Voices and visions Recording the reflections of prominent American women Archived article from Oct 21, 2002 By Joni Scanlon   Bella Abzug's death in 1998 left Ruth Mandel keenly regretful that she hadn't found the opportunity to interview Abzug about the pivotal role she had played in advancing women's rights during the 1960s and 1970s. Then, when New York Times reporter Eileen Shanahan — who challenged her male editors to chronicle the early days of the women's movement — died last November, Mandel became determined to do something. "I knew that I didn't want to go to many more funerals of prominent women without having captured at least one hour's worth of their voices and their visions preserved in a visual way," says Mandel, who is director of Rutgers' Eagleton Institute of Politics. Mandel shared her thoughts with her frequent collaborator, Mary Hartman, who directs the Institute for Women's Leadership at Douglass College. Together, with an SROA grant from Rutgers, the women launched "Talking Leadership: Conversations With American Women Leaders." The long-term project hopes to attract adequate funding to interview and preserve on videotape the perspectives and recollections of many of the prominent women who shaped the women's movement of the late 20th century. The videotaped interviews will be archived in the new Margery Somers Foster Center at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, where they will be available to students, scholars, journalists and others interested in exploring that period. "Bella's death had a tremendous impact on me. She was such a force in the women's political movement, and then she was gone," says Mandel. "I felt that we couldn't let that happen again. We should find a way to interview those who are still here. We must capture their perceptions, perspectives and memories of what was such an important chapter in American political history and certainly a turning point in U.S. women's history." The project will do just that by recording conversational interviews with women who were instrumental in defining the second wave of the women's movement — that period spanning the 1960s and 1970s in which women made tremendous strides in the home, in the workplace and in politics. "It's a fascinating period to document," Hartman notes. "Women's progress was so dramatic that nobody could have missed it. We witnessed a quantum leap in opportunities, in doors opening for women." Among the women who have already been interviewed for the project are feminist author Betty Friedan; Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress; Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run on a major political party's presidential ticket; Anita Borg, president and founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology; Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Barbara Roberts, Oregon's first woman governor; and longtime civil rights activist Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. "These interviews are wider ranging than typical interviews," says Hartman. "We've already made up our minds that these are women who made remarkable contributions. We're much more interested in how they did it — how they configured their theories and what kind of obstacles they confronted." Hartman says the women leaders interviewed share several traits, most salient of which is a deep passion for their respective causes. "They are impatient with the whole notion about ‘being a leader,' about developing leadership," says Hartman. "Again and again, they believe that you have to care about something and care about it a lot. You must have a passion to do something particular, and then everything else falls into place. "This theme runs across different socioeconomic groups and different ethnic groups. For example, when we interviewed Eleanor Holmes Norton, who grew up in a middle-class African-American family, she spoke about this passion for justice and equity that guided everything else she did. Meanwhile, Barbara Roberts, whose family were blue-collar whites, said that she thought one couldn't be a leader without passion and risk taking." Also emerging in the interviews is the subjects' unrelenting optimism, a trait that, while inspiring, sometimes proves frustrating for the interviewers. "Most of these women are so eager to encourage younger generations that there's a tendency to gloss over the tough stuff. They don't want to turn off young women from entering the fray. So when we ask them about what was really tough, some don't want to talk about it, and we really have to push them." Other prominent women the interviewers hope to sit down with include such renowned figures as Ms. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem; Roe vs. Wade attorney Sarah Weddington; Jewell Jackson McCabe, founder of the Coalition of 100 Black Women; Feminist Majority founder Eleanor Smeal; Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg; and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. Then there are those long-ago women who made history and whose ghosts now inhabit the interviewers' fantasy wish lists. "Where do I start? Eleanor Roosevelt is an obvious one I would have liked to have interviewed. We know vast amounts about her through her biographies, but wouldn't it have been fabulous?" asks Hartman. "Then there's Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth — what a mystery that one would be! "But the truth is, we just have to get cracking on the ones who are left," she adds. "We hope to go beyond just the well-known public figures and identify women to interview whose consciousness of the women's movement and feminist issues affected their leadership in politics, in the arts, the media, business, science and the law. We are not going to run out of material before we run out of energy." Talking about leadership Excerpts from the interviews Shirley Chisholm In 1972, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to