Atta Girl! asks: Is this the way to the White House?
In case you missed the headlines, the big education news this year is that women outnumber men in bachelor's degree programs. Somewhere between 56 and 60 percent of undergrads are women, and the race is on to find a solution to this imbalance. Atta Girl! has been thinking about this and she's in full support of equality. If it doesn't happen naturally that boys and girls attend college in a 50-50 ratio, throw some money at the problem and spend some time revising the rules; in fact, go ahead and reorganize the institutional system.
And then, of course, we'll want to make sure everything else is 50-50 too, so we'll be making the same kinds of changes to city governments, the state legislatures, Congress, the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, medical institutions, corporations and pretty much every other area, throwing money at these systems and revising the rules, so that women and men will be represented equally at all levels of society. (Oh, and they'll be paid the same. Effective immediately.)
And we'll probably start funding some housework-training seminars to get men up to speed in the area of domestic maintenance. You know, so everything's 50-50.
And, of course, the next 40 presidents of the United States will be women.
Well, I'm pretty happy with this new scheme. But (as usual) it's tricky translating Atta Girl! brainstorms into reality.
Just as I was thinking this, I stumbled on an article about public policy—a field where people figure out what kind of laws and rules are needed to make society more just and more equitable. It seems there are more women than men at many of the country's top graduate school programs in public policy.
Atta Girl! was off and running. The big question for me: does a majority of women in public policy mean that we can expect some big changes in government? Are we paving the way to the White House this very minute?
Red carpet or Red Cross
First, I had to get someone to define public policy. Julie Harrold, director of admissions and recruitment at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, gave me the scoop. "Public policy is the design and management of programs that impact the public good, either on a local or global level," she said. "The bottom line is improved lives and greater opportunities for people."
Since the 1930s the U of M has offered classes in public administration, said Harrold, and in the late '60s the school of public affairs was organized. The school inherited the Humphrey name in 1977. Less than a decade later, in 1985, the Center on Women and Public Policy opened. It was the first research center in the country devoted to studying the effect that policies and laws have on women, and the extent to which those policies reflect women's experiences.
"We are one of very few public policy programs in the country to offer a concentration in women in public policy," Harrold explained. She said the Humphrey's graduate program attracts women because it focuses on more than economic analysis or theory, and offers women practical skills—and the chance to earn a master's degree in two years or less. "What a lot of women want to do is applied work: [for instance,] to draft legislation. You don't need a Ph.D. to do that."
I noticed that Harrold was using the terms public affairs and public policy more or less interchangeably. "Public affairs is the umbrella," she explained. "It's public work; it might be done through the private or nonprofit sector or through the local government. Public policy is one aspect of that—the design of policies that impact the public good. It's also the management of programs and their implementation."
Hmmm, I thought. All that talk about "the public good" sounded less like a prescription for getting into the Oval Office and more like social work. There is an element of that, agreed Harrold, but women who study public policy have a wide range of career options.
"While our graduates continue to be leaders in the nonprofit sector, they're [also] active leaders in state, local, federal government agencies and in the private sector, in business and in consulting."
About 45 to 50 percent of Humphrey grads end up working in government, said Harrold.
Atta Girl! did some rapid calculations. Harrold said about 110 students would be starting the public policy program this fall. Typically, she said, women make up about 60 percent of the incoming class. If 50 percent of this class works in government, that's 30-some women who weren't in government before.
Right now Minnesota has a total of 54 women in the state legislature, I mused. Another 30 would make a big difference, even if they weren't in elected positionsŠwouldn't they? And at this pace, it won't take women long to get to the topŠwill it?
The inner circle
Kelly Scanlan, a staff member in Congresswoman Betty McCollum's office and a graduate of the Humphrey Institute, believes the political arena is changing. "It's still a very male-dominated situation, but definitely there are more women getting involved. That's what's so great about working with Betty Š[she] had to face a lot of obstacles, so she's very aware of helping other women candidates."
After working in the nonprofit world for several years, including a stint volunteering at an environmental organization in Central America, Scanlan earned a master's in public affairs from the Humphrey in fall 2001. It was there, she says, that she learned about the complexities of the lawmaking process.
"At Humphrey [I gained] a greater understanding of how policy comes together. It's not just politics: it's economics, it's administrative decisions, it's the role the stakeholders playŠThere's so much more than high school civics!" laughed Scanlan. "It's getting into the nitty gritty of cost-benefit analysis and understanding how to even read the information. Who wrote the studies—each side has their studies—and how to come up with policies that help the community and help the people."
The process is far more intricate than most people realize, said Scanlan—and she feels her background in public policy is essential to her daily work.
"As far as using my degree, now I really feel like I'm doing what I went to school for," she said. "I really love what I do. I think my basic intention has always been to be involved in government in some way. Because I went to Belize, I got involved in the nonprofit world first. There was always a frustration because we weren't making policy. Now I'm more involved in that and more directly making change on the political governmental level."
Scanlan believes that a woman will occupy the governor's seat in Minnesota in another decade or so. "Maybe not next election, but the nextŠ We've had a lot of lieutenant governors and lots of women are talked about as being candidates." As far as a Ms. President, though: "That feels a little less hopeful. But I think it's a realistic possibility that that could happen in our lifetime. Maybe we're looking at 20 years before that would happen."
Not so fast
Another Humphrey alumnus was more skeptical that the high proportion of women in graduate public policy programs will lead to significant changes in the political landscape.
