deal with problems of the elderly or poverty or children, that there will be that that's something that they're going to be different on and feel differently about. Well, as you can see, from what Bob was saying, when you look at the public opinion polls, national polls on this, this is very small difference. But it's very small. And you know that that small difference really masks a great deal of diversity. You can ask on any kind of issue, I'm sure you have female friends, and you think they're not all really compassionate. You know, it doesn't. This of course, you know, unfortunately, not only is her work, it's interesting, but it also pulls back into some stereotypes that we have to question asked about. So when you look at that, and you look at the polls, you say, well, that difference isn't really big enough to warrant this discussion of this polarized world, where men are on one side and women are on another. There may be small differences, but we can exaggerate but the implications of those are, and that in itself is a real danger with. It's also easy for us to think in terms of categories. And some sometimes this is part of this debate within feminism, I think about should we be moving away from all of that, should we just try and be trying to get rid of labels. So this, these expectations that women will be different somehow also fuel. And I wanted to some sense as I'm talking one, of course, a shared by many people, including people who run political campaigns. So sometimes you'll see instances of ad political ads, which are designed to appeal to women. And they I, for example, I was reading an account in the Wall Street Journal of last election. And there was a, it was a radio ad that was aired in Charlotte, North Carolina, but it had two women talking. And they were they were discussing Bill Clinton, and they said, Well, you know, the conclusion of that conversation was they said something like, Bill Clinton smart. And you know, I believe he's a really caring man. This is like, you know, this is supposed to bring in the women's vote horse. This is, I mean, it's plain and simply designed. I mean, again, it's pulling back on our cliches and stereotypes. But but people who design political campaigns fall victim to the same kind of thinking. When so when you look at public opinion, despite Gilligan's argument, it's hard to find strong evidence for her case that women and men really do think differently about a lot of these issues, when you look at women politicians. So one expectation is that we should see women being much more supportive of extra spending on domestic programs that help people out, especially people who are down and out. You don't as I say, you don't find much evidence of that when you look at women who actually hold political office. It's a little hard to say exactly, people have sort of weighed up ways in which they're different from men, especially in national state politics. And it turns out that at least so far, women are clearly more liberal, either more feminist than male elected officials. But again, you have to be a little bit careful about saying women will always these women, politicians will always be different from men. It turns out that least in Congress, up until now, the women who've been elected represent large cities that are very democratic, that are much more likely to be liberal. And so the congruence between them and their constituents is quite close. That's why they look more democratic and more liberal. But what are we going to see when women actually start entering politics for more conservative states? I think again, you know, we run the danger of expecting them to be different because they're women. And we they everybody may be disappointed when they turn out not to be so different. So again, I think that there are reasons to worry about this line of argument. Let me just say in terms of Carol Gilligan's main main points, it turns out that her work has been very severely criticized within psychology, that quite damning criticisms, because she's a psychologist, and on her own terms, but people have looked at research about this, they found is really no evidence for that she may have been attacking a straw man in the first place. But what she was saying were differences in the way people reasoned about moral problems just disappeared, they never really were there. So this is one reason if you ever entertain, issue someone with a conversation about Gilligan's work, this is a really important point. You might say, if she wasn't a psychologist, maybe we wouldn't have to worry about it. But that's a discipline. Those are the terms on which she wrote the book, and which she should be evaluated.

Unknown Speaker  23:36
When you look at psychology more closely to say, okay, so we don't see much difference in the polls, but I went in somehow more compassionate and empathetic. The one funny that comes out pretty clearly as the woman thinks they are. When you ask them, they will say yes, that you don't want on a scales but questions about do you care about people's feelings, you're concerned about those that come out scoring a lot higher than men, when psychologists have tried to observe this in actual behavior. Again, it's very hard to find and it's still going on because we have any familiarity with psychology, we'll find that the studies is still being done. Some of them some of the classic help, there are a series of classic helping studies. Now, some of them are complicated because they involve danger, or they involve approaching stranger. Some of them were actually conducted on the subways here in New York, there were a group of psychologists were doing this research and they would have somebody who was unhealthy needed help, trying to get people to help them out with course, men, it turns out in all of these studies, men are more likely to help them Luminar. But that's partly because danger is involved in all the rest of it. But as I say, this research is still going on, even when you look at more other kinds of situations. It does seem like it's one of those things that when you look at it closely, it's very hard to find that hard and fast evidence that will tell you that women really are a lot more compassionate if they nature or despite ourselves versus

Unknown Speaker  24:59
you know, In the form of expression, so that our verbal verbal expression, but again, psychologists will have tried to systematically put all of this together, I having trouble finding really strong evidence of it. So, so this is if you ever get involved in this discussion about Carol Gilligan's work, this is some of the difficulties and the problems that surrounds us. So that's that's one, one set of issues and one debate that's come up, I think, amongst feminists, and I must say her work is among people who are not psychologists and haven't looked at the evaluation, her work. She's very highly regarded, very well received, you may have seen, I think, a year or so ago, she was on the front cover of York Times Magazine about some of her more recent work with the identity development about adolescent girls, and the loss of confidence that goes along with that. So I mean, she herself is horrified and shocked by the amount of controversy that has always received she said, she never anticipated it. It was not intended for that, I think, but people say once you read a book, people are free to do whatever they're going to do with it. So and those of you who are interested in looking at it more closely and are familiar with Susan Faludi 's book, The Bad lash, she led resoundingly lambastes Carol Gilligan's work as actually contributing to the backlash against women by sort of, again, re assign some of those old stereotypes about what women should be doing, they should be more caring, and that feminists are at fault for having taken away all those wonderful caring things that women would have otherwise been doing. So if you want to follow up on this, you might go back home and take a look, she has a whole section on Carol Gilligan's work, let me just say something. So that sort of concerns our compassion and empathy and all that sort of stuff. Let me move on to another issue that often comes up, which is what to do with aggression. And Bob had mentioned again, that's in the polls, the largest differences that emerge in the polls are to do with women condoning governmental use of force, either at war in wars, the things like the death penalty, gun control, and again, hit a gap is about that Candace said which points difference. But again, there's an awful lot of overlap. When people have looked at this efficiency, you know, so I've heard some people refer to this as the testosterone poisoning. discussion about, about what's going on here. So you know, there are discussions that come up about socialization biology, it's also a muddled up as surrounding all of that. And some of the these arguments arise from some very early work in psychology, observing children. And there are a couple of developmental psychologists many years ago who wrote a very influential book summarizing what they could see in a range of different studies and found that, you know, there were, there were some small differences between boys and girls, when they looked at observational studies of children in a playground that boys was more slightly more likely to push each other over and add to perpetrate acts of violence, and so on. So there's some evidence here that we have some differences, at least where I come from, I don't get it just want to really want to get into the nation nurture, sort of discussion right here. But But in any event, so we have some differences in the polls there. But it turns out even there that some of those are ephemeral, that you see them sometimes and not others. So for example, over the Gulf War, you might remember that before we actually got into the war, there were large differences actually, between women and men, that women were actually more opposed to intervention in the Middle East. But then after the war began, those gender differences disappeared. It turns out that both women and men week, everybody was wildly supportive of the war. And so there were no gender differences by the time that rolled around. And that apparently, is a common trend that when the split on an issue, when there's not consensus, the women will fall out on the less violent side of things. But when there's massive public support, those differences disappear. So so we have an interesting sort of tantalizing set of findings there again, and puts in a huge, it's not everyone, there are some of them in Britain, about the women who support wars, who are out there pushing the guys onto the boats to go off and say, you know, go find fourth guys, and we'll be here when you get back. Well, maybe not. But in any event, you know, there are still gonna be plenty of women who have taken out some of these more aggressive positions on policy or women before to the women and there were women in the war. And there were women in the war. This will begin, you know, this debate gets essentially that other debate about what roles women should be playing in the military, those of us who care about women's economic advancement, you can certainly see the logic and allowing them to to go into combat because at the moment their advancement is thwarted in military because of that, but you also entertain in into these discussions about are women really more pacifist by nature.

