Gendered Politics: Campaign Strategies of California Women Candidates, 19121970

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This book explores womens 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 womens 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 womens equality while also recognizing the political value of connections to men in power. Organized in a loose chronology with the states governors, this study shows the persistent nature of womens 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.

Reviews

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 womens 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. -- Robyn Muncy, University of Maryland
In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Linda Van Ingens Gendered Politics is timely indeed. She reminds us that, whether they won or lost, Republican or Democrat, California women have been running for office for over a century. With its new record of three female U. S. Senators, and the first female Speaker of the House, Van Ingen shows us the often bumpy but historic journey of how women redefined the political sphere in the Golden State. -- Jacqueline R. Braitman, Historian, Independent Scholar
This important study of California womens political activities will help eradicate the belief that women did not seek and did not find political power until the 1970s. Based on voluminous research in a wide range of archival sources and grounded in recent scholarship in womens political history, Van Ingens book tells a compelling story of California womens continuous struggle for greater political inclusion and shows how over the course of six decades women candidates and office-holders became agents for political change in their state and the nation. California women have long deserved this exploration into how womens campaign strategies influenced the states political history. -- Melanie Gustafson, University of Vermont
Van Ingens book is a welcomed addition to the field of womens political history. By looking at Democratic, Republican, and third party candidates over such a broad swath of time, this book allows us to see the full range of gendered obstacles and strategies that women across the political perspective have encountered and pursued. The book is rich in detail and well-argued. -- Catherine Rymph, University of Missouri

Author Bio

Linda Van Ingen is professor of history and director of the Womens, Gender, and Ethnic Studies program at the University of Nebraska, Kearney.