marisa chappell
Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy and the
Limitations of Free-Market Feminism
In late November 1982, presidential aide Lee Atwater forwarded to chief of
staff James Baker a report warning about “one of the most severe challenges
facing the [Reagan] administration” in the coming year, one that “could lock
the GOP into permanent minority status.” He was referring to the “gender
gap”:1 women had voted for Reagan in significantly lower proportions than
men, Reagan’s approval lagged among women, and pundits credited women
voters with several Democratic victories in the 1982 midterm elections. Polls
also showed potential presidential contenders for 1984 running “substantially
better among women than men in trial heats with President Reagan.” Pollster
Ronald Hinckley counseled that “continued growth of the gender gap . . .
could cause serious trouble for Republicans in 1984,” while California
congresswoman Bobbie Felder warned that the gender gap could prove
“disastrous.” Media analysts contributed to Republican alarm. Adam Clymer
speculated in the New York Times that the gender gap “may influence American
life in the 1980s as much as the civil rights revolution did in the 1960s.”2
The gender gap offered feminists and Democrats as much hope as it
caused Republicans worries. Former New York congresswoman Bella Abzug
I would like to thank Rebecca Davis, Serena Mayari, Alice Kessler-Harris, Wendy Mink,
participants in the session on “The Political Uses of Feminism, 1970–2000” at the 2010
Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, and Eileen Boris for thoughtful
comments and suggestions; Carol Bucy for sharing her paper on the Reagan administration’s debates about women; and the archivists at the Reagan Presidential Library.
Research for this article was generously supported by an Oregon State University Valley
Library Travel Grant.
the journal of policy history, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2012.
© Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2012
doi:10.1017/S0898030611000406
116 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
saw the gap as “indicative of a long-range trend toward the development of a
distinctive issue-oriented women’s voting bloc” and predicted that woman
voters would “defeat Reagan, Reaganomics, and Reagan Republicanism” in
1984.3 The Democratic Party certainly hoped so, and went out of its way to
show that it “stands for and with the women of America.” Presidential contenders vied for women’s support, while the party targeted women with voter
registration campaigns, gave women’s organizations a key role in shaping the
platform, and selected a woman—Geraldine Ferraro—as its vice presidential
candidate.4
The respective fears and hopes surrounding the gender gap in the early
1980s reflect over a decade of profound social, economic, and cultural change
in women’s roles and family structure, rapid shifts in public policy and law as
a result of feminist activism, and the political mobilization of a “New Right”
committed to reversing these changes. They are also a product of the gender
gap’s novelty. While women had supported the “‘less radical’ and/or more
‘caring’ candidate” since the 1950s, in 1980, “the gender gap began to manifest
itself along ideological and partisan lines.” Women, an administration report
warned, “are now emerging as considerably more liberal and Democratic
than men.” And 1980 was the first year that women voted in equal proportion
to men; this new voting power fueled fear that the gender gap would generate
a political turning point much different from the “Reagan Revolution” that
conservatives envisioned.5
Analysis of the Reagan administration’s response to the gender gap not
only illuminates the influence of second-wave feminism but also suggests
that gender played a more complicated role in conservative politics than
many scholars have contended.6 During the 1970s, anxieties about changes in
sexual behavior, gender roles, and family structure fueled the development of
a “New Right,” which mobilized voters around the so-called social issues:
prayer in public schools, sex education, and especially abortion and the ERA.
Phyllis Schlafly’s Stop ERA, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and dozens of
other organizations of socially conservative voters gained a disproportionate
influence over electoral politics and provided an energetic base of support for
Reagan. But if “‘profamily,’ antifeminist politics . . . was central to Reagan’s
platform,” as political theorist Zillah Eisenstein has contended, Reagan
offered little more than rhetorical support on New Right social issues,
spending political capital instead on implementing his vision of free-market
capitalism through tax cuts, social spending cuts, and deregulation—policies
generally supported by New Right voters, to be sure, but not their top priorities.7
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If Reagan’s election marked the end of a viable “Republican feminism,” as
historian Catherine Rymph has argued, it did not mean complete victory for
antifeminism either.8 The Reagan administration’s alarm over the gender gap
suggests that Americans’ widespread commitment to equal rights and equal
opportunities for women played a role in constraining the policy influence of
traditionalist conservatives. It also challenges a portrait of gender politics
rooted in simple binaries—feminism versus antifeminism. Much like “color-blind
conservatism,” which rejected both overt racism and government efforts to
overcome racial inequality, the Reagan administration’s free-market feminism adopted the feminist movement’s rhetoric of equal opportunity and
choice while denying the need for federal intervention to promote gender
equality.9
The administration ultimately blamed the gender gap on women’s
changing economic role: their growing rate of labor market participation and
their economic vulnerability amid the collapse of the family wage system.
It hoped to address the problem in a manner consistent “with the basic principles of the Reagan philosophy, e.g. reduced federal spending [and] reduced
tax and regulatory burdens.”10 Hewing to the narrowest interpretation of
liberal feminism, the administration promised that formal legal equity and a
growing economy would ensure equal economic opportunity. This rhetorical
commitment to formal fairness in the marketplace, or free-market feminism,
was a far cry from the position of even the most mainstream feminist organizations, which insisted on the need for active government intervention to
achieve meaningful equality. In the end, the administration offered rhetorical
support and a few benefits to economically secure women—those considered
a good prospect for Republican recruitment. But in supporting retreat from
active enforcement of equal opportunity, affirmative action, and welfare-state
supports, free-market feminism failed to address the “real gender gap”—the
gap that continued to keep women more economically vulnerable than men.
