The saga of women in local politics is a dizzying tale of gains and losses, breakthroughs and setbacks, triumphs and heartbreaks. For every step or two forward, there’s a step or more backward. It’s a tango more confounding than the dance steps diagrammed on Broadway.
The story here begins in the 1850s when women alternately were allowed and then barred from voting. Initially they took part in school district elections, in keeping with the belief that women had a “sphere” that included hearth, home and children.
Throughout the 19th Century, the territorial government and then the State Legislature took multiple votes on woman’s suffrage. Once a House committee denied the right by a vote of five to seven. Another time the outcome was 15 to 11. Much opposition came from the liquor and beer lobby which feared that women, if allowed to vote, would impose prohibition.
Granted the vote for a time in the 1880s, women lost again when a gambler, indicted by a grand jury that included women, took his case to the territorial Supreme Court and won, revoking the franchise.
Finally, thanks to the persistence of this state’s suffragists, women did gain the vote in Washington in 1910. It would be a full ten years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed and women went to the polls across the nation. A mere six years later, Seattle elected its first – and so far only – woman mayor, Bertha Knight Landes.
Mayor Landes , first woman to head a major city, instigated sweeping reforms. During her two-year term, she cleaned up corruption so successfully that her tenure provoked a backlash. The downtown establishment wanted Seattle to profit from a look-the-other-way tolerance policy. Sin was in again. It would be decades before Seattle had more than a lone woman on the Seattle City Council.
Not until the 1970s and the advent of the latest of four women’s liberation movement s – would Seattle have more than the token woman councilmember. By then, Seattle had elected Wing Luke, the first Asian-American, and Sam Smith, the first African-American, to the City Council.
Gains for women on the council came incrementally with the election of accomplished women, including Phyllis Lamphere, Jeanette Williams, Dolores Sibonga, Virginia Galle, Jane Noland, Margaret Pageler, Sue Donaldson, Cheryl Chow, Sherry Harris, Martha Choe and Tina Podlodowski.
The high water mark for women on the council came in 1994 when Jan Drago was seated as the seventh woman councilmember. It was a time of great civic optimism, the feeling that any child of any race or gender could grow up to achieve a leadership position. Women brought a new energy to the legislative branch. Take the time in the 1990s when downtown leadership decided the new Seattle Central Library should be permanently housed – on the cheap, naturally – on lower floors beneath an expanded Washington State Convention Center.
It was a slap at the City Council’s visionaries. They reacted instantly, opposing the pound-wise/penny-foolish proposition. It was the prelude for the Libraries for All campaign that, since then, has brought Seattle and its downtown main branch international acclaim. Meanwhile, the council’s quicksilver response gave the city a good laugh and a movement they called SLICE – Seattle Ladies in Charge Everything.
The seven to two gender ratio was the high watermark. Changes followed. Each election seemed to erode the number of women on the council. When I joined in 2004, Jan Drago and I were, the only women on the council.
When Jim Compton left the council midterm in 2006, the council appointed Sally Clark as an interim member. She since has won two elections. The council lineup for this August’s primary includes 15 male candidates but only two women. One can only wonder why women are so much more reluctant to take on a council campaign.
In the end, does it matter whether the council has a balance of men and women? Do women legislate differently? My own experience, first as an observer and then as a participant, leads me to believe that they – we – do tend to have stylistic and philosophical differences. Arguably, the pioneers were correct in their belief that women had closer links to hearth, home and children.
There’s supporting evidence for that view. When working with the Center for Women and Democracy, training women in Morocco and Jordan to run for office, I was surprised that women from opposing political backgrounds had remarkably similar political platforms. Whether conservative or liberal, they all voiced support for three issues: education, jobs and health care.
The fact is, Seattle government seems to function best when the council most reflects the breadth, vitality and ethnic diversity of the population, male and female. Seattle can profit from having both women and men on the council, from having councilmembers with diverse backgrounds and life experiences. It’s been my privilege to serve with some extraordinary officials. In our differences there is strength.