Unknown Speaker  29:58
You know, so we get the This whole discussion gets us back into that. Let me just say a word about women politicians on the score that some of my own work has been concerned with the impact of stereotypes that are trying to gain political office. And there seems to be expectations that politicians, especially for national politics, need to be able to commandeer the military, you know, those are important things. And a lot of women politicians go out of their way to stake out pretty tough positions on things, it's to try and compensate for what this is a deficit in stereotypes. So you'll see someone like many, many female politicians will stake out a tough position on the death penalty. Someone like Dianne Feinstein has been probed very vocally pro death penalty for longtime majority Ferraro so you know, the tough more notice stuff to turn to counteract the stereotypes. So again, here you see the women politicians actually going out of their way to contradict some of those stereotypes, and certainly not fulfilling them in a way that we might expect when we look there. And let me just say, so So that's so that's the sort of the second set of discussion I get, I guess, which was also very fractious, let me just say briefly, because I think I should, I should stop pretty soon. The third set of expectations about why women should be test different from men concern the fact that women have common interests that, for example, were similarly affected by reproductive policies, or we commonly suffer from a differential in wages and pay, although we are going to equally be the victims of sexual harassment, but these are things that should unify women in the political arena. And again, Bob mentioned that on issues concerning women's rights roles and so on, again, there are no real differences between women and men. Everybody would you know, people will feel as supportive of VDI, right? There aren't any differences these days on the choice position on a board on abortion? And again, why is that? You know, so it raises some questions about and this is the area in which we all expect to find differences in national polls, when you ask people what do women think about some of these women's issues? People wildly polarized, they say women want this men want that, and it's like, night and day. Now, it's absolutely true in national polls, that's apparently we think that's perhaps why the title of the panel, we just think that there there are large differences on the dishes, and there really aren't. Some of this is because when you go back to women and men and ask them things like the economic interdependence, it turns out that many women live with men and, for example, financially, their fates are quite tied together on some issues, certainly, in terms of a pay advancement in the family, you know, if we, if we go back and ask questions, like, would you be doing better if working women were doing better? A lot of men say absolutely. Because you have been married to a working woman, and it contributes directly into household income. So so that's something that this interdependence is something that is real, and it's, it's impossible to ignore. I mean, that that's something that's very palpable. Another thing that comes up here is that a lot of women say, women are disadvantaged, but I'm just fine. This is like I see the analogy in discussions of healthcare policy, right? Yeah. When you ask people, How's your health care, as it couldn't be better, it's just great. How's the nation doing with health care, so we really got to do something. So it turns out, people really don't internalize women don't internalize some of these things. And this has been shown to in a number of different instances that women will rate for example, the chances of advancement that pay scale, whether they experience discrimination on the job is fine, very few women will either admit or recognize that this is happening to them personally. But they see it as pervasive for women in general. So again, it's another it's one of those things where women are not seeing it as something that's happening to themselves. And if their sword is happening to themselves, they'd be more likely to perhaps feel differently about to do something about it.

Unknown Speaker  34:08
And the other thing, of course, is that women are very diverse group of people, as we know, and they have quite different interests, you start talking to people, there are many different things that come into play in politics and shaping people's political views. And you will find every shade opinion strongly held on these issues among women. And so So I think that in looking at that, perhaps that helps, to some extent to explain why we don't see more differences on that on that particular set of political concerns about reproductive rights or pay equity for women and so on. So let me just wrap up by saying something that I hope we can talk about in our discussion here because I think that's what we want to do is actually open this up for a conversation discussion, to come back to this whole question of gender differences and I just wanted to say as well as we have an example of how I think sometimes these things can go astray in the political arena, is if women's organizations misrepresent women as being a monolithic group of people, it may have short term political payoff, but it's like crying wolf. And if you do want a couple of times, people stop listening. So I think in particular, there have been, there's been quite a bit written about the journey Ferraro's nomination of Democratic nomination for the vice presidency in 1984. And women's organizations, including now and other organizations pushed very hard on the Democratic Kairos. To say to them, it's going to make a difference. You know, use the Montel may not be Mr. Charisma, but you know, with Jerry, he's gonna go all the way you know, he's really going to make it, it's going to make a huge difference, when it was clear wasn't going to make a difference. Vice Presidents really do make a difference. If George Bush can get elected with Dan Quayle, it's, you know, it just doesn't matter to people. They're not voting for the vice presidency. But you worried that perhaps women's groups lost some of their political capital, by pushing on an issue with they were actually not going to win. And in the end, they're going to be proven wrong. I mean, I think that there's real benefit and virtue in telling it like it is, and making better and stronger and realize evidence for why things should change and not misrepresenting women. I worry. As a last night, I worried that the same thing is going to happen to women as they get elected to politics. Recently, I've seen several organizations pushing the view that women as politicians are different, that they are more feminist, that they're going to be more concerned with Family Policy and childcare and and stuff like that to be true, as I say, but this is partly because of where women are coming from the kinds of constituents that they have. And also, I think it's a consequence of women being a minority of politics, and feeling very strongly that this is something that somebody's got to do something about. But what happens when we have enough women that we don't have to worry about this issue anymore in politics? Will people stop fighting for it? Will they stop giving money to women candidates? Because they say that just like the men? You know, what difference will it make? It's just the same sort of thing, same flavors, Democrat, Republican doesn't matter. And so again, I think we need to be careful about trying to use these arguments of gender differences, to push for something that's it's a very laudable goal, but it may be the wrong argument to make. So I'd love to hear some reactions. Yes,

Unknown Speaker  37:39
recently, there has been media coverage on

Unknown Speaker  37:42
the fact that women in the military are much more open to having gay than the man or is that a perception? Is it real?

Unknown Speaker  37:55
I still the same thing. So isn't that there was an article in the Times a few days ago reported that I don't know whose vehicles it but I can't recall that it was if they didn't mention that it was based on systematic data. And I don't know, you know, the military has secrets, you know, who knows where that information is coming from? It was interesting, though, to decide that it was the implication was, and I think it was even explicitly stated in the article that women are threatened by male homosexuals. You know, I mean, again, that was, you know, sort of the homophobia explanation among men, I'm sure that that no one really knows if that's actually actually the case, or the right explanation for

Unknown Speaker  38:31
what I wanted to share with you guys. I'm involved with two women, military and my organization are broken. There in public relations for the Navy talking about it, and they felt the women, again, just from their experience field, it will be easier for them, because of the fact that the Navy has to change their traditional ruling and stiff rigidity that they had before by opening to gave and make it easier for women to do other things in the military for which they are

Unknown Speaker  39:00
now. This is to share an anecdote.

Unknown Speaker  39:03
You know, what, just just for the record, what the what the national public opinion polls say about just Americans attitudes toward homosexual homosexuals in general, is that the country is basically quite puritanical. I mean, that 80% of the public, basically, you know, thinks homosexuality is always or almost always morally wrong. And possibly, and and the differences between men and women's opinions, as you know, is skewed in that direction. The differences between men and women are not are not are not very great to the extent that they're differences. Women are a little more a little on average, a little bit more conservative, but but not much. This question about you know, gays in the military, I know the interpretation there is that the gays refers to gay men. Right, right. And then there's the there's also the the gay women, you know, women issues, as well.