Meanwhile focus on the gender gap ignored divisions among women, that is,
the relative privilege of some women over others, predominantly workingclass and racial/ethnic minority women, to take advantage of market-based
opportunity.
diagnosing the problem: the “quiet revolution”
In August 1982, as pundits predicted that women voters would provide the
margin of victory for Democrats in key congressional races that November,
Reagan appointed a seven-member White House Coordinating Council on
118 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
Women, chaired by Elizabeth Hanford Dole, Assistant to the President for
Public Liaison. That fall, the council heard “extensive briefings from pollsters,
demographers, market analysts, and organizational leaders,” suggestions
from numerous administration officials, and surveys conducted for the
Republican National Committee, Census Bureau data, and published election
analyses.11 It quickly dismissed two commonly cited explanations for women’s
disaffection: Reagan’s positions on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and
abortion, and his hawkish foreign policy stance. It is a “myth,” insisted pollster Dick Wirthlin, that “women don’t like Reagan because of his positions on
Women’s Rights,” by which he meant abortion and the ERA. True, a majority
of women supported the ERA and reproductive choice, but so, too, did a
majority of men; there was no gender gap on these issues, and they appeared
to play little role in voting preferences. At any rate, the council saw little hope
of winning over the most vocally feminist women. It considered young and
baby-boom women who “want to actively change the role of women in
society” a “low probability population” for the administration’s appeals and
determined that “the development of policies simply to appease the feminist
advocates would be counter-productive.”12 Journalists, pundits, and feminist
analysts also targeted Reagan’s hard-line Cold War rhetoric and increased
defense budgets as one cause of the gender gap, and several pollsters concurred.13 Unlikely to convince Reagan to alter his foreign policy paradigm,
his aides dismissed women’s concerns as misguided. Hinckley advised that
“belligerent, bellicose, or aggressive statements will tend to increase the gap,”
and the council merely suggested strategy to correct women’s supposed
misperceptions and to ensure that “the Administration communicates its
philosophy in language that women can respond to.”14
The council also hoped that emphasizing the president’s softer side would
win over more women. Reagan’s “personality and style,” as a “man’s man,” it
suggested, had contributed to the gender gap. Some aides suggested “more
feminine input into the speechwriting process” and ensuring that all White
House communications were “sensitized” to the “apparent fact that women
and men receive messages differently.”15 Citing Carol Gilligan’s highly publicized book, In a Different Voice, the council also considered ways to appeal to
women’s “unique values, mores, [and] morality.”16 Gilligan’s theories seemed
to lend weight to assumptions that women voters disliked the impact of
Reagan’s economic policies and budget cuts on low-income Americans,
prompting recommendations that the administration “focus on themes
which demonstrate our compassion, gentleness and caring,” with a “possible
theme” of “Reagan Cares” as well as more rhetorical attention to women’s
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“deeply held values and commitment to children, family, and the needy.”
Other suggestions included “special awards for women” in various arenas, a
consistent female presence on Reagan’s Secret Service Detail, and footage of
Reagan “speaking before thousands of cheering women” at the National
Convention of Republican Women.17
Reagan had reason to fear that not all attendees would be cheering.
Republican feminists were highly critical of the president’s antifeminist politics, particularly his opposition to the ERA, and the council worried about “a
sense of alienation and ‘benign neglect’” occurring among them. “It is important to convey to women that they can succeed as Republicans,” the council
urged, something high-level female appointments could accomplish.18 The
administration repeatedly touted the president’s female appointments, but
the council acknowledged that “the [absence] of women in substantive policy
positions, especially in the cabinet is a factor which influences women’s
perception of the Administration.”19 The short-lived effort to find “qualified
women to fill high level jobs within the Administration” benefited Dole when
she became one of two female cabinet members (Secretary of Transportation)
in January 1983.20 But the administration was careful to dispel any suspicion
of pandering to feminists or capitulating to demands for affirmative action.
“These women had to compete for their positions of responsibility with
numerous other highly qualified candidates,” it insisted, and they “were chosen
because of their abilities, not because of any arbitrary quota.” The administration maintained that women could and would advance as far as their talents
would take them on the supposedly level playing field of the free market; such
appointments became evidence of “[the president’s] commitment to equal
opportunity for women.”21
The emphasis on equal opportunity drew on the Republican Party’s
historic commitment to individual rights; it also illustrates the influence of
more than a decade of feminist activism and highlights the council’s ultimate
conclusion that the gender gap stemmed from “the changing economic role of
women.”22 In a 1982 article, Dole celebrated this “Quiet Revolution.” Recalling
her experience as one of a handful of female students at Harvard Law School,
“ignored by a professor who reserve[d] his questions for the annual ‘ladies
day,’” Dole acknowledged the “breathtaking change” that had occurred since
then. Rather than credit feminists, she cited “changes in the marketplace” that
had allowed women to discover “new and welcome opportunities” and to
“tak[e] their place beside men in business, government, and the professions
in unprecedented numbers.”23 Another staffer lamented the very changes that
Dole celebrated, comparing the Republican Party’s requisite courting of
120 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
working women to southern segregationists’ relinquishment of overt racism.
