Women play unprecedented role in Vt. Democratic Party

From left to right: Former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, House Speaker Gaye Symington, Symington campaign manager Jill KrowinskiBesides being Democrats, what do Vermont’s House Speaker, House Majority Leader, chair of the state Senate Appropriations committee, former executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, Vermont Democratic coordinated campaign director, VDP spokesperson, and vice chair of VDP all have in common?

They’re all women.

The vast majority of leadership roles in the Green Mountain State’s Democratic Party are currently filled by women: from elected officials to the state’s top party executives. And Vermont has an excellent record of looking past gender to determine the capabilities of a candidate: almost 38 percent of the legislature is composed of women—the highest percentage in the country. The national average of women serving in state legislatures is only 23 percent.

“Women are often hesitant to go into politics because of the perception that politics is a noisy and unpleasant business,” said House Speaker and gubernatorial candidate Gaye Symington (D-Jericho). “But women can bring a unique perspective to politics.”

Madeleine Kunin was the state’s first female governor and the first female ambassador to Switzerland. She's currently a professor-at-large at the University of Vermont and recently published Pearls, Politics, and Power, a book about women in politics. In an interview with PolitickerVT.com, Kunin said that women have a much greater presence in Vermont's government than in other states for several reasons.

“Women can more easily combine politics and family,” Kunin said, noting that Vermont’s citizen legislature is part-time, and the small size of the state means its much easier for people to commute to Montpelier. Combined with the state’s “sense of individualism,” a concerted effort to recruit more female candidates, and the fact that constituents “just see more women in positions of authority,” means that the women of Vermont have the opportunity to pursue leadership roles.

And while women now dominate the highest levels of authority in the VDP, the political landscape was much different 10 or 20 years ago.

“People don’t ask the question anymore: ‘can a woman do this?’” Kunin said of her first gubernatorial campaign in 1984.

House Majority Leader Carolyn Partridge (D-Rockingham) said she had faced discrimination because of her gender in her career, but noted that those occurrences were rare. Partridge first became a state representative for the Windham-4 district 10 years ago.

“In terms of sexism, I’ve run into that in the past mostly with men who have a pre-existing problem with women in authority roles," she said.

Though the women leaders agree that progress has been made, criticisms of female politicians have become more nuanced and subtle, particularly in terms of appearance. If women appear too tough, they are not feminine enough. If women appear too feminine, they are labeled incapable of handling the pressure of politics.

“Women find themselves in a double bind,” Kunin said. “The only way to counteract that is to prepare and be yourself. Women have to prove they know what they are talking about. The public is still less forgiving then they are towards men. Any woman will have to leap over a higher bar than men.”

Partridge added that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was scrutinized in ways that no man would ever be: from her cleavage to her laugh.

And while Clinton was unsuccessful in this year’s bid for the presidency, Kunin said she thinks more young woman are considering a career in the public sphere.

“Girls are being brought up with parents who tell them they can do anything,” Kunin said.

The generation gap is palpable when women are first presented with the idea of campaigning for an elected position. “Women used to play a supportive role,” Partridge said, who plays an active role in candidate recruitment. She noticed that women from different generations had different responses when she would ask them to consider running. “Someone who is older might have an initial reaction of: ‘I’m not qualified.’ For younger women, the initial reaction is not: ‘I’m not qualified,’ but ‘How can I make difference?’”

Younger generations of Vermont women also have a legacy of strong women role models: Symington counted Kunin among her own. Other female politicians and party executives, in turn, listed Symington as a role model.

In the future, Partridge said that she “would love to see the day when 50-51 percent of the people in the legislature are woman, because that would be much more reflective of the population.”

And while female leaders of Vermont, both past and present, believe that parity will one day be achieved, the process is slow-going. “You can slowly but surely change the mindset of women and people in general,” Partridge said. “But that takes time.”