Gendered Politics

Campaign Strategies of California Women Candidates, 19121970

By (author) Linda Van Ingen

Publication date:

07 February 2017

Length of book:

274 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498537605

This book explores women’s campaign strategies when they ran for state and national office in California from their first opportunity after state suffrage in 1911 to the advent of modern feminism in 1970. Although only 18 won, nearly 500 women ran on the primary ballots, changing the political landscape for both men and women while struggling against a collective forgetfulness about their work. Mostly white and middle-class until the 1960s, the women discussed in this book are notable for their campaign innovations which became increasingly complex, even if not consciously connected to a usable past. They re-gendered politics as political “firsts,” pursued high hopes for organizational support from their women’s clubs, accommodated to opportunities created through incumbency and issue politics, and explored both separatist and integrationists politics with their parties. In bringing these campaigns to light, this study explores the history of California women legislators and the ways in which women on the ballots sought to transcend gendered barriers, supporting women’s equality while also recognizing the political value of connections to men in power. Organized in a loose chronology with the state’s governors, this study shows the persistent nature of women’s candidacies despite a recurring historical amnesia that complicated their progress. Remembering this history deepens our understanding of women running for office today and solidifies their credibility in a long history of women politicians.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Historical Firsts: Women Candidates Re-gender Politics (1910s)
Chapter 2: Incumbents, Widows, and New Competitors (1920s)
Chapter 3: Partisan Loyalties, Separatist Tensions, and Integrationist Politics (1930s)
Chapter 4: Familial Connections, Incumbent Succession, and Accommodation Politics (1940s)
Chapter 5: Party Power and its Limits (1950s)
Chapter 6: Issue Politics: Liberal, Conservative and Extremist Agendas (1960s)
Epilogue: Feminist Politics (1970s and beyond)
Bibliography
Appendix

In her fascinating study of the nearly 500 women who ran for elective office in California between 1912 and 1970, Linda Van Ingen reveals both the consistent determination of women to serve in electoral offices and the strategies they devised to succeed. Perhaps most important, she argues that one of the reasons electoral politics has proven such a hard nut for women to crack is that female aspirants to political office have not known the long history of women’s engagement in the electoral arena and so have had constantly to reinvent the wheel. Gendered Politics is an important antidote to this crippling historical amnesia.