Unknown Speaker  39:55
And I also had, I don't know, probably in the New York Times, but I can't tell you when but Recently, and who wrote the article that in terms of discharge from the military dismissal from the military, more or less being discharged?

Unknown Speaker  40:11
I did quite disproportionately, I think it was by orders of magnitude. And that that was somehow very extinct exceedingly offensive to the military to or to the men in the military is something that

Unknown Speaker  40:23
was one of the occasion. I'm going to start now psychologists or sociologists, and I wanted to get back to something that Shapiro said in his opening remarks. Something about equal rights amendment or legal rights. You probably know Joe Zimmerman's work at Fox poppin on festival right from England, and it was a palace hall. And without LeBron, who had just been married without see him,

Unknown Speaker  40:47
what year was that? Just tell everybody when the when the Equal Rights Amendment was first.

Unknown Speaker  40:53
She introduced it was called in in 1916. You had the famous case of Atkins versus Children's Hospital. And this article by Gavin seventh when he's done a lot of work on alcohol. I've done a lot of work and published analysis. But anyway, John Zimmerman, who's now talking, did some superb work on the case by consensus Children's Hospital in 1922, Sutherlands opinion that when there should not be a minimum wage for women in our district of Columbia Floyd, we defend the importance of them from springing from anywhere. In her investigation of that she discovered that as Paul had been pushing for an Equal Rights Amendment, it was one of the basis of a National Woman's party since 1916. And if she did not have introduced him to Congress, Charles Curtis introduced in 1923. But anyway, it's Albert Levitt, a graduate of Harvard Law School, who had just been married to Elsie Hill, who was Alice Paul, second in command from the National Party, who wrote the first Equal Rights Amendment and he wanted it worded in a certain way and said it feels right for him and professor of history. It's our it's a superb article in the spring issue, last spring, spring 92 issue of the Journal of American history. But anyway, a man wrote, and I said that to print it Oh, that just couldn't leave it. Well, not to expect it not to asphalt in their argument, that breeze breeze in the space thought they might have won the case. A Salomon just call him out.

Unknown Speaker  42:36
Well, the other. The other important aspect of equal rights amendment was that the big proponents of the amendment initially was the Republican Party, which is not willing to up and up until the end, it was it was with the party platform on which Ronald Reagan ran when the era disappeared from the Republican Party platform.

Unknown Speaker  42:55
But it was a man who ran.

Unknown Speaker  43:00
Yes, I have been reporting last year and a half the economy was away in ringberg, qualitative research or a campaign that talks to people around the country. One interesting tidbit which my time is a change unless they change indeed, when I talk to women, they are very reticent to talk about politics, and how about men, regardless have no qualms about voicing your opinion,

Unknown Speaker  43:38
whether they like it or not. And

Unknown Speaker  43:43
another interesting tidbit I haven't quite have offices to go with is the women candidates seem to have a higher standard needed in the perception of both male and female voters. One of them which is very fascinating. female candidates have much more credibility when they are mature, have raised their family and if indeed, they have young children in a negative sense, because they should be home and not held up to no candy at all.

Unknown Speaker  44:23
What's interesting, I know Pat Schroeder often tells the story about the thing. We've seen her book, but she wrote about how when she was elected to Congress and children were three and six was something like that. She's been in the Congress now for a long time. But she said that she would do things like out of necessity have birthday parties, for the kids in her offices. And it was just absolutely shocking. You know, this was something that was not supposed to be going on and on. And the other comment about women politicians, I know Barbara Mikulski has that thing that she says she's single and she says, Well, you know, if you're married, then you neglecting him. If you're old You know, you killed him? If you're divorced, you made him leave. And if you're single Well, you know, we know what that means. And I think she's often had, she's had to deal with that constantly. I think

Unknown Speaker  45:17
the only thing that kind of counters that value of it is, if they say the woman has community service and for record, they'll be a little more forgiving of that single state.

Unknown Speaker  45:30
I, as a follow up to your comment, um, I was recently presenting a paper at a political science convention, actually, just last week in Chicago, where was a graduate student, we had actually been looking at the 1990s Senate elections, trying to get a handle on just whether it's like go to do expect more from the candidates when they deal with them differently. And the one thing that we noticed is that in 1990, no women actually there was one, I think that Nancy Kestenbaum may have been tighter I talked a bit about, we were looking actually women who had challenges in the Senate. And there were quite a few well known women actually, who were running as challenges to democratic male senators who were already polling office. And it turns out that we if a woman had not held prior office in those Senate elections, that she was much more negatively rated than a male candidate who had held prior office and was challenging incumbent senator. But having held prior office made a big difference for women, much larger difference than it made to men. So it's sort of in support of what you're saying that women what is prior office do for women, it probably teaches them how to run a good campaign, they've got more connections, they can get more money, you know, a whole variety of things like that. And we're just waiting, we're holding our breath to get them the the outcome and the survey data from the last election, the Senate elections. So we can take a closer look at that, to see if some of these assertions are true, because many of my colleagues in political science have been saying, who have been following this topic, say, Oh, well, at the end to be a woman these days in politics, and you want to throw up your hands and despair and say, Don't you understand? I mean, it may have been hard. But, you know, there were probably a whole lot of problems that confronted women who were running for office last year. And they just saw it as a catchy way to get some media attention, that you were the flavor of the month last year, if you're running for the Senate, and you happen to be a woman, it isn't that easy. And women who run for office are up against the whole range of problems.

Unknown Speaker  47:33
In a small way, half of the state legislature and talk to other women in our town and area who have run for office. And one thing we observe is women who are interested in running for office want to know what they're talking about. Man don't make this perfect. They don't have to. But it seems that women want to project confidence much more than men seem to care about it. And I don't know if you've found it yet. Whether you've ever studied women who are who run for office to find out whether that's a trend that wouldn't really go into it when they feel that they're able to look better than that.

Unknown Speaker  48:11
Would there have been some studies done of most of these studies have been done? I think, some of state legislatures as well, but a lot of them are convention delegates to the Democratic and Republican convention. And then there's studies that have looked at people's motivations. And physics, people regard that as sort of a stepping stone into further politics potentially. And so they've often found that women are more issue oriented. And that are for men, there is more political ambition. Almost, yeah. self serving is not a very kind way to say, but that's sort of what they found that women are perhaps a little more concerned about the common good, or at least say that that's what they're doing. Again, whoever knows, but, but that's certainly the way it looks when those those things have been done.

Unknown Speaker  48:55
Probably more than not as many women perhaps for the reasons typically, they get into politics very young, and running for office, men usually start off very young. And she's usually done other things they've been involved in raising their children or the PTA, or whatever it is. So they I think, have a richer background.

Unknown Speaker  49:15
And I think, you know, we're going to see more research on this topic. As I say, as a woman in political science, I must say that until women entered the discipline in large numbers, there hadn't been greater research on these topics that for whatever reason have been the one a lot of women in politics has to warrant analysis of this. But in any event, it's women, mostly who do the research on these issues. And I think as we see more women, political science, like politics has been a very male discipline. And it's just changing now. I think we're seeing more women going in as graduate students into my PhD programs. So I fully expect there to be a lot more research on these issues. It sort of comes back to what's interesting to people. Men may, you know, say that's important, but I'm not going to do it. Oh, and some men feel that they can't do it. That it's is not within their domain, that that's something that they want to be given credibility for. That comes from the outside telling women, you know what they should be doing or whatever, they just don't want to get into it. So the variety of reasons are more likely to be doing that kind of research. I think it's going to be very helpful for women running for office. I know, like Linda, Linda has done a lot of research on women candidates, but we often don't get the benefit of that. It's it's private information, you know, belongs to the candidate. And so I think we'll see more political scientists spreading information like this around I'm really hoping that because we actually have a pretty good connection, I think, between women in political science in the women were in politics, there was some formalized and close connections. And I think that that will really help.