"I wish I could say that it would change things, but we haven't been given all the tools for politics," said Jennifer Godinez, executive director of La Escuelita, a nonprofit that helps Hispanic students succeed in school. "There's just so many things you need in place." Money and mentors are essential for women to progress in politics, Godinez explained. "There isn't that structure for women to get into politics, much less women of color." But, she said, it's not because our society doesn't have the capability. "Of any country in the world, we can do those things. It'd be great for the graduate school to say we're going to create the funds; we want a woman from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute to be governor. If you want an outcome, you put the resources toward it."
For Latinos, just getting into graduate school means beating tremendous odds, said Godinez. "Our numbers are staggeringly lowŠOur national dropout rate has been estimated between 30 and 40 percent for high school. For college, we're talking really small percentages of people who get their bachelor's."
She was an exception, said Godinez. She considers herself lucky because as a teenager she got involved with the National Hispanic Institute in Texas, a program that helped her develop skills to succeed in college. "I'm kind of a product of youth development. My mother is a high school graduate, my father's not. Neither of them attended school beyond that." Godinez was interested in Latino community issues even while working on her bachelor's degree in sociology, and this interest solidified during travels to Mexico. "I saw really great examples of women's leadership and community development projects," said Godinez. Her advisor helped women in Oaxaca become economically self-sufficient.
Godinez graduated from the Humphrey in 1999 with a concentration in nonprofit management and education policy. Now she's working at the job she essentially trained for. "It's nothing like the textbooks," she laughed. "We do a lot more with social issuesŠManagement is a lot more 'learn by doing.'" But, she said, she's glad she picked the concentration she did. "The reason I decided on an M.A. in public affairs versus social work, where women tended to be geared before, was that with an M.A. I could do leadership or I could do management. When you get into upper level management you need your master's."
Godinez believes that, with the recent shift in local politics, the election of a woman to the highest office in the state might not be, ultimately, a reason to celebrate. "I feel like Minnesota politics has just changed a lot with the new administration. We might have a woman [governor] but she'll be Republican."
Though she's disappointed in the slow timetable, Godinez does see change on the horizon. "I hope to see Latinas be involved with more policymaking in the Midwest. I feel like I'm in the first generation to do this; we're just on the brink of a lot more of that. I'm mentoring a woman right now who's getting her degree at the Humphrey, in the same concentration."
Get 'em in the pipeline
Humphrey graduate Bernadine Joselyn, director of public policy and engagement for the Blandin Foundation in Grand Rapids, Minn., also believes that more groundwork is necessary before women's presence and influence in politics increases.
"It's important to get women into the feeder systemsŠWe need to prime the pipeline. We need to focus on the pick and shovel work, helping create the old girl network. We came very close to having a woman DFL candidate for governor this time. One step at a time, that's how we'll get there."
Joselyn, who spent seven years working as a U.S. diplomat in Washington, D.C., India and Russia, was a single mom when she enrolled at the Humphrey in 2000. She lived with her parents and earned her master's in public affairs in 12 months.
"When I came back to the U.S. from Russia, I wanted to make a difference in my community. My parents were always active and we always felt we had an obligation to make the world better: either try to make it better, or you have no right to complain."
Joselyn knew she wouldn't find meaningful work in the business world, but because of her child, she also didn't want the long hours and low wages that are routine at many nonprofit organizations. She feels privileged to work at the foundation, she said, where her passion for public service is directed toward strengthening rural Minnesota. At the same time, Joselyn's well aware that the array of choices available to her was in some ways defined by a consistent and cross-cultural devaluing of women's work.
"It is true that male professions and female professions tend to be remunerated differently. When I was in Russia, you go to these not-for-profit collaboratives or coordination meetings, and it's all women. Then you go to a meeting of professional lawyers and it's all men. It's not an accident, as they say in Russia, that the lawyers make a lot more money. Women are the ones who seem to really roll up their sleeves and get the work done. They seem to populate the nonprofit sector disproportionately to their percentage of the population."
Joselyn said women consultants she works with routinely ask for less money than male consultants. It's her belief that both women themselves and society at large have to learn to place more value on women's work before significant change can happen.
Curriculum of change
Despite the large number of women graduate students, said Sally Kenney, professor and director of the Humphrey's Center on Women and Public Policy, public policy lags far behind other disciplines in recognizing the importance of gender issues.
"One of the interesting paradoxes is there's always been a large number of female faculty in public policy, but they haven't been that interested in gender issues. Just because she's a woman doesn't mean she's interested in women's issues." Kenney said she's worked hard to get the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management—public policy's trade association—to recognize gender as a category of interest and to include panels on it at the national meeting. Oddly, she says, most of her colleagues just don't think about women's issues. "It's not that people have this organized resistance to it, but there needs to be someone working to change it."
Kenney has also noticed that case studies—texts used by professors to teach public policy—almost never include women as subjects. "Fewer than one percent of the existing cases available to teachers have women as protagonists," said Kenney. So she's hosting a series of summer institutes at the Humphrey where women are invited to write cases about public policy issues; her goal is to create a body of curriculum materials that teachers can use to study gender in the classroom.
Kenney is at a loss to explain the invisibility of women in a field defined by a search for social justice. "People go into it because they want to work on social change. It's a paradox why women's issues haven't been more at the center of public policy."
No Yellow Brick Road
As always, Atta Girl! feels somewhat chastened by reality. Nobody's on the fast track to the White House. No sudden revolution is going to tip the world into balance. But it does sound like women are getting paid for doing good in the world; and in the meantime, if they're quietly getting closer to positions of power, well, let's just not tell CNN.