“Politicians that wanted to survive had to adjust. . . . It always hurts to give up
something you like. . . . Southern politicians gave up a lot in response to the
civil rights movement; who knows what the GOP will have to give up in
response to the women’s movement.”24
Women’s changing economic role became the council’s central explanation for the gender gap. It suggested a public relations campaign to dispel the
notion that Reagan was hostile to women’s employment, which stemmed
from the president’s opposition to the ERA, his ties to the New Right, and his
statement during the campaign that a wife in the workforce “threatens the
very structure of family life itself.”25 Advisers insisted that the administration
“make it resoundingly and decisively clear that we accept the new role of
women, especially working women,” and advised the president to communicate his “recognition of the changing role of women as breadwinners as well
as homemakers” and “awareness of the particular demands on . . . single parents who work.”26 Emily Rock, Special Assistant to the President for Policy
Development, suggested that cabinet officials emphasize the economic
benefits of women’s employment: “the potential increase in productivity, the
cushion against unemployment and inflation, and the positive effect on the
economy of increased spending by more wage earners.”27
The women most likely to disapprove of Reagan, however, were those
with the least money to spend.28 “Women tend to be poorer, to earn less
money on the job, and to be more dependent on the government for assistance,” the council recognized. Single women, least likely to approve of
Reagan, included the most economically vulnerable, “single mothers with
children as well as widows dependent on Social Security.” The largest gender
gap occurred between separated and divorced men and women; as Hinckley
acknowledged, “the personal circumstances of divorced or separated women
are less stable than those for divorced or separated men,” and these women
“frequently must look beyond their own resources to keep themselves and
their families going.” The Reagan administration “is a threat to the supports
originating with government,” he concluded, thus accounting for their
opposition.29
While some advisers predicted that economic recovery would be solution enough, the council insisted that “the Administration cannot rely on
economic recovery alone to improve its standing with women”; “symbolic
and ceremonial gestures alone” would also be “insufficient and probably
counterproductive.” Instead, the council urged “enactment of some specific
policies of direct benefit to women.” Wirthlin also called for “long-term
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strategies and programs” and Hinckley promoted “new, bold, and creative
ideas,” including “far ranging and far reaching policies.” In fact, Dole saw her
task as helping the administration “respond effectively and sensibly” to
changes in women’s role and “to anticipate appropriate policies for the decade
of the 80’s.” The administration must “build a credible record on issues
of concern to women,” the council insisted, including “substantive policy
decisions.”30
What kind of policies would effectively address the gender gap? How
could the administration convince working women that it was on their side?
And, given its diagnosis that the gender gap was rooted in women’s economic
vulnerability, could the administration respond effectively while maintaining
“consistency with the basic principles of the Reagan philosophy, e.g., reduced
federal spending, reduced tax and regulatory burdens, [and] support of the
federalism initiative”?31 In devising its policy response, the Coordinating
Council set out to “address the changing role of women in the U.S.” and “suggest appropriate action for government,” but the administration’s free-market
philosophy hobbled its efforts to respond effectively.32 The result was a set of
tepid policies designed to enhance choices among upwardly mobile, middleclass women. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable women, viewed as unlikely
converts to the Reagan agenda, found themselves on the losing end of the
Reagan Revolution.
the policy response: class politics and free-market
feminism
The “real gender gap we confront is not political,” Dole insisted, “but financial
and legal. It is the shortfall between society’s promise of sexual equity and
the often frustrating facts of American life.” Women working full-time still
earned 60 cents on the male dollar, public policies like Social Security and the
tax system were modeled on male breadwinning, working women struggled
to find adequate and affordable child care, and women were a growing proportion of the poor. Yet Dole expressed confidence that the president’s tax
policies and legal equity initiatives would level the playing field, enabling
more women to succeed in the free market. “By making the legal system
reflect the economic realities,” she insisted, “we can further the quiet revolution. We can close the real gender gap.”33
This conviction—that achieving legal equity and adjusting tax policies
would solve the gender gap, both economic and political—shaped the administration’s response. Some advisers understood that Reagan’s budgetary
122 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
attacks on income support and social services contributed to the “feminization of poverty.” A few even recognized that women required government
intervention to ensure access to good jobs, good wages, and affordable child
care. But the council ultimately concluded that while it must “focus on what
we are doing to support working women and female heads of household,” it
was “not necessary to deviate from the Reagan agenda one iota in order to
accomplish this task.” One of the council’s “basic assumptions” was: “We must
adhere to the basic principles of the Reagan philosophy.”34 That philosophy
opposed the income support and social service spending upon which lowincome women relied and rejected vigorous enforcement of antidiscrimination laws and affirmative action that had proven necessary to allow women
the very success that Dole celebrated. In the end, the administration followed
the advice of Margaret Bonilla of the Heritage Foundation, who urged
Reagan to articulate the following message to woman voters: “Government interference in the marketplace is the greatest barrier to the success and
advancement of women.”35
Feminists disagreed. By the early 1980s, organizations like the National
Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Women’s Political Caucus
(NWPC) had become vocal advocates for redistributionist policies, from
expanded income support and social services to affirmative action and job
training. They contended that in the face of deep-seated sexism, women’s
disproportionate responsibility for raising children, and an unequal and sexsegregated labor market, women’s economic opportunity depended upon an
activist government.36 Reagan advisers took a narrower view of women’s
rights and considered calls for redistribution illegitimate. The council wrote
with disdain about “allegedly ‘non-partisan’ women’s groups, such as NOW,
the League of Women Voters and the National Women’s Political Caucus,”
for example, which had become “basically left-liberal front groups for the
Democrats” and had “push[ed] the politics of America to the left.”37 “The
Democrats would like nothing better than to inculcate women, or at least
working women, with the set of class-conscious/class warfare thinking that
kept blue collar workers in line for decades,” one adviser warned. The “only
way that we can get working women out of the Democratic Party and
keep them out” was to pit Republicans’ “growth axis” against Democrats’
“us-against-them redistributionist axis” and prove that “our strategy for
growth is correct.”38
The poorest women would be the hardest sell. Reagan’s free-market
philosophy, his strong opposition to organized labor, and his commitment to
social-spending cuts threatened the very tools of working-class survival;
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unsurprisingly, among women as well as men, support for Reagan was highest
at the top of the income scale and lowest at the bottom.39 Poor women “feel
the brunt of the recession and budget cuts,” and staffers worried that cuts in
“Social Security assistance to the elderly, and of school lunches” cost Reagan
support among non-poor women, as well, who, according to Velma Montoya
of the Office of Policy Development, “perceive the President’s budget cuts as
lacking ‘heart’” and who “don’t appreciate the counter-arguments of reduced
dependency, etc.”40 Republican feminists and a few Reagan staffers advocated
a reconsideration of spending cuts or offers of alternative assistance to lowincome women. Hinckley suggested eliminating taxes for the working poor,
while another adviser advocated efforts to provide health care for women cut
off of welfare rolls and advised “reversal on previous reductions on the earned
income credit for welfare recipients.” And African American Lenora ColeAlexander, director of the Women’s Bureau, urged the president to “lessen or
resolve” the impact of those budget cuts on women and suggested that single
mothers get “priority placement in jobs programs” and training “for jobs . . .