sit in the House of Representatives, became the first woman to run for president, taking her campaign all the way through the Democratic convention. Ruth Mandel: Did you think that you could become president of the United States? Shirley Chisholm: No, of course not. I knew I could not become president. But the time had come when persons other than males could run for the presidency of this country. Why couldn't a woman run? Why couldn't a black person run? I was angry that everything, everything always redounded to the benefit of white males. It made me mad. ... So I decided that I would really make a bid. Of course I knew that I couldn't win, but somewhere, somehow they had to get used to the idea that persons other than white males could be president of this country — and should be president. So I decided to put my hat in the ring. I had a ball. I traveled into 20-something states, and I carried my message to the people. And it was surprising. I was really surprised how many, many people knew that I couldn't be president, but they acknowledged the fact that I was not afraid to chart a new course in the history of this country. Jeanne Kirkpatrick Active in politics for much of her life, Jeanne Kirkpatrick served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985. Ruth Mandel: When you became ambassador to the United Nations, when you accepted that appointment, you had all sorts of talents and skills, needless to say. Which ones were you missing when you found yourself in that arena? Jeanne Kirkpatrick: I was the first woman who had ever represented a major country at the United Nations, any major country whatsoever. When I arrived there, there were two other women permanent representatives. The top ambassador is called the permanent representative to the United Nations. There had only been about five in the whole history of the U.N. There was a woman from Ghana ... and a woman from Liberia. But there had never been a permanent representative from a European country, a major power country, a power in the world. I was a total shock to the men. The diplomatic core — the foreign service of all countries — is very much an exclusively male preserve. ... It was not until quite a bit later that I realized that I was the first woman ever to sit at the table, as compared to against the wall or someplace, to sit at the table when discussions of major foreign policy and national security issues were being decided. ... I realized that one day when we were in a meeting of the inner circle of the National Security Council; it was called the NSPG in those years. All of a sudden someone said, "It's a mouse!" A mouse in the situation room. It's underground. The walls are three feet thick. It has super, super, super sophisticated secret technology. And someone said there was a mouse in the situation room. How could that be? How did it get in here? Nobody could imagine how it got in. We looked at the mouse; the mouse looked at us. This is a true story. And the mouse sort of turned and walked away. We were hardly able to continue with the meeting, we were so shocked. Walking out of that meeting, it occurred to me that that mouse was no stranger a creature to be in the situation room than I was really. Barbara Roberts Oregon's first woman governor (1991–1995), Barbara Roberts is recognized as a strong advocate for public education, handicapped rights and services, environmental management and streamlined state government. Ruth Mandel: We've turned a corner and women are pursuing all kinds of opportunities in leadership in the political world that they weren't before, for lots of reasons we all know about. ... But what I am concerned about is that if you look at the pace of progress, it has been pretty steady, or it was over the first 25 years or so. .... Lately, it looks as if it is slowing down. It is slower. And I wonder if you've noticed that and are concerned about it. Barbara Roberts: Well, I think there were two reasons. There were a lot of women who got into elective office in that period of time, about a 15-year period. One, and this is my speculation, I don't know if it would stand up to research, but my speculation is that when women were told they couldn't be in the Equal Rights Amendment, they couldn't be in the Constitution, then they said, "OK, if we are not going to be in your Constitution, we are going to be in your courthouse and your city halls and your legislature." I think they were mad. If you really wanted to keep women out of the political system, you could have just passed the ERA, and we would have moved on, and they wouldn't have been nearly so activated as they were by the failure of the ERA. I think that was one thing. The other, there was a concerted effort to recruit women, to nurture them and train them, to work on mentoring them so they would run. I think that made a huge difference. I think we've been very lax in that the last few years. We see women in office, so we don't need to go to all that work, we think. So we just move on and let nature take its course. And as a result of that, less women are being recruited and running. Obviously, you can't elect women if you are not recruiting them or if they are not running. ... Maybe we haven't mentored enough. Maybe we haven't reached out enough, those of us who've done the job. ... Maybe we haven't told them that along with all that bad stuff I told you about — how they weren't fair to me and how they didn't give me credit — we tell them all the bad things about serving in public office, but maybe we didn't tell them all the good stuff. Maybe we are forgetting to tell them how special it is. Maybe we need to stand back a little and see we are not being very good role models about the privilege of serving at that level of office and making those decisions and making those policy changes and how special they are, how good we feel about the choices we've made.

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