After the disruption, alienation, and insecurity of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the family, more so than ever before, became the center of American life. Couples wed early (in the late 1950s the average age of American women at marriage was 20) and in proportions that surpassed those of all previous eras and have not been equaled since. They reared large families. Many moved to sprawling, affordable tract housing developments in the suburbs, bought modern conveniences ranging from cars to dishwashers, and enjoyed more leisure time.
Postwar prosperity made the banalities of housework less taxing but often came at a cost to the women who gave up careers to maintain the domestic sphere. This lifestyle stressed the importance of a one-income household, with the husband working and the wife staying at home to raise the children. Historian Elaine Tyler May called it a kind of “domestic containment”: In seeking to nurture their families in the suburbs of the 1950s, housewives and mothers often gave up their aspirations for fulfillment outside the home.39 For instance, the decline in the proportion of women who sought higher education degrees can be attributed in large part to marital and familial priorities. In 1920, 47 percent of college students were women; by 1958, that figure stood at 38 percent, despite the availability of more federal aid to pay for university education.40
Social expectations for what constituted a woman’s proper role outside the home constrained women Members of Congress as well. When asked if women were handicapped in the rough-and-tumble of political campaigns because society held them to different standards than men, Maurine Neuberger, who served for years in the Oregon legislature before succeeding her late husband in the U.S. Senate, replied, “Definitely. . . . A woman enters into a man’s world of politics, into back-fighting and grubbing. Before she puts her name on the ballot, she encounters prejudice and people saying, ‘A woman’s place is in the home.’ She has to walk a very tight wire in conducting her campaign. She can’t be too pussyfooting or mousy. Also, she can’t go to the other extreme: belligerent, coarse, nasty.”41 Congresswoman Gracie Pfost observed that a woman seeking political office “must be willing to have her every motive challenged, her every move criticized,” and added that she “must submit to having her private life scrutinized under a microscope . . . and [being] the subject of devastating rumors every day.”42
The primacy of family responsibilities and the power of society’s expectations of what constituted a “woman’s sphere” in the 1950s is aptly illustrated by the demise of Coya Knutson’s congressional career. The first woman to represent Minnesota, Knutson was an early advocate for the creation of a food stamp program, funding for school lunches, and federal student loans. But after two terms, her abusive husband sabotaged her promising career by conspiring with her opposition to publicly embarrass Knutson. He accused her (falsely) of neglecting their family, which included a young adopted son, and of having an affair with a Washington aide. The press sensationalized the story, along with Andy Knutson’s plea, “Coya come home.” In the 1958 elections, Knutson’s opposition subtly exploited this theme, and her constituents voted her out of office by a slim 1,390-vote margin. Although the House elections subcommittee agreed with Knutson’s complaint that the accusations had contributed to her defeat, the damage had been done. Knutson’s 1960 bid for re-election failed by an even wider margin.
Knutson’s experience reinforced the widely held perception that women politicians could not manage both a career and family. The debate over balancing domestic responsibilities and professional life lasted well into the 1990s, and though male political opponents were less inclined to exploit it in latter decades, women politicians were repeatedly put on the defensive by the media and constituents who raised the issue.
Shifting social norms quickly altered staid notions of domesticity. Amidst the routine of household duties, many postwar wives and mothers were frustrated by their lack of professional fulfillment. Betty Friedan memorably identified this malaise as “the problem with no name” in her landmark book The Feminine Mystique (1963). The book’s popularity attested to Friedan’s connection with a feeling of discontent. Daughters who came of age in the 1960s were determined to make their lives less constrained than those of their mothers. Consequently, the women’s rights movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s challenged many of the traditional notions of motherhood and marital relationships.43 Many young women rejected the sexual conventions of their parents’ generation. Open discussion of sexuality and cohabitation outside marriage became more socially accepted. As birth control became more widely available, women exercised greater control over when, or if, they would have children. In the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) decision, the Supreme Court upheld on the grounds of privacy a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy.
Sexual and reproductive freedom provided more options for women, who previously chose either a career or marriage. By the 1970s, many marriages involved two careers, as both the husband and the wife worked and, increasingly, shared familial duties. These added stress to family life. The divorce rate rose, and the phenomenon of the single, working mother became more commonplace. Yet, throughout this period, more young women pursued careers in traditionally male-dominated fields such as law, medicine, and business—loosening their bonds to home and hearth and preparing the way for a new and larger generation of women in state and national politics.
These changes profoundly altered the characteristics of the women who were elected to Congress from the 1970s onward. As younger women entered the institution, they faced questions about motherhood and family. Like many of their contemporaries outside politics, some Congresswomen chose motherhood as well as a career. In November 1973, a year after winning election to the U.S. House, Yvonne Burke gave birth to a daughter, Autumn, becoming the first sitting Member of Congress to become a mother.