which are higher paying and will provide self-sufficiency.”41 Congresswoman
Felder acknowledged that “not all in the Republican Party will support”
initiatives to help poor single mothers but insisted that the “[political] risk in
not doing so are much greater.”42
The council calculated the risk differently. Hinckley warned that the
poorest women, a group that included a disproportionate number of African
Americans, were unlikely converts to the Reagan agenda. Their “extreme
vulnerability will make them suspicious of anyone, even more so of someone
like President Reagan whose image and policies they find personally threatening.”43 The council labeled many of these women “Domestic Inactives”;
they were “on welfare or otherwise supported by the Federal government,”
“believe that the Federal government should support them,” and were “a very
poor prospect for the Administration.” Single mothers who were “working,
not on welfare” were an “unknown quantity.”44 Policies aimed at helping these
economically vulnerable women would not only violate the president’s conservative philosophy and endanger his political appeal to non-poor voters;
they would also fail to close the gender gap.
Economically secure and upwardly mobile women seemed a better prospect.
The council targeted working women, whether “minority women who are
moving into the middle class,” whose “salaries [were] a necessity for family
maintenance,” or “professionals,” who “tend to be liberal on social issues” but
may be attracted to Reagan’s economic policies.45 The class-based approach
is evident in various proposals, from sending speakers to “organizations of
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women in business, real estate agents, etc.” and encouraging “employee stock
ownership plans [and] job satisfaction/enrichment programs” to workshops
on “managing money, managing time, managing the family, [and] Jazzercize”
for working women.46 It is also evident in the administration’s policy offerings. The council insisted that the administration could address the concerns
of working women within a conservative, free-market framework. “There is
no reason why the Administration should be seen as reluctant to address such
important issues as child care, sex discrimination, equal employment opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and pension reform,” the council asserted,
for “issues such as these are not exclusively feminist and have appeal, in many
cases, across the ideological spectrum.” “Surely,” one adviser concluded, “there
are creative solutions to these problems that don’t require a lot of government
interference.”47
Legal equity seemed a promising response. During the 1980 campaign,
Reagan tried to finesse his opposition to the ERA by promising to “advance,
guarantee, and promote equal rights for women” by eliminating all vestiges of
sex discrimination in federal statutes.48 Advancing legal equity seemed both
“cost effective” and “Republican.” Barbara Honegger of the Office of Policy
Development argued that legal equity would “lift the economic inequities of
opportunity created by government” and “advance equality for women in the
free enterprise system.” Emily Rock concurred. “If government and society
discourage women from working” by discriminating against them, “the
economy will be inhibited” and “individuals will not develop individual skills
that lead to economic independence.” Ensuring opportunity in the labor
market via legal equity would not only fuel economic growth by encouraging
women to work; it would eliminate the need for “a welfare state” by providing
upward mobility for low-income women.49
The council flaunted efforts to eliminate discrimination from federal and
state statutes as evidence of the president’s commitment to equal opportunity.
In December 1981, Reagan had appointed a Task Force on Legal Equity for
Women, charged with helping the Justice Department identify and eliminate
sex discrimination in federal law; he also initiated the 50 States Project to help
state and local governments do the same. Little action was taken on either
effort before mid-1982, when the administration grew concerned about the
gender gap.50 The council insisted in late 1982 that “a comprehensive action
plan has been developed to maximize the visibility and effectiveness” of these
efforts; it was anxious to put the administration “on the offensive,” as “women’s
organizations and Democrat[ic] leadership have greeted the Project with a
large measure of skepticism” and “are hoping that a lack of progress can be
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used against the President.” Successful efforts to eliminate sex discrimination
in law “can help the President demonstrate his sincere commitment to the
object of equal rights for women.”51
The council had little evidence of progress. Felder wrote a scathing letter
to the president in November 1982, complaining that the task force had not
“effectively counterbalanced the president’s position on the Equal Rights
Amendment, abortion, and budgetary priorities affecting poor women”
and blasting “retreats from aggressive enforcement of our civil rights laws
affecting equal pay and equal opportunity for women.”52 A year after the
council promised to go on the offensive, Justice Department official Honegger created a stir when she publicly blasted the lack of action. As project
director of the attorney general’s Gender Discrimination Agency Review,
Honegger claimed to have sent three reports to the White House identifying sex discrimination in federal statutes, but the administration had
taken no action. Honegger also reported that her offer to help with the 50
States Project was rejected; she was told that the effort was “not something that the White House wants to expend any financial or political capital on.”53 Other administration officials were equally critical; one reported
that the legal equity effort had “been a lot of motion going nowhere.”54
Responding to the negative publicity, Reagan recommended that Congress change a few laws to eliminate discriminatory language. Assistant
Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds said these changes were “not
substantial.”55
Cole-Alexander offered a more profound critique of the legal equity
approach, challenging the notion that removing overtly discriminatory laws
would reduce gendered economic inequity. Referring to Reagan’s efforts to
scale back affirmative action, she implored the president to “more carefully
consider changes to laws and regulations which impact on real employment
opportunities for women,” including the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program’s (OFPCC) “goal for women in the construction trades.” Velma
Montoya and Wendy Borchardt, who handled women’s groups in the Office
of Public Liaison, likewise urged the administration to resolve the four thousand outstanding complaints women had filed with the OFCCP.56 Rather than
“removing much of the perceived enforcement strength” from affirmative-action
programs, Cole-Alexander recommended that the president “consider positive ways” to encourage compliance and chastised the administration for
failing to support women-owned businesses and for speaking “against
set-asides to provide procurement opportunities for women with Federal
agencies.”57
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Velma Montoya acknowledged that “many working women will always
want more than this Administration is philosophically prepared to give” but
insisted that “this shouldn’t deter us from continuing to search for ways to
monitor the quality of the work environment to assure equal opportunity.”
