Female politicians have not fared particularly well in the Commonwealth ofMassachusetts. We have sent no women to Congress in recent years and have neverelected a female senator, governor, or attorney general; the state legislaturehas never been led by a female senate president or speaker of the house. So asRepublican Lieutenant Governor Jane Swift prepares to take over the office of governor from Paul Cellucci (who's resigning and awaiting confirmation asambassador to Canada), she enjoys some cautious bipartisan support--eitherbecause of or despite the fact that she's pregnant. Swift, the mother of athree-year-old girl, is carrying twins.
Is her pregnancy a matter of public concern? It's been the subject ofdiscussion in the local press (and has gained a little national attention), butcommentators generally seem loath to suggest that the impending birth of hertwins makes Swift unfit to undertake the job of governor. It's not hard toimagine people suppressing their doubts about a pregnant governor for fear ofbeing charged with sexism, given the delicate condition of women in Massachusettspolitics and the long history of discrimination against women on account ofpregnancy, or the mere possibility of it.
Popular notions of feminine frailty have always relied on the indisputablefact that only women get pregnant. The logical connection between women'sreproductive roles and their presumed fragility has never been quite clear to me.An unbiased observer, such as a visitor from another planet, might consider theability to bear children a sign of strength. But on this planet, through most ofour history, women have been deemed particularly weak (and sensitive) becausesome of them occasionally get pregnant. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeissaid in Muller v. Oregon, the famous 1908 case upholding protective labor laws for women (three years after the Court had struck down such laws for men), "Woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence."
It's worth stressing that Brandeis attributed women's natural "disadvantage"not just to the practical burdens of wage earning and child care but to "woman'sphysical structure." Citing "abundant testimony of the medical fraternity," heobserved that even if she was not pregnant, a woman was apt to be injured by"spending a long time on her feet at work." The presumed weakness of all women,pregnant or not, also justified their exclusion from the practice of law. In 1873the Supreme Court took judicial notice that "[t]he natural and proper timidityand delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of theoccupations of civil life." Even women's recreation was limited: in thelate-nineteenth century, doctors warned young women that vigorous exercise wouldharm their reproductive organs.
The feminine mystique derived its power from medical opinions like this.Assumptions about women's physical weaknesses were inextricably bound toassumptions about their refined emotional and moral sensibilities, as well astheir passivity. (Feminine "delicacy" was linked to feminine "timidity," as theSupreme Court suggested.) In fact, faith in women's moral superiority proved more tenacious than a belief in their physical frailty, as modern feminists layclaim to a presumptively female ethic of caring, sharing, and nonhierarchicalcooperation.
Today it's difficult to suggest that bearing children may even temporarilydisqualify a woman from high office, or any extremely demanding and stressfulfull-time job. It's hard to ask the question "Is Jane Swift fit to serve?"without calling up more than 100 years of crippling stereotypes about theemotional, moral, and physical attributes of normal women. Still, it's a questionthat ought to be asked.
First, it's important to separate concerns about child care from child birth.Of course, Swift's husband can care for their infant children (and he isreportedly planning to do so). But he can't bear them; he can't recuperate fromchildbirth for her (if recuperation is necessary); he can't experience whateverhormone swings lay in store for her, catch up on her sleep for her, or keep herfrom being happily distracted by the mere thought of her two new babies. Whywould you want to become governor and give birth to twins more or lesssimultaneously, anyway?
I realize that Swift didn't plan this odd confluence of events, but she couldeasily have anticipated it. Anyone who paid any attention to political gossipknew that Paul Cellucci was campaigning for George W. Bush in the hope of landinga post in his administration. She must seriously have considered the prospectof his resignation. If she intended to assume the office of governor whenCellucci moved on, Swift could have postponed her pregnancy.
Some readers will consider my last remark horribly sexist, I know, but feminism is supposed to be about women making choices, after all. The hesitancyto question Swift's choice to become a new mother and a new governor at the sametime seems almost anachronistic. It's reminiscent of the "have it all" popfeminism of the 1970s and 1980s. Having it all (not sequentially but all at once)always seemed like a childish fantasy to me.
It's true that Swift appears, at first glance, to have made the fantasy come true. She campaigned while pregnant and was elected lieutenant governor two weeksafter her first child was born. But no one seems to take the office of lieutenantgovernor seriously--least of all Swift, who ran into trouble for ethical lapsesinvolving her personal use of state employees and resources, her questionableacquisition of an apartment at a below-market rent, and her acceptance of anexcessively well paid sinecure at a Boston law school. Apparently Swift andothers considered the lieutenant governor's job to be a part-time position. Ifshe had taken a three-month pregnancy leave, it's not likely that any constituents would have missed her.
Luckily for Jane Swift, the governor's job in Massachusetts doesn't seem terribly demanding either. In fact, we've gotten used to no-show governors. Bill Weld played squash for six years; Paul Cellucci went on trade missions.Considering the record of her predecessors, it will be hard to criticize GovernorSwift if she stays home with her babies. But living down to low standardsshouldn't make her a feminist role model. Women who want to be taken seriously asofficeholders had better take their offices seriously.
Wendy Kaminer and Lindsay Sobel debate the implications of "Mama's Delicate Condition." Ann Crittenden, Alyssa R. Rayman-Read and Richard Weissbourd respond in the May 6th, 2001 issue of The American Prospect.