Unknown Speaker  50:45
I was wondering what type of research is available on women's attitudes towards Hillary Clinton? During the election during the campaign, she was certainly a troubling figure. For many women, many, many women who decided they liked or disliked if they agree with them when they disagree with her. Especially I have a separate question during the campaign, she was referred to as Hillary Clinton. Now that the campaign is over, she's referred to as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Curious if that was some sort of tactics in terms of clear on the reasonings behind that and

Unknown Speaker  51:19
let me say that the polls, I mean, I was gonna say that I haven't seen a lot on the polls, maybe you've seen well,

Unknown Speaker  51:26
what I've seen what I've seen, what I've seen, what I've seen on the polls is I mean, typically, the pollsters asked this common question about presidents do you approve or disapprove of the President's performance in office, they would also ask them if you approve or disapprove of Hillary's performance and public opinion public, which they never used to in that in that way, which, which is another issue about Hillary that we might want to might want to talk about. The the public is sort of is it basically feels about the same bet the same way toward Hillary as they do toward bill at this moment sort of split. And the gender gap is small, if anything, I think on average, women are a little favorably more favorably disposed toward Hillary than than men are, but but sort of split the UI anymore. Before we know the right now that the Hillary Rodham Clinton is it is an interesting issue, but I think it's my perception is that it's pretty clear, she dropped the Rodham, for the sake of the campaign, and then immediately, you know, took it back. And I think it's, I mean, it's clearly the norm for professional women to to keep their to keep their original names or to keep them with their original name ism as a middle name, and she cheats, which what she do I don't think was very surprising to professionals at all.

Unknown Speaker  52:45
Way and had our own all system somewhere not refill reason this is why desperate nearby their fear of public relations people have, you know, we're taking polls, and they she was perceived as being too bossy, and among other things, and so they were specifically advised or told COVID. Yeah, she was to pull back. And so that

Unknown Speaker  53:17
she was told to stay more in the background, you know, all the authorities like to work and all of that. And anyway, we're also advised to do more family, that they didn't manage to do that. But all that was supposed

Unknown Speaker  53:30
to be currently forbidden post came out saying that people look at their child. But yes, that's right. That was going on. And then suddenly, we started seeing Chelsea every time you looked around, it was Chelsea Ark. So I mean, it's sort of this culture of having the nation watches.

Unknown Speaker  53:49
Absolutely. pieces of information. Before we tell quantitative work, was that they were chocolate. Yeah, that was that was way back.

Unknown Speaker  54:03
When I think that very effectively dispelled both of those. I mean, what you can say about that campaign, that they really effectively use the poll information to address some of these issues. I'm interested in,

Unknown Speaker  54:15
I don't know response to

Unknown Speaker  54:18
political climate. Has there been any kind of systematic study

Unknown Speaker  54:23
that would point out motivations other than the genuine?

Unknown Speaker  54:27
Well, there could be several motivations to say, I don't know you want to hide your real opinion? You don't know the issue. You don't trust the toaster, whatever. Has there been any kind of study of

Unknown Speaker  54:42
discussion? If it has

Unknown Speaker  54:44
been studied, has it been substantiated with a justice status? That perhaps the reason that more women say I don't know is that the

Unknown Speaker  54:52
more that men are more reluctant to say? I don't know because it shows something up And then

Unknown Speaker  55:02
in the Political Science

Unknown Speaker  55:05
Okay, the studies of these, you know, he's not, I don't know, responses tend to show that people who are more likely to save don't know, on average tend to be people who are less well educated. The other factor that seems to correlate is is gender, even during periods in which the average levels of education of men and men and women are have been about have been about the same. And the difference between men and women shows up even after you, even when you compare men and women with the same level of education. Now, it could be the case that men are more are more reluctant to sort of admit ignorance, on the other hand, could deal with it could deal with actual information on a particular issue. And the other possibility is this, you know, this, this this possible, you know, this possible reticence on the part of women of stating their views publicly? And there's no, there's no, I mean, there's no definitive answer. There's those there, those contributing factors, but even after controlling for education, and other things, there still seems to be this gender difference. And even today, women are still more likely to say don't know, but the differences, the differences has diminished over the last

Unknown Speaker  56:09
one point to that, because it's also true that we didn't mention this bit in the polls, when you ask people in their stead of questions, how interested? Are you in politics? Still women lag behind on that question? So women will always say that they are somewhat less interested in politics. Again, there's a small differences. But you find this gap and it suggests, again, you know, it does suggest that that may be consistent that in the past, remember, you know, politics was something that women were not supposed to be all that interested in. Now, people will argue to get, again, there's been an increase in interest among women in politics, they haven't closed that gap completely. And you could argue that I mean, there's some interesting explanations for that one could be the politics, things more engaging, when it deals with issues that are personally relevant to you, or when you see women politicians, because I'm sure that what happens is women read those articles a bit more closely. They're interested that, you know, it's just one of those natural things, you think it's a woman, you know, I'm a woman, in terms of very basic level, I think. So I think that if you take at face value, what women say, it turns out that they claim they're a bit less interested in politics than men are. And sometimes, even when you ask them about political knowledge, what they know about politics, that's a bit more ephemeral. But sometimes that also appears that women just don't know as much.

Unknown Speaker  57:29
In fact, in Professor Michael Delhi, Papini, who's a professor here at Barnard has done studies of just just levels of political knowledge, knowing particular political facts, and it's found that on average, women tend to, you know, give, tend to be more likely to give, you know, either incorrect answers to factual questions or say they don't know about Navy, or who certain political figures are, and so forth. And when you just bounce one explanation, yeah, it takes time to learn all these things about politics. And my wife would argue that women have less time to spend on politics, because even even when they're working, and so forth, or they're still they still have household related things to do, that men go to spend less time for these other use other things. What I'll

Unknown Speaker  58:12
say, you know, even when you look at college education, as we teach political science majors, I mean, these are all well educated people. But I think there were fewer women, to some extent, were attracted to plug sighs maybe that's not quite true. But it turns out that it's certainly in the classes that I've had, the men are usually they're always more vocal anyway. But they often some of them are very familiar with politics and know an awful lot about it. Sometimes it's out of personalization, that they plan to become politicians themselves. And so they're learning the name of every possible person that they might ever need, in the future, that Bill Clinton strategy for keeping those little index cards. Because I see those people like that I very rarely see women like that in any of my classes. And in fact, I teach an undergraduate course called Women politics at Stony Brook, and over the last couple of years, have had a series of women politicians come in, and have had some wonderful success bringing in women from Washington. And you have no idea how inspirational that is to young women. I mean, in fact, sometimes they think that the local politicians are the most effective, because they can say, Why did you come work in my office, take an internship next semester. And so I've had a lot of women who said, Well, maybe I could do this, you know, maybe I could be a politician. It's like something that would never have crossed their minds before. And I think that that we'll see more of that. And that again, all of this together, may hopefully

Unknown Speaker  59:33
diminish when local trends has been at Barnard in recent years political sciences, but which has always been a popular majors become even more popular in recent years.