Her own experience as a professional woman in the male-dominated field of
policy research convinced her that it was necessary to find ways to “assure
that the ‘old boy network’ is opened to the ‘new girls.’” The Rand Corporation,
where she served for several years as a staff economist, changed its policies
“so that all Rand researchers now learn at the same time” about new funding
and contracts rather than “the previous way that the news trickled out from
the men’s locker room.”58 Affirmative-action policies, from public job listings
and outreach and recruitment to goals and timetables for hiring, had been
designed specifically to address the kinds of reflexive male bias that Montoya
described. She did not explain how the government might make the workplace more open to women while remaining true to Reagan’s philosophy.
A similar tension surrounded discussions of equal pay. Two decades after
Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, women continued to earn sixty cents
to the male dollar. The council recognized that “the perceived failure of the
Equal Pay Act” had “led to more radical proposals such as the concept of
‘Equal Pay for Work of Comparable Worth,’” and that “feminist groups and
liberal Democrats . . . have combined to make this a leading-edge pro-woman
issue.” It hoped to find “a good, long drawn out Equal Pay for Equal Work case
that the Administration is willing to support and publicize this support.”59 Yet
many Reagan officials did not believe that the wage gap was a result of discrimination. When six Republican congresswomen asked the president to
appoint a commission to “develop legislation to eliminate wage disparities
between men and women,” staffers called the idea “ill-advised”; it would “give
credibility to an idea we know is false—namely, that the pay gap is attributable
to discrimination and that it somehow lies within the power of government
to do something about it.”60 As the Council of Economic Advisers saw it,
“choice rather than discrimination as such was the dominant factor in
explaining the wage differential.”61 Linda Chavez, by then director of the
Office of the White House Public Liaison, elaborated this position in a
Fortune magazine article whose title captured the dominant administration
position: “Pay Equity Is Unfair to Women.” The wage gap reflected a fairly
functioning market, she insisted. Women chose jobs that gave them flexibility
and concentrated in fields that “command salaries in the market commensurate with the supply and demand of people able and willing to perform the
work.”62 Reagan felt the same way; an EEOC attorney told the Washington
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Post that Reagan “told us he was a believer in the marketplace and that we
would no longer pursue those cases” involving women’s complaints about
unequal pay.63 Michael Uhlmann in the Office of Policy Development advised
against any move that “in any way, shape, or form encourages the idea that
it somehow lies within the power of government to erase any significant
portion of the gender gap.”64
Uhlmann was worried that the administration might get sucked into
supporting “comparable worth.” “The typical equal pay case is dryasdust
incarnate,” he warned, and the only cases likely to generate interest are those
in which “women’s advocacy groups . . . urge litigative strategies or remedies
that would stretch the law beyond what this Administration believes to be its
proper bounds.” Feminists insisted that discrimination could be proven with
statistics and that the pay gap would be narrowed only through comparable
worth—the reevaluation of jobs to eliminate historic and deep-rooted undervaluing of female-dominated job categories. The council advised “an internal
study” of comparable worth, hoping that it might be able to “define the concept in a manner consistent with the Administration’s goals,” but comparable
worth, others concluded, “is nothing less than the elimination of a market
economy in the labor sector.” Tackling the issue of equal pay, Uhlmann
warned, would merely “give unnecessary aid and comfort to a philosophy
which is fundamentally opposed to that of the President.”65
The council urged the administration to address working mothers’ need
for child care, but it again struggled to remain within a free-market ethos.
Like comparable worth, Rock insisted, “federally funded child care . . .
require[s] interference in the free market and attack[s] concepts of personal
responsibility and the traditional family.” The council recommended “a public
effort to encourage [state and local] governments to relax . . . restrictions,” or
regulations that they suspected might deter the creation of child-care centers,
along with efforts to encourage private-sector child-care centers. Montoya
recommended encouraging states to require “workfare” participants to provide child-care services. Finally, the council flaunted the administration’s
most successful child-care effort: tax incentives. The Economic Recovery Tax
Act of 1981 increased child-care tax credits for working parents and provided
tax exemption for employer child-care contributions. Here, Dole insisted,
the administration was offering “more than verbal solidarity with working
women.” This was “compassion women can put in the bank.”66
Too much encouragement of maternal employment, though, posed a
political dilemma. The council recognized that the “Schlafly constituency”
and “Christian women’s groups” formed an energetic base for the president
128 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
and wanted to avoid “ignor[ing] or alienat[ing] married women who stay
home.” In a meeting with Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum Leadership Conference,
the council emphasized the Homemaker IRA in Reagan’s tax bill. By allowing
workers to create tax-exempt retirement accounts for their nonworking
spouses, this reform “will aid non-paid spouses who work as homemakers.”
