Babbitt and the Gov Jocks

YESTERDAY, Bruce Babbitt showed exactly why few Harvard women chose to concentrate in Government.

The former presidential candidate was speaking to Gov 30, the introductory American Government course required of concentrators, and criticizing the electoral system.

"TV debates are prissy, League of Women Voters," he asserted snidely.

Some students hissed. Then he acknowledged his faux pas, with a gosh that was bad, wasn't it?

Then he decided it wasn't so bad after all. "But they are!" he insisted. And most of the few hundred students in the room greeted his remarks with uproarous applause.

WHY is this episode so damning? Because it shows the subtleties of sexism that pervade the political process--from candidates to decision-makers to young powers-to-be in their intro gov classes.

The TV debates may be bad. But the way in which Babbitt cast aspersions on the debates was significant--he said "the League of Women Voters" as though those words were a put-down in and of themselves. He used the group as an adjective to signify weak and laughable, and he furthered the stereotypical image of women as irrelevant busybodies with the term "prissy." In essence, he carried all the baggage of traditional sexism that has marginalized women in the political process.

One of the most disturbing moments in yesterday's class came when the students in the overwhelmingly male class applauded. These future politicos, members of Harvard's male elite, were lauding Babbitt's remarks--even after many students, and even Babbitt, had just indicated that those words were delivered in a highly sexist and offensive context. They were learning it from a political hero and regurgitating it. How can these young men be expected to accord women respect in politics, when sexist remarks like these are tolerated and even celebrated?

The women sitting around me were stunned and angered and disappointed. Not exactly the response a political role model should provoke.

How was that lecture supposed to be inspirational to the women students in the room--already outnumbered by men 4 to 1? Here was a political leader casting doubt on women, and most of their class eagerly applauding him. It is alienating enough for these students to sit as the only woman in their section, or one of two or three women, as it usually is in Gov intro courses. Now they were insulted by a man they are supposed to look up to.

Babbitt was one of the most liberal candidates in the Democratic field, a strong proponent of child care, poverty programs and military cut-backs. If a candidate who backs issues that a majority of women have supported can make such offensive remarks, how can a woman expect to be taken seriously, by anyone?

WHY did women need a league of voters all of their own, in the first place? Because they were denied suffrage; the league was created in 1919 to mobilize women who had just gained the vote. When a presidential candidate can quip that one of the only ways women have found to get involved in the national political system is "prissy," he shows why women have only made it this far, and no further.

Anything run by women, especially middle-aged women with little economic or political leverage, seems to be lesser. It may be--only because men in power have never taken women seriously. For older generations of women, it was one of the only places in politics that they could be taken seriously. At any rate, the most recent presidential debates were taken away from the league--and the substantive content of the presentations didn't improve at all.

Women have always been shut out of the halls of political decision-making. Only 25 women are in Congress. They comprise less than 16 percent of state legislatures. With men holding the clutch on power, subtly putting down women's involvement with snide remarks like Babbitt's and overtly barring women from behind-the-scenes decision-making, the attitudes and means of exclusion are reinforced.

Even after the women's liberation movement and surge in grassroots organizing of the 1960's and 1970's, women were still excluded from the real power. According to "Movers and Shakers," a study in community power done in 1979, even in a city known for women leaders, only two of the top 40 business and government elite were women.

WOMEN in politics disparaged. Role models reinforcing sexism. Young men applauding. Young women alienated. This was Harvard's introductory course to American Government. A realistic introduction.

Currently, only 27 percent of Government department concentrators are women. This number is dropping. No wonder.