Unknown Speaker  59:42
I wonder if the phenomenon is restricted to questions of political pressures or what happens with other surveys and we can 1000s of market research surveys and survey from other areas. And I wonder there if they don't know so much

Unknown Speaker  1:00:01
Okay, firstly, firstly, there are variations in the in these in these differences between men and women, depending upon the kind of issue involved in the case of abortion, for example, men are more likely to say don't know than women are. Okay, so there are variations. I was talking overly average figures, I suspect in market research studies. I mean, there probably differences there, depending on the particular products, Rob, I would I would guess more likely than not women. Yes, yes. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:34
Well, yes. I'm a woman.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:37
No know, if I, I don't know about the case of non flip non political attitudes. But in case of political attitudes, there are differences. And I suspect women, they don't may not know about politics, but they probably know about a lot of other things. And you and unfortunately, a lot of cases we we haven't been able to fully appreciate what it is that people do know. In general, for example, studies of political knowledge, have generally shown that the public just doesn't know much on average about anything about politics. They don't they don't ask about what they do know about products, what they know, you know, about popular culture and things of that sort of the famous example was, well, well, very few. Well, relatively few people knew who Justice Rehnquist was a large proportion of people knew who Judge Walker was on the people's courts.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:27
What do they

Unknown Speaker  1:01:28
post election color and shelter modern and voted for Clinton on family values and national initiatives? From my bedroom Republicans?

Unknown Speaker  1:01:39
misuse that.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:42
So why did vote for

Unknown Speaker  1:01:45
Clinton majority with an economic?

Unknown Speaker  1:01:49
Okay, unfortunately, I don't I don't have a good answer for it. Because we usually depend on some of our colleagues who actually study these things in very intricate detail. In fact, that was the the latest, the main election study that's used by political scientists is not the exit polls that we see. But but but more systematic studies that have done about all the different aspects of voting, I suspect what the studies will find is that the biggest thing, the biggest factor that influence voters was was one that influenced everyone. And that was basically voters evaluation of George Bush's performance in dealing with the economy. And their, their their I mean, that, that affected everyone, and probably weren't very great differences between men and women, the gender gap in the late last election was about the same size, or maybe a little smaller than it was in the last lecture. It's both, but the differences were on the order of maybe four to six percentage points. So they weren't enormous

Unknown Speaker  1:02:37
wasn't a big difference in the last election. Despite, you know, despite what people were saying about the Republican Convention, how that would really turn off Republican women. In the end, it seems to be a bit of a wash. And that often happens that something that looks like it's going to shake the election early on, you know, in this election, you know, the economy really to dominate, I think in terms of people's assessments, and so on. More hire

Unknown Speaker  1:03:11
who voted for Clinton, I thought there was a higher percentage of women who voted for Clinton.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:24
Dirt genetically, and this is in terms of sort of basic liberal conservative outlook. And in terms of party affiliation, is among young people. I don't know how, you know, however, you want to cut it, people who are currently in the 1920s. So someone sort of pulls in different polls, that kind of different ways, you could look at people who are now 18 to 2118, to 24. But when you look at the young women, they're very supportive of the Democratic Party, to a much greater degree than the young men who are much more effective Republican Party. And this gap has emerged, in some research that I've done recently looking at reactions to feminists, if you want to find a group of people who cringe when they asked about feminists talk to young men in that age group, it's phenomenal. And it's very striking. And I think one issue that arises is why we're seeing such a big gap between young men and young women, I feel for this, what this implies, is going to be some very contentious relationships that grow up out of this. It's gonna be a lot of political finding, in the household, I think, but this is a huge gap if you don't see it, any other age group. And so one of the things I wonder about is how much this is related to questions of gender and women's issues and so on with this something that's happening among young men that they've just been very turned off, but by some of this, I mean, some arguments that have been put forward, you know, and again, I have no evidence for this, and I think it's something that's going to receive study is whether young men are feeling like their opportunities have dissipated. And you know, The generic competition with young women who are advantaged? Yes,

Unknown Speaker  1:05:02
I think it's I think

Unknown Speaker  1:05:04
it may also have something to do with

Unknown Speaker  1:05:06
our ability that many men and young women to want their sexuality is still in flux. Because

Unknown Speaker  1:05:11
believe me, the gay and lesbian community has walked out that 99% of the people who do this often the young men, who are still struggling with feeling vulnerable about being a man. So then I'm wondering, is this

Unknown Speaker  1:05:23
this intolerance of feminism in this age group,

Unknown Speaker  1:05:26
is something

Unknown Speaker  1:05:28
has already happened right now. Or is that the way a two year old self and says inside of an 18 year old self that gave me an 18 year old son in a shot the gap in

Unknown Speaker  1:05:38
as far as feminists go, this is just an aside, but the term feminist is something that's only recently made the two poles or in our popular language, actually, I could go back to the 1960s, sending her feminists but none of the way that you do now, not all dissent connotations. So women's liberation was predominantly what people talked about. In fact, we just recently I had a student go through this was just a very cursory analysis, looking at Time and Newsweek in the 70s, and 80s. And counting up that references to terms like women's movement was liberation, feminist feminism, it turns out that in the 1980s, feminists skyrocketed as a term of choice to discuss the women's movement, but for the whole thing, the women's movement is used, to a lesser extent, women's liberation is gone. So it'd be very hard to go back and actually look at reactions to feminists, you could go back and look at reactions to women's liberation. But I think in terms of this gap in ideology, and political outlook, you know, this preference for Democrats or Republicans, that's new. I mean, I think I've not seen it in the past, looking at young people. So I think that there are some interesting issues that

Unknown Speaker  1:06:50
women in the economy when dealing with illusionary and your perception of the Democratic Party is covered by 12 years ago.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:57
Yeah. And you know, in general, political

Unknown Speaker  1:07:00
descriptions, women's issues, traditional values, all the stuff kept popping up in the 1980s. And it may have been easy to get to feel disenchanted by some of that, but it's something that you may want to pay some more attention to, as you wander around out there. That was if you have sons, who were in the 20s, do something to that.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:23
Problem, I don't know exactly what it's all about. Yeah, well, there's

Unknown Speaker  1:07:26
a piece of data that I just can't press, which is very

Unknown Speaker  1:07:29
clean, and I need to make a reaction to its application to those colleges, which will talk to the reputation box up

Unknown Speaker  1:07:41
to an assistant

Unknown Speaker  1:07:43
particularly this one. With only Well, we compete with. But I think that that is extremely interesting, given given

Unknown Speaker  1:08:01
mean, just go away from following today. Greetings, Texas, RBNZ, much analysis of that, but it certainly seems that these discussions about the virtues of women's colleges. And I think we've seen lower discussion of that, even in the context of African Americans, and also going into environments the uniform in that way. So they don't have to compete with a women's case very vocal men in the classroom. As I said, this is just you know, from observing the discussions that go on, but I think in the medium expand enough information disseminated that that that puts women of rethinking the value of a woman's colleges

Unknown Speaker  1:08:46
or going into graduate school or the declining rate, so that they never win a flat rate percentage of women applying to graduate schools has declined in the last two or three years.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:00
Right. To what extent have

Unknown Speaker  1:09:02
I got remember, they were published? And apparently the percentage of women applying to graduate schools has declined over the last two or three years. gone down? I don't know what it means. I don't like it. No, it doesn't. Like me. Tied to jobs.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:27
Well, it's but it's the percent it's the percentage dropping but the but there's actually been at least in some university circles, an increase in applications to graduate school overall,