The administration also touted the “virtual elimination of the estate tax” as
“of particular benefit to women,” who tend to outlive their husbands, and
declining inflation, which would “make it easier for women to work as homemakers if they wish to,” for “by slowing the growth of family expenditures,
lower inflation rates will return to [women] the choice of whether or not to
work outside the home.”67
That language epitomized the administration’s free-market feminism,
which celebrated maximum choice in an unfettered free market. Appealing to
upwardly mobile professional women and traditionalist housewives at the
same time, the administration insisted that “more than anything else, women
need a sound economy that will provide opportunities both in the market
place and at home” along with “legal equity—the removal of artificial barriers
that prevent women from making choices.”68 The administration claimed to
have delivered. “For women who wish to enter the job market or advance in
their careers, the President has sought to remove barriers and disincentives to
employment,” an Issue Update declared. “For women who wish to concentrate on their roles as wives, mothers and homemakers, he has implemented
economic policies which will allow them to more easily do so.” The president,
the Update continued, “recognizes the value and reward both in raising a
family and in working outside the home” and his policies would “lessen the
economic pressures that could force women to choose one or the other
against their preferences.”69
Reagan’s free-market feminism applied only to women who had the
means to make such choices. Cuts in Aid to Families with Dependant Children
(AFDC) denied poor single mothers the choice to act as full-time homemakers, while changes in welfare work incentives and cuts in Medicaid and
job-training programs limited their ability to secure jobs that could lift their
families out of poverty. Despite the claim that tax breaks for child-care expenses
would “go a long way toward helping women achieve greater financial independence and security—especially for the growing number of working
mothers who are the heads of single-parent households,” the administration’s
approach to child care primarily benefited middle- and upper-income families.70 Reagan converted Title XX—the largest federal source of child-care
funding—into a lesser block grant, trimmed the Child Care Food Program,
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and eliminated the requirement that states match federal child-care funds,
leading to “a significant reduction in the availability of money to support
child care services directly.”71
The administration’s press guide on the “feminization of poverty” reveals
the class bias of free-market feminism. When confronted with questions
about women’s poverty, officials were encouraged to deflect blame from budget cuts and attribute the phenomenon to “changes in moral values, inflation,
and the decline of private sector productivity.” The guide claimed that Reagan
was helping poor women by reducing inflation, which was “of greatest help to
medium- and low-income women, especially those who head single-parent
households.” It celebrated tax policies that may have provided a modicum of
additional income for some low-income women but that were largely irrelevant for poor single mothers. Free-market feminism—choices enhanced via
deregulation, tax and spending cuts, and tax breaks—had little to offer lowincome women.72
conclusion
The Coordinating Council had a short and “fitful existence.” Within a year of
its founding, the council “was virtually disbanded” when Dole became Secretary of Transportation. Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver created a
new working group on women’s issues and allied with Republican women in
the House to increase the child-care tax credit and tax breaks for the Homemaker IRA, but Reagan’s Department of Treasury and Office of Management
and Budget resisted these increases as too costly.73 With Reagan’s comfortable
victory in 1984, the administration no longer saw the need to court women
voters as women.
However short-lived, the administration’s discussion of the gender gap
offers a fruitful arena for examining the tensions within the Republican Party
around women’s changing roles. Historians have sometimes simplified the
role of gender in the politics of the 1970s and 1980s, emphasizing a sharp
distinction between feminists and antifeminists, but some of Reagan’s staffers
and other Republican feminists challenged his overtly antifeminist positions,
and they used the gender gap to push the administration to live up to its
rhetorical commitment to equal opportunity. But they were constrained by
the administration’s conservative philosophy. When, at the 1984 Republican
National Convention, Dole described President Reagan as “a man who gives
women ‘choices’ and opportunity rather than ‘promises,’” she employed the
language of feminism to celebrate women’s progress in the free market and to
130 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
condemn Democrats’ stated commitment to a more active federal role in
advancing women’s legal and economic equality.74 If such advocacy restrained
the policy advances of traditionalist conservatives, it had little success in
convincing Reagan to support federal efforts to level the economic playing
field or to enhance gender equality, particularly for economically vulnerable
women.75
In the decades since, the Republican Party has increasingly offered a
place to women who hew to a conservative, free-market ethos. Women have
achieved a growing presence in conservative policy circles, as pundits in conservative media outlets, and as Republican candidates and officeholders.76
New organizations, such as the Independent Women’s Forum, established in
1992, promote “free markets, limited government, and individual responsibility” and work to “combat the all-too-common presumption that women
want and benefit from big government, and build awareness of the ways that
women are better served by greater economic freedom.”77 Whether they
subscribe to “equity feminism” or “free-market feminism” or reject the term
“feminism” completely, these spokeswomen insist that women’s interests are
best served by tax cuts, social-spending cuts, and deregulation.78 Hardly new,
this position has roots in the Reagan administration’s response to the gender
gap and Republican women’s efforts to reconcile feminist commitment to
gender equality with a conservative economic agenda. As in the Reagan
administration, free-market feminism today coexists with a more explicitly
antifeminist politics in the Republican Party, offers a way to appeal to women
voters in a society profoundly altered by the feminist revolution of the 1960s
and 1970s, and promotes policies that ignore long-standing structural
inequalities and deepen economic divisions among women.79
Oregon State University
notes
1. I will use the term “gender gap” without quotation marks throughout the article.
While the term can connote a variety of political phenomena, for the purposes of this
article it means a statistically significant difference between all men and all women in
support for a candidate or elected official, a political party, or a political position. In the
early 1980s, that gap generally meant that fewer women than men supported Reagan, the
Republican Party, and Republican public policy positions.