Young mothers in Congress entered territory where few, if any, of their predecessors could provide guidance. Representative Schroeder recalled that several weeks after her first election, Congresswoman Bella Abzug telephoned to congratulate her. Abzug then asked incredulously how Schroeder, the mother of two young children, planned to maintain two careers: Representative and mom. “I told her I really wasn’t sure and had hoped she would give the answer, not ask the question!” Schroeder said. 44 Service in Congress, she recalled, placed many extra demands on her family and required some creativity on her part—bringing diapers onto the House Floor in her handbag, keeping a bowl of crayons on her office coffee table, moving the family wholesale from Denver to Washington, and contending with her husband’s decision to leave his career to follow hers.45 Schroeder’s contemporaries and later women Members often echoed her descriptions of the disruption and uprooting of familial rhythms.
The younger generation of feminist lawmakers also tended to buck many of Capitol Hill’s most visible discriminatory and patronizing practices. In the 1960s, Patsy Mink publicly protested the House gym’s exclusionary policy towards women by marching on the facility with Charlotte Reid and Catherine Dean May. “It was just a symbolic gesture that there are so many ways in which sex discrimination manifests itself in the form of social custom, mores or whatever, that you really have to make an issue whenever it strikes to protest it,” Mink recalled. “You can’t tolerate it.”46 The women also complained that the only bathroom facilities directly off the House Floor were for men. By the early 1960s, there were nearly 20 women Members sharing a single lavatory. Congresswoman Edith Green appealed to the House Administration Committee to set aside a space for the women, and in 1962, they were assigned a suite off the Old House Chamber that included a powder room, a kitchen, and a sitting area. Eventually the suite was named the Lindy Claiborne Boggs Congressional Women’s Reading Room in honor of Representative Boggs’s long service to the institution.47
Deviating from traditional dress codes was another way women challenged congressional custom. Bella Abzug broke long-standing tradition when she insisted on wearing her trademark hat onto the House Floor. Others followed her lead, often contending with resistance and outright scorn. “The day I wore a pants suit onto the floor you’d have thought I asked for a land base for China,” Armed Services member Pat Schroeder told a local newspaper. “I just want to do my job. Does it make any difference if I have a bow in my hair or not?”48
Feminists not only challenged their male colleagues; they also questioned the conviction, prevalent among the older generation of Congresswomen, that they should not organize to champion their own agenda. In 1971, Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm helped organize the National Women’s Political Caucus to promote greater participation of women in all aspects of U.S. politics. More than 320 women attended the founding conference in Washington, D.C.49 Abzug, Chisholm, and other new Members, including Schroeder and Holtzman, pushed to create a formal congressional women’s caucus, both to organize women and to educate the rank-and-file Membership about issues of special importance to women. Early efforts floundered, however, without the sanction of senior women leaders. The most influential among them—Leonor Sullivan, Julia Hansen, and Edith Green—subscribed to more-traditional views and generally hoped to avoid the establishment of a women’s caucus.50
This clash was primarily generational rather than ideological, pitting older Democratic Members against a younger cadre of party members. By 1970, the dean of congressional women was 68-year-old Representative Sullivan, who proved far more traditional than many of her younger colleagues. She was the only Congresswoman to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment, not only because she believed it was a threat to labor laws, but because she believed it would jeopardize the family. “I believe that wholesome family life is the backbone of civilization,” Sullivan said. Passage of the ERA would “accelerate the breakup of home life.”51 She added, “There are differences between male and female roles in our society and I hope there always are.”52 Sullivan refused to countenance a women’s caucus because she believed it unnecessary and a possible affront to male colleagues. Julia Hansen, a pioneer at virtually every level of Washington state government, also showed little support for a women’s caucus. Having made her way in the male political world principally by hard work, talent, and determination, without benefit of caucuses or women’s groups, Hansen was reluctant to advocate a caucus that would distinguish her based on her gender.53 Caucus advocates also received no support from Edith Green. Like Sullivan, Representative Green viewed a potential women’s caucus as a polarizing force that would do little to ease divisions and might even hinder legislation that addressed inequities for women and minorities.54
Other factors added to the reluctance to create a women’s group. The leadership’s lack of support for the effort led some women to question the legitimacy and staying power of a women’s caucus. Others, elected by more-conservative constituencies, feared they might alienate voters by joining a group that likely would advocate nontraditional issues. Also, many Members were particularly concerned with the probable participation of Bella Abzug, a domineering and highly partisan Member some feared might quickly become the public face of the caucus.
New impetus for organization came after Sullivan, Green, and Hansen retired in the mid-1970s and Abzug left the House to run for the Senate in 1976. By 1977, the deans of House women—Republican Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts and Democrat Shirley Chisholm of New York, elected in 1966 and 1968, respectively— had only about a decade of seniority.55 These changes enabled a renewed effort to form a women’s caucus and continued emphasis on legislation that addressed women’s economic, social, and health concerns.