Unknown Speaker  1:09:38
overall. The application, then we said women for the first time began to decline. med school and graduate school.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:57
In response to that, I'm a board of alumni I'm a Columbia PhD. And in preparing for a talk on the Seven Sisters at my grand today and who I was the bonnet representative, and I wrote to the Office of Development Office here and got some information and voted, this was given to me. Like in like 92, Bonnie ranks second among the four year colleges, whose graduates go on to the VHD and then take a PhD. I don't know who the first one was, I sent it to a boring adjuster who let me in here, the staff knew. And I spoke to the person who asked me was a Smith graduate. I think it's Bryn Mawr, and I'm sure, but also when it ranks, let me say the same information from the development office after Michigan, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Cornell in the number of graduates at Barnard College who get their medical degrees. So I don't think honest answers on this one.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:57
The last two or three years.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:02
I mean, there was a period before this drop off, there was a period of increasing applications and enrollments in schools.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:11
As a member of your generation, I spend most of my summer arguing with my contemporaries men that Republican men are very troubled by Hillary Clinton and children are more and people like that they're really not sure. Where I was mentioning recruiting is dad is she Africa's decided she really went to the President himself, if you're in big trouble, but I want you to we have an answer for that. And I, you know, I will say, Oh, you know, she's, she's a lawyer, she's been She sounds from boring fisted down, what do we have an answer really, as a standard answer to seek to answer these 20 Something men that are Republicans and are troubled, I just want to ask you, we traveled also

Unknown Speaker  1:11:54
supporting what I think, you know, on this specific issue that you raised about a woman's role as a first lady with clearly in a, at a point of transition. I mean, I think that our conceptions and understanding of what that role is gave back to women of a different era, who had very different lives. And so we I think, not only do we have to wonder about that, we have to wonder about what it first man's role, whatever, whatever, First Gentleman, whatever they might be called to be. And so I think, you know, at that level, you you Oh, you can say to someone is, we're really in a ton of change. And, you know, holding her to some old standards that clearly don't apply to professional women is not going to do anymore. And you have to think about that more carefully. You know, you have to think, what do you want Nancy Reagan, who's running the country to astrology is that the sort of

Unknown Speaker  1:12:46
point where they were talking about her being in cabinet meetings, whether she belong there,

Unknown Speaker  1:12:50
you know, when you know that, you know, I mean, women, husbands talk to their wives, you know, it just happens, and one of whom was it, you know, if you've got some talent there, it seems like a very logical strength to drawn. But, but I think, you know, the answer is that we are all confused about that specific issue. Now, whether that's the crux of the problem that men are having with women's roles. I mean, this is, I guess, you know, one example of that, but I do think that come up in your conversations with them about it's the

Unknown Speaker  1:13:22
whole I think Hillary Clinton's people find her very, very troubling and I'm very active Democrat in their county and I'll be very honest with you, I find that very troubling. And while I spend a lot of time talking about how brave is well before the election, and now about this great new administration, I myself, you know, I'll sit down I'll say Well, I agree with everything they're talking about, you know, just on a personal level. So I find that somebody Bergen County in New Jersey, which is a very interesting County, and that's it's primarily Republican, though there for the first time in I think 20 years as New Jersey as a whole you see emerging interest in democratic issues of voting Democrat for the first time for many years. So men have never spoken to just Republicans it's it's really scary. I think the men so young really just have these they just look to me like Hillary Clinton and they say no, she's she's you know, what was she talking about? You know, as well I remember back then, yeah. Because your hand

Unknown Speaker  1:14:36
and I have brothers in their 50s One of them is a fundamentalist the other one is libertarian.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:59
Yeah, about the people who

Unknown Speaker  1:15:01
wonder, for your friends that are coming up. I wonder as the roles are changing, and as we see more women and we accept the Janet Reno's and we celebrate women, judges, etc. I think change is always difficult. And if your mom was, especially if their moms were home, and were traditional llamas, so I think that gives them the time I find.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:36
In New York, it was a very urban kind of population. And I find the number of men in my class are willing to discuss diapers. I mean, I couldn't believe that you take classes to Mansell, market and financial management. And suddenly you guys get on the subject of what brand is dying. Now that father is your Father,

Unknown Speaker  1:16:02
can I just add one thing? Before I get back to you because I know you've had your hand up. But when I was speaking about these reactions to feminist, this was the research where we actually asked people we have the variety of questions that we asked them. Well, what comes to mind when you think about feminism? And I have to say that what was troubling about reactions, it's not just among men, but there are people. Some people, you know, I think there may be some confusion out there, but always a small percentage, the smallest percentage of people would say things like, what did he do support equal rights? They're working on issues of concern to women who had a sort of more, more when you think about you when you speak about feminism. These are some of the principles that are invoked to discuss it. But the most common comments were more things to do with the radical extreme, divisive, troublemakers, sometimes even references to sexual preference. Occasionally references very pejorative words like ditch, unattractive, ugly, men don't wear makeup. Yeah, that would make up your hairy legs, all this sort of stuff. You know, no clients admit some of that those were outliers. I mean, people were a little more polite about it than that. But it's interesting to see what the popular conception is. And what I was going to say is that among young men, again, in this particular study, and this was a study that we did, it was a local population on Long Island in Suffolk County, Suffolk County is also quite conservative. And so it was, I mean, young men by far have most unflattering portrait a feminist and they were virtually to one, were unprepared to call themselves a feminist. Now, among older age groups of men and women were quite willing, you know, about a third, roughly between, you know, 25 to 35%, of men and women were willing to call themselves a feminist in that same study in that same study, but it was among the young people in particular with and the young men in particular, who are very unwilling to think of themselves and finished and hence very extreme view, you know, maybe things right, but whatever, but they had the least positive view of what feminists were on about. And even though even though the same individuals said that they supported things like women getting together to organize to further their rights, and that they thought absolutely the women who mentioned have equal roles. I mean, these were not individuals who would retrograde on those same sorts of questions. And so something has happened.

Unknown Speaker  1:18:34
It's a word. It's a wooded. Section politician of scraping the bottom of the barrel. I'm sorry, yes. You know, I just want to

Unknown Speaker  1:18:57
say that this the Hillary thing, I certainly don't understand what the objections are. But for working woman, but nepotism is a problem. And nepotism would be a problem for me of data stature. We're running the government and I had a British citizen who voted for Margaret, I don't know that he should be a co head. I mean, for he was a very mild man did not pay for it. I never, I never liked the idea. Bobby Kennedy being an attorney general. I mean, this is, you know, this is a problem I and I don't I don't think it has anything to do with the Clintons. But this is probably the first case where he said, you know, the strength of the of the light. And therefore, it's taken the role of the presidency and rule number.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:47
Well, the formal the formal nepotism problem won't be a problem anymore, because it's illegal. Okay,

Unknown Speaker  1:20:00
I think there's I think there are two parts of Hillary to consider your one is I mean, her personality and like, get people upset. But then But then But then the idea of someone, you know, this high power person being, you know, a spouse in the White House. I mean, the two things you have to keep in mind here, there's there's, there's the one thing is that you have both you have a president and a First Lady who are very young, and who will have careers beyond the White House that will be visible for a long time. So in a sense, this is a this is a career, a career move for Hillary, whether whether it bill, whether bill, I mean, Bill will be will be out of office in 96, if not by 96, the year 2000. And they will move on to other things. And I think, you know, she's, she may be looking. Oh, I believe so. And I wouldn't rule the presidency. The other thing and yet, the other thing, just the other piece of data here, there was a newspaper article about their their tax return. Yeah. She was, I mean, Bills, Bills, Bills, income as governor of Arkansas was $36,000. Hillary's income was 200, some odd $1,000. And I commented to my wife, I said, Yeah, I know why bill, one would be president. 200,000 hours is a lot of money

Unknown Speaker  1:21:16
allocated to us with these comments that I didn't say what it's worth to us. Yeah. We want points of view it for us as a soundbite is taken out of context, so that I can understand. But when we just looked at, let's say that she really did say that I think there's a group of women that call themselves feminists, and to stay home, bring up their children and say, This is what I want to do. As a woman, I feel this is important, She assaulted them by saying anything remark like that. Now, if it was a soundbite, I don't know. But I think that perhaps it was not thought out on on her behalf to make some