2. Lee Atwater to James A. Baker III, 23 November 1982, Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393,
folder “Women: Gender Gap,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California
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(hereafter Reagan Library); “Post-Election Assessment,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393,
folder “Women: Gender Gap,” Reagan Library, 1–2. On the gender gap’s impact on the
midterm elections, see, e.g., Steven R. Weisman, “President Seeks to Gain Support from
Minorities,” New York Times, 16 January 1983; “Women’s Strategy: A Two-Year Plan,” n.d.,
Elizabeth Dole File, box 6411, folder “Women’s Strategy 7–11/82,” 1; “52% Solution: Track I,”
n.d., William Barr File, OA9095, folder “Women’s Issues,” 3; Office of Policy Development,
“Gender Gap,” 19 November 1982, Elizabeth Dole File, box 393, folder “Women: Gender
Gap,” 1. On trial presidential heats, see “Post-Election Assessment,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole
File, box 6393, folder “Women: Gender Gap,” 5; Charles O. Jones, “Renominating Ronald
Reagan: The Compleat Politician at Work,” in The American Elections of 1984, ed. Austin
Ranney (Washington, D.C., and Durham, 1985), 77.
3. Bella Abzug with Kim Kelber, Gender Gap: Bella Abzug’s Guide to Political Power
for American Women (Boston, 1984), 216, 131.
4. Adam Clymer, “Male-Female Split on Politics Found Decisive in Some Polls,” New
York Times, 27 October 1982 (reprint), William Barr File, OA9095, folder “Women’s Issues”;
Jane Perlez, “Women, Power, and Politics,” New York Times, 24 June 1984.
5. “Post-Election Assessment,” 3, 1; “52% Solution: Track I,” 3; “Post-Election
Assessment,” 1.
6. For example, Marjorie Spruill argues that after 1977, “there were now two
clearly developed sets of ideas about what was best for American women.” Marjorie
Spruill, “Gender and America’s Right Turn,” in Rightward Bound: Making America
Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Bruce J Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge,
Mass., 2008), 86.
7. Zillah Eisenstein, “Antifeminism in the Politics and Election of 1980,” Feminist
Studies7, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 188, 194.
8. Catherine E. Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from
Suffrage to the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill, 2006).
9. Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South
(Princeton, 2006); Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American
Workplace (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).
10. “Women’s Strategy Summary,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6411, folder “Women’s
Strategy 7–11/82,” 5.
11. Steven V. Roberts, “Surveys on Women’s Reaction Worry White House,” New
York Times, 1 September 1982; Carole Bucy, “The Reagan Administration and Women: The
ERA, Title IX, and the Role of the Federal Government,” paper presented at Conference on
the Reagan Presidency, University of California Santa Barbara, March 2002, 3; Elizabeth
Hanford Dole to President, 13 November 1982, and Ronald H. Hinckley to Elizabeth Dole,
5 November 1982, both in Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder “Women: Gender Gap”;
“Women’s Strategy Briefing: Outline,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, OA6409, folder “Women:
CCW, 1982,” 2.
12. “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 17 November 1982, William Barr File, OA9095,
folder “Women’s Issues: Gender Gap,” 2; “Women’s Strategy: A Two-Year Plan,” 4.
13. Kathleen A. Frankovic, “Sex and Politics: New Alignments, Old Issues,” PS 15,
no. 3 (Summer 1982): 441, 446.
14. “Propositions and Conclusions Regarding the Gender Gap,” 4 ; “Two-Year Gender
Gap Strategy,” 2.
132 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
15. “52% Solution: Track I,” 5, 21–22; “Post-Election Assessment,” 7, 12–13; “Two-Year
Gender Gap Strategy,” 2.
16. “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 2; “Women’s Strategy Briefing: Outline,” 2.
17. “Post-Election Assessment,” 5–6, 7, 14, 16; “52% Solution: Track I,” 27; Emily
H. Rock to Edwin L. Harper, 26 July 1982, William Barr File, OA9095, folder “Women’s
Issues”; “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 4.
18. Rymph, Republican Women, 222–29; “Women’s Strategy: A Two-Year Plan,” 3–4 ;
“Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 4.
19. “52% Solution: Track I,” 19.
20. “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 4; Robert Pear, “Reagan Chooses Ex-Representative
Heckler to Be the New Secretary of Health,” New York Times, 13 January 1983.
21. “Issue Update,” no. 7, 6–7.
22. Office of Policy Development, “Gender Gap,” 1.
23. Elizabeth Hanford Dole, “ The Real Gender Gap,” Christian Science Monitor,
29 October 1982 (reprint), Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder “Women: Gender Gap.”
24. “Post-Election Assessment,” 7.
25. Quoted in Abzug, Gender Politics, 87.
26. “Post-Election Assessment,” 14; “52% Solution: Track I,” 2, 20.
27. Rock to Harper.
28. Cynthia Harrison, “Politics and Law,” Women’s Annual 1983, 146–47.
29. “52% Solution: Track I”; “Women’s Strategy: A Two-Year Plan,” 2 ; “Propositions
and Conclusions Regarding the Gender Gap,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder
“Women: Gender Gap,” 11.
30. “Women’s Strategy Briefing Outline,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, OA6409, folder
“Women: CCW, 1982,” 1; “Women’s Strategy: A Two-Year Plan,” 2; “Dick Wirthlin
Presentation,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder “Women: Gender Gap,” 3–4; Ronald
Hinckley to Elizabeth Dole, 5 November 1982, Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder “Women:
Gender Gap,” 2; Dole to President, 13 November 1982; “52% Solution: Track I,” 1–2.
31. “Women’s Strategy Summary,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6411, folder “Women’s
Strategy 7–11/82,” 1.
32. “Women’s Strategy Briefing: Outline,” 2.
33. Dole, “The Real Gender Gap.”
34. “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 1.
35. Emily Rock to Roger B. Porter, 6 December 1982, Elizabeth Dole File, OA6409,
folder “Women: Coordinating Council on Women, 1982,” 1.
36. Marisa Chappell, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern
America (Philadelphia, 2010).
37. “52% Solution: Track I,” 3.
38. “Post-Election Assessment,” 9–10.
