WASHINGTON
— Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the new chairwoman of the Energy
Committee, was at a reception in Hershey, Pa., last month when aides to
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 2 Republican in the
House, presented her with a party favor: a black windbreaker with the
words “Chairman’s Table” on the back.
There
was just one problem: The windbreaker was for a man, and far too big
for Ms. Murkowski. Mr. McCarthy’s aides say they simply ran out of
women’s jackets in Ms. Murkowski’s size, but to her the episode reflects
a new reality on Capitol Hill.
“His
staff was, of course, very apologetic,” said Ms. Murkowski, who gave
the windbreaker to her husband and said she took no offense. “But I did
think that was somewhat telling. We are not thinking about the women.”
The
November elections brought a record number of female lawmakers to
Washington. With 20 in the Senate and 84 in the House, women for the
first time in history hold more than 100 seats in Congress. But the
Republican takeover of the Senate has also cost women powerful committee
leadership posts and presented new challenges to their wielding of
power.
Last
year, when Democrats controlled the Senate, women led a record nine
committees, including male bastions like the Appropriations Committee,
which dispenses billions in federal dollars, and Intelligence, which
oversees the government’s secret national security apparatus. Now there
are only two female committee chairwomen: Ms. Murkowski and Senator
Susan Collins, Republican of Maine.
In
the House, while women hold five of the 10 elected Republican Party
leadership spots, only one woman — Representative Candice S. Miller of
Michigan — leads a committee, House Administration.
The
reason is largely that Congress is a culture where power is tied
tightly with seniority, and committee chairmanships do not go to junior
members. More than two-thirds of female lawmakers are Democrats, and
Democratic women, who overall were elected earlier and in larger numbers
than their Republican counterparts, have more longevity. When Democrats
lost control, women lost top jobs.
“You cannot deny that women were in a more powerful position in the United States Senate
when the Democrats were in control,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the
Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s not
to say that women can’t and won’t exert leadership, but we do know that
titles matter, those formal positions of leadership matter.”
Women
do of course flex their muscles regardless of rank. A revolt by
Republican women recently forced House leaders to abandon a bill that
would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In the Senate
last week, Ms. Murkowski shepherded to passage a bill to approve
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry petroleum from Canada to the Gulf Coast, her party’s first legislative priority in the new Congress.
“The
women in the Senate — there are no pushovers here,” Ms. Murkowski said,
rejecting the notion that women have lost power. “I don’t think that
Barbara Mikulski” — the Maryland Democrat and former Appropriations
chairwoman — “goes shrinking away because she’s not gaveling in the
meeting.”
But
in an institution whose core function — writing laws — rests with
committees, chairmen and chairwomen wield enormous influence. They alone
can call hearings, the first real step in shaping and passing
legislation. “The ranking minority member may have some wonderful
ideas,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University,
“but unless the chair approves, it’s not going to happen.”
For
Democratic women, watching the tough-talking Ms. Mikulski go from
leading the Appropriations Committee to being its ranking member has
been especially difficult. Elected to the Senate in 1986, she is by far
its most senior woman and has for years held bipartisan dinners for
female colleagues. In 2013, after nearly three decades on the committee,
she made history by becoming the first woman to run it.
“Barbara
Mikulski has worked and fought and thrashed and clawed for decades to
get the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, and to have it
snatched away almost as soon as she got it, all of us feel for her,”
said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri. “It’s painful for
us.”
In
an email message, Ms. Mikulski said she would “continue to have a
voice,” adding, “While I’ve been in the minority before, I’ve never been
on the sidelines.”
It
has been 22 years since the “Year of the Woman” elections doubled the
number of Senate women — from two to four — and progress has come in
fits and starts, the women of the Senate say. Ms. Collins, who now heads
the Committee on Aging and ran the Homeland Security Committee when
George W. Bush was president, recalls one moment of self-awareness when
Donald Rumsfeld, then defense secretary, was testifying.
“I
looked to my left and I looked to my right, and all of a sudden it
occurred to me that there were no women on the dais,” she said. “And
then I looked down at the witness table, which probably had five people
on it, and there were no women. And I remember thinking, ‘But I’m in
charge!’ ”
As
more women have come to the Senate, they have been credited with
changing its dynamic and leading the way in cutting bipartisan deals.
Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski and Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New
Hampshire, bucked their party to push for an end to the 2013 budget
shutdown. Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, got a
long-stalled farm bill
passed when she ran the Agriculture Committee. As head of the Budget
Committee last year, Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington,
forged a bipartisan budget with Representative Paul D. Ryan of
Wisconsin, her House counterpart.
“As
women were chairing these committees, you saw a lot of bipartisan
agreements,” Ms. Murray said. “So if you just look at it from that
perspective, I’m worried, going forward, that we will not have those
same things that women bring to the table to help get agreements in a
way that works for everybody.”
But
Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist, said that if Democrats had
been doing such a good job, voters would not have thrown them out.
“The
point that you had nine female Democratic senators chairing committees
last cycle was either soundly rejected by voters, or it didn’t matter,”
she said. “Any way you slice it, they put Republicans in power.”
With
the elections of Senators Joni Ernst of Iowa and Shelley Moore Capito
of West Virginia, Republicans now have a record number of women in the
Senate. But there are no women in the elected Republican leadership, and
still so few overall that of the 20 committees, five — including
Banking and Finance — lack a single Republican woman. Both men and women
say that creates an optics problem for a party trying to court female
voters and fend off accusations from Democrats of a war on women.
“It
doesn’t help us as a party,” Ms. Murkowski said, “when the public out
there thinks that there’s this Republican initiative that is not
supportive of women, and then they look at the makeup of the Senate and
we just don’t have very many.”
Senator
John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, put it simply: “I
think it helps to have a Senate leadership that looks more like the rest
of America.”
So Republican leaders are doing what they can to put women forward.
They
asked Senator Ernst, an Iraq war combat veteran whose clever ads about
her hog-castrating skills captured national attention this fall, to give
the televised Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Ms. Murkowski recently gave the party’s weekly address.
And
as soon as the new Senate convened, the majority leader, Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky, expanded his leadership team to include four
unelected counselors, two of them women: Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska
and Senator Capito, the West Virginia freshman, who has deep experience
in Washington from 14 years in the House.
“I think he wants more voices at the table, women’s voices,” Ms. Capito said.
But
at least one Senate woman, Ms. Fischer, longs for the day when all the
talk about women in Congress would just go away. “Let’s talk about who’s
effective at doing their jobs,” she said. “That’s how I want to be
judged.”
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