Unknown Speaker  1:21:55
comments up.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:57
One thing that we should think about is, you know, the way in which women are covered by the media, in essence, she's become very visible to political figures. And as you mentioned earlier about, about women candidates, and somebody you mentioned about women candidates having to be better, when you get an awful lot of scrutiny by the media and people and maybe, you know, sometimes you wouldn't even want. And I was gonna say that there is some studies, also that have been looking at the way which wouldn't have been covered for Senate races, and found that the kind of coverage that they get is different, that in fact, there's more emphasis on things like the viability, what we call the horse race aspect of campaigns in political science. So people talk more about are they ahead behind, and this is when they may be an incumbent office holder. And it's a comparison with other male incumbent office holders. There's also some more sort of stereotypical coverage of their issue positions on, you know, what you might think of as women's kinds of issues, you know, with the childcare, all that sort of stuff, maybe less attention to other things that determine to say, I mean, probably, anecdotally, you've seen the coverage of clothing, what you know, what, what you are currently wearing, you know, all of that sort of stuff seems to be somewhat of an obsession. So, you know, you worry that somehow we're holding women up to different standards or higher standards, or expecting too much of them. And that it's just really difficult to meet some of those expectations. The one thing I was gonna say about Hillary Clinton, I sometimes wonder, and a lot of women politicians do this, these days, they're trying to emphasize the sort of the tough side of the cells and the warm and caring, like the tried to be both, they try to promote this image of themselves as nice mommies who've got little kids and they bake cookies. And on the other hand, they're high powered lawyers, and they go into fight crime and, and beetle, that sort of stuff. And in fact, you see this explicitly in like Dianne Feinstein is often used to campaign slogan, tough carry or something. It's just a direct play on both of those. But in Hillary's Claire, she seems to be, you know, in terms of the pelvic Pro Plus, she's missing something in the warmth department. And the woman carrying department now, is that so would you worry if she were a first man? No, would you want him to be sucked guiding? So, you know, again, you worry, we just ticked off with her because she doesn't, she's not everything. And she doesn't fit the profile of a typical, you know, there's a very simple ideas that people sometimes apply to politics. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:24:35
something that I observed anecdotally, like they maybe confirm and this is true for certain. I had a district that was very much split between upper middle class, middle class, college educated people and blue collar, high school educated people. And a speech that could grow really well but women in the college educated It's all about blue collar, blue collar crime in this section, you're going to get very different responses on your questions, depending on economic and educational statuses,

Unknown Speaker  1:25:13
Oh, yeah. And in various blogs, it varies by kind of kind of issue for certain for certain kinds of economic issues. It's the income character of the, of the constituency that makes a difference for the, for certain kinds of social issues. Like, like, well, well, I'm okay, but, but for issues like that, things like abortion and civil rights, that are that don't have a direct economic component that instead it's the it's the education, character, rather characteristic, rather than the income characteristic, with more education being associated with a little more liberalism on those those kinds of social issues. No, clearly, their constituents, the audience makes a difference. And as people who you know, is people were involved in campaigns and so forth, know, you picture your picture, your speech to the audience, and you have to be careful, you have to be careful about the characteristics of the audience.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:09
No, actually, the worst thing to come. Like, I was perceived as a feminist lawyer, politician, I mean, if you want to have all that, like, get into too much about that. But the people who heard both of us and who I would, I would regard as open minded, I thought that I sounded a lot better than he did. Didn't seem to keep most people who voted for Hillary. And I, I think part of that just has to do with that kind of local level, what you really feel like wasn't getting around and getting to meet as many people as you can and try to do everything in a short period of time with my kids. My second, okay was too short to do that. But taking on problems, I think, and again, you probably I'm sure you've seen this, it's very difficult to overcome a map of who they are. It doesn't seem to matter. People will get attached to whoever they feel competent, and unless the person has done something very bad, then

Unknown Speaker  1:27:22
you have the other claim that's made us the company usually as more money available. True? Well, I mean, I don't know if it wasn't

Unknown Speaker  1:27:29
true.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:31
But again, on that level, learning is not really the the overriding factor.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:36
What about did you run out? And did you run it on a party ticket, and up and come it was the opposite the other party? Okay, so

Unknown Speaker  1:27:46
this is a district that

Unknown Speaker  1:27:49
has been held by a woman, the current comes to them and support him, there were two of them. At first, the second one would actually pick the first one out. Then she went on to run for Congress unsuccessfully. And this guy, another gentleman in between those guys came there. And who's the last one coming to run against this fell off the last two times that night, but at this time, people kept telling me to do it a couple more times, because it takes

Unknown Speaker  1:28:25
persistence and you give him hopefully, each time you learn more stocks, and people unfamiliar with TNA,

Unknown Speaker  1:28:31
but I'm still trying to figure out how

Unknown Speaker  1:28:34
diverse this was one thing that it is true in terms of gender differences. Well educated professional women are quite different from well educated professional men in the support of with a whole range of women's issues that if you want to look to a group that's pretty strongly feminist, you start looking at very well educated, professional women. And you know, us, basically, and we seem to be different from other people, in some respects, in terms of the way we look at some of these issues. And often that stands out even by comparison to similarly educated men. That I mean, it's a combination for those of us who are in professions where there aren't a lot of women. It doesn't take long to put two and two together and figure it's not going to be easy. And so you get I think politicize that one and the whole variety of other words. So so when you speak to well educated women, it's even more expensive. Yes,

Unknown Speaker  1:29:32
I got a question that occurred to me while you were talking about the trying to discern whether there are any differences between male politicians and female politicians. And as someone who loves politicians actually are particularly last

Unknown Speaker  1:29:43
candidates.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:46
My partner and I see a candidate that we know is good, and how can we know he just knows personality? So I've wondered if there were any subscribers. Now this exemption is not the public stands for personality type is most likely to make a successful career politician or the most likely to pursue that line of work,

Unknown Speaker  1:30:06
or make a good

Unknown Speaker  1:30:09
try to think about studies have. I mean, people have looked at what the kinds of personalities are the kinds of traits, the personality traits that they're looking for. And some of that, I mean, in some of the work that I've done actually varies by office a little bit. I mean, we were looking at it in terms of what what what a typically masculine feminine traits, so you're asking about personality types, but

Unknown Speaker  1:30:33
thank you for standing, it's

Unknown Speaker  1:30:34
like, you know, you take it people tell you make a terrible

Unknown Speaker  1:30:37
nurses.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:42
Politicians?

Unknown Speaker  1:30:44
Well, I mean, it was the first thing that the academic, the academic studies and other studies say that personality and character make makes a difference in terms of the kinds of desirable qualities I mean, it's in a lot of ways the kind of blow dried Bill Clinton type or John Kennedy image, the case of men is helpful. But But, but but they're always examples that really run against that. I mean, Ed Koch in New York, I mean, I mean, it's, you know, it's an example. If you look if you if you want to look at you know, women candidates, there's there's, there's a lot of variation in, in personality and character. And maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the thing is, you need to be sort of a character, whether the character is an actor type character, or a Bella absent type character. Maybe you need something distinctive, but what that distinctive character is.

Unknown Speaker  1:31:42
More than a normal

Unknown Speaker  1:31:45
durability.