39. Abzug, Gender Gap, 130.
40. “Post Election Assessment,” 9; Office of Policy Development, “Gender Gap,” 1;
Velma Montoya to Edwin L. Harper, 2 August 1982, William Barr File, OA9095, folder
“Women’s Issues,” 2; “52% Solution: Track I,” 27.
41. “Propositions and Conclusions Regarding the Gender Gap,” 6–7, 10; Lenora ColeAlexander to Mel Bradley, n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6471, folder “Women’s Strategy,
January–June 1982,” 3–4.
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133
42. Bobbi Felder to President, 2.
43. “Propositions and Conclusions Regarding the Gender Gap,” 5, 11.
44. “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 2–3.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 2; “Post-Election Assessment,” 10; Evans Witt, “What Republicans Have
Learned About Women,” Public Opinion, October–November 1985 (reprint), Linda Arey
File, Oa15056, folder “Women,” 49.
47. “Women’s Strategy: A Two-Year Plan,” n.d., 4; “Post-Election Assessment,” 10.
48. White House Office of Policy Information, “Issue Update,” no. 7, 1.
49. Barbara Honegger to Martin Anderson, 28 April 1981, Martin Anderson File,
CFOA91, folder “Women’s Rights,” 1–3; Rock to Harper, 26 July 1982.
50. Cole-Alexander to Bradley, 2.
51. “52% Solution: Track I,” 19.
52. Felder to President, 1.
53. Harrison, “Politics and Law,” 151; William D. Hopkins, “Reagan Administration
Efforts to Eliminate Sex Bias in Federal Law: A Critical Assessment,” Journal of Law and
Politics 3, no. 1 (1986): 71–72; Abzug, Gender Gap, 141–42; Jones, “Renominating Ronald
Reagan,” 77; Judith Cummings, “Friends Say Feminist Heroine Is Sincere If Eccentric,” New
York Times, 30 August 1983; Hopkins, “Reagan Administration Efforts to Eliminate Sex
Bias in Federal Law,” 73.
54. Hopkins, “Reagan Administration Efforts to Eliminate Sex Bias in Federal
Law,” 73.
55. Harrison, “Politics and Law,” 152.
56. Wendy Borchardt to Ed Harper, 21 July 1982, William Barr File, OA9095, folder
“Women’s Issues,” 3; Velma Montoya to Ed Harper, 23 July 1982, William Barr File, OA9095,
folder “Women’s Issues,” 1. The OFCCP issued new, more lenient affirmative-action rules
in March 1983, exempting many firms from filing affirmative-action plans and narrowing
back pay for violations to individuals rather than classes of victims. Uproar prevented the
implementation of these new regulations. Reagan had also shaken up the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights to replace supporters of affirmative action with opponents. The administration
also supported the plaintiffs’ narrow interpretation of Title IX in the Grove City case. Harrison,
“Politics and Law,” 149–51, 153; Bucy, “The Reagan Administration and Women,” 9–17.
57. Cole-Alexander to Bradley, 2, 4.
58. Montoya to Harper, 3.
59. “52% Solution: Track I,” 8 ; “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 7.
60. “Key Issues,” n.d., Michael Uhlmann File, OA9442, folder “Women’s Issues:
1/18/83 Meeting of the Women’s Coordinating Council,” 3.
61. “52% Solution,” 7.
62. Linda Chavez, “Pay Equity Is Unfair to Women,” Fortune, 4 March 1985 (reprint),
Linda Arey File, OA15026, folder “Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly)(1).”
63. Quoted in Dugger, On Reagan, 229.
64. Michael M. Uhlmann to Edwin L. Harper, 17 January 1983, William Barr File,
OA9095, folder “Women’s Issues.”
65. Uhlmann to Harper, 17 January 1983; “52% Solution,” 8; “Key Issues,” 3.
66. Emily H. Rock to Roger B. Porter, 6 December 1982, Elizabeth Dole File, OA6409,
folder “Women: Coordinating Council on Women, 1982,” 2; “52% Solution,” 4, 11, 12;
134 | Reagan’s “Gender Gap” Strategy
Montoya to Harper, 2; ; “Fact Sheet,” n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder “Women:
Gender Gap,” 2; Dole, “The Real Gender Gap.”
67. “Two-Year Gender Gap Strategy,” 1; “Suggested Talking Points for Meeting with
The Eagle Forum Leadership Conference,” n.d., Linda Arey File, OA15026, folder “Eagle
Forum (Phyllis Schlafly)(1),” 2; White House Office of Policy Information, “Issue Update,”
no. 17, 2–3; “Tax Reform and Other Economic Initiatives,” Michael Uhlmann File, OA9422,
folder “Women’s Issues: 1/18/83 Meeting of the Women’s Coordinating Council”; White
House Office of Policy Information, “Issue Update,” no. 7, 2.
68. “Executive Summary,” n.d., Michael Uhlmann File, OA9442, folder “Women’s
Issues: 1/18/83 Meeting of the Women’s Coordinating Council,” 1.
69. “Issue Update,” no. 7, 1.
70. White House Office of Policy Information, “Issue Update,” no. 7, 3; “Fact Sheet,”
n.d., Elizabeth Dole File, box 6393, folder “Women: Gender Gap,” 1–2.
71. Alfred J. Kahn and Sheila B. Kamerman, Child Care: Facing the Hard Choices
(Dover, Mass., 1987), 20–23, 100. Overall, child-care funding increased under Reagan, but
this increase benefited middle- and upper-income families predominantly. Tax benefits for
child care more than doubled from 1980 to 1986, while direct federal expenditures for child
care declined by over 14 percent in the same period. Kahn and Kamerman, Child Care, 104;
Abbie Gordon Klein, The Debate Over Child Care, 1969–1990