Unknown Speaker  1:31:50
I just want to say something in defense of Hillary, I have mixed feelings. I felt the serious illness of Krypton human gotten into step took her out to a little rah, to be with him. And he, like that does show our Washington but she was away. But then he went out with at least twice before Mr. Ronstadt. And I said to someone this morning, I'm looking for Bill Clinton, I've met and he's, anyway, during the campaign he was accusing me of working on, but anyway, I feel that that illness and deaths or they lost their momentum. He was doing well, I felt, and she apparently didn't have as much criticism of herself. And well, anyway, I felt that practice some she has two brothers, you had two sons as he went out to be with him. And I don't fault him for that. I think I think it was wonderful. But I think it's, it was an absence from Washington, that a man a son might not have taken,

Unknown Speaker  1:33:01
had been how do you think what would public reaction be like? I'm not suggesting that this was cynically designed, but on the other hand, given the kinds of public reactions to Well, I think, no, no, no, but I think that it would have been, I mean, it would have been terrible if she hadn't been there. You know, you're just saying they had some deleterious consequences by the FBI. But on the other hand, I think in terms of public reactions to her, given the way that she perceived it was, you know, wise, fortuitous, fortuitous that she did she was there. I'm not suggesting that was,

Unknown Speaker  1:33:39
in terms of the political policy consequences, the fact that it's a few things have not gone putting his weight lately. I don't I don't think that had any. I don't think they had any effects on that. I think the Republicans were doing their political work and other things were happening to work that, that those responses had no effect on.

Unknown Speaker  1:33:56
The question to the liberty of the statement, in my county, we descend to the process of nominating Democratic candidates to run against the Republicans in November and November leading to that he was willing to nominate who would go into run. I accept them here. It is one statement that we should call it a woman because we want a woman that will guarantee at least 1000 2000 more votes. Now, is that a valid statement? Is that true? Because, of course, I was in support of a woman representing us and running for the Democratic ticket. I was wondering if that is true, what they're saying and

Unknown Speaker  1:34:28
my assessment of looking people have looked very hard to see at looking at election outcomes, whether it makes a difference. Now in terms of the actual votes that women and men get, for example, in comparable kinds of races. The challenge is running against an incumbent on their incumbents, whatever state local or national. It's a wash out there's no difference.

Unknown Speaker  1:34:52
Those nails Okay.

Unknown Speaker  1:34:53
However, however, however, if you're if you're a party having to nominate You're a sort of slate of candidates for a diverse number of opposites and you want to do things to bolster turnout. I think there there's there's no direct evidence in the United States. But there's there's stuff in countries and places that have proportional representation voting where you put up where you don't run people for districts one by one, but you put up a slate, and your party gets as many seats as as, as, basically as the party gets votes. Those systems have to carry interesting characteristics. One is they have higher foot higher voter turnout. And two, they have higher levels of representation of people in different ethnic and gender groups. And they're the incentive is, is that they haven't shown us for putting up a diverse ticket to mobilize voters and to get greater representation. So let's

Unknown Speaker  1:35:41
be honest, I wouldn't leave the line argument is is is good. So you can always argue for the turnout. We don't know if that's right or wrong. But But it's an interesting argument. And maybe you could make that.

Unknown Speaker  1:35:53
And Democrats who typically make the argument that if we get more, the more turnout we get, the better we use, Democrats will do on average? Well, the data don't show that on average, Democrats do that much better with greater turnout, but it's only slightly mixed. I mean, it's common sensical that that Democrats will get better, we'll get more votes, because the people who are who will come out to vote, didn't vote for forwards, you know, lower socioeconomic status and minorities and things of that sort. But the data are not overwhelming to show you please turn out when this story helps the Democrats automatically.

Unknown Speaker  1:36:21
I want to talk.

Unknown Speaker  1:36:31
To election, common sense, candidate, and at one of our literature committee meetings, I said, No, this may be a time to capitalize on all immediate attention as new candidates are getting. Put some of that into our literature. And I met with resistance from every other person on the campaign claim that we would distinctively Foster was just the two emotions in common. So there was not a lot of local races. They were very, and I heard the stories from various people in different parts of the county. It depended on whether you were a good candidate, but he was not an across the board. issues by candidate in particular to that

Unknown Speaker  1:37:15
was interesting. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:37:16
yeah. I mean, I think what it's complicated, a lot of complicated stuff, when everyone is on a campaign has a point of view about goals, gleaned from some way or another that often they conflicting. And sometimes they you know, some people have enough money to do the right research to tell them the answer. But if you're running for local office, you're working on hearsay, I think a lot of the time you don't have the resources to go out into pose and find out what's really gonna work. What is it

Unknown Speaker  1:37:45
it's interesting how gender came up, came up in a lot of important context. Well, one thing that occurred to me in the case of the Waco Texas event was that would public reaction has been different had the Attorney General been a man

Unknown Speaker  1:38:01
a difference in I don't know what the task was cancer or personality. It was in the way the men involved in the way it handled the press and the way, renown handled the press. And I think that there was much more willingness on the part of the nail to rake it out, and, you know, really come out with very innocuous statements, but without any doubt that I am right. Whereas with dad right now, it was a very different kind of approach that I think it's interesting we were talking about earlier, that from the beginning of the week to the end of the week, it became a more positive thing. It's

Unknown Speaker  1:38:46
the beginning of the week, she

Unknown Speaker  1:38:47
was asked if she's gonna quit her job. I don't think a man would win. But I do think, you know, we talked earlier, is there a difference in the way women handled things and the way men do and we could argue that for a long time, but there certainly was a difference with Dan and Lena, as a woman and as a politician handled that situation and took the blame right away. I said, you know, I may have been wrong. For me, I thought it was political nine. We have to delete that

Unknown Speaker  1:39:25
smartness and went directly on Larry King Show.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:30
She was he was on.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:33
I love about 20 hours a day. 10 show and had the one after another it was more the same co noticed it I was really

Unknown Speaker  1:39:52
color that she had read that day in any event, it was handled very differently than men generally handle. And so it is a difference in style and

Unknown Speaker  1:40:05
who she I mean, one thing that it seemed consistent with her experiences in Miami that she had quite a contentious brain in Miami for a while. And apparently she learned to do this initially, it she had a lot more difficulty and learned how better to deal with public relations, because she was in the middle of a lot of contentious issues, I think there and so this is a direct consequence. I mean, she's an experienced person who's dealt with a multi ethnic city and a lot of very contentious situations before. repression, I

Unknown Speaker  1:40:35
think that has been growing up with Hillary and her cookies. I think that a lot of people that are relatively new to handling press, men and women and watch male friends that got into the public, and we just do a lot of very things that can be held against us very quickly, in dealing with depression.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:01
Someone said, on television newscaster 100 That one perhaps one reason why Janet Reno was so excellent general may not what is that? She her parents were journalists and the brothers. And she knew she had to get out there and tell the story. And she bet she said, I had been wrong, but that's what they saw. Because the fact is a woman character, a human being

Unknown Speaker  1:41:33
do the other as well. The other the other matter, I think perhaps maybe worth bringing up and closing on was the educative function of the Zoe Baird nomination, which which I which I think between that and Anita Hill has been sort of major events and sort of public education and discourse about the nature of politics and women assigned

Unknown Speaker  1:41:58
a job that doesn't come up for comparison last year review I'm not sure that it was just within the last one for 30 days give an assignment by Bill Clinton on sometimes advisory judicial advisory and it was I think that took a lot to

Unknown Speaker  1:42:22
love about being

Unknown Speaker  1:42:24
yes being appointed

Unknown Speaker  1:42:29
she really does into college never How can you picture

Unknown Speaker  1:42:33
another administration that signing with that background does that kind of position she was voted down we have the woman who was showman

Unknown Speaker  1:42:54
because she she had not gone to college and she said

Unknown Speaker  1:42:58
she's not always the kind of capital for

Unknown Speaker  1:43:04
punishments and rewards.

Unknown Speaker  1:43:14
Well, I mean, that was a very fruitful I think an interesting discussion. They can start with formal part of this and if you want to talk more informally,

Unknown Speaker  1:43:23
we can we can turn the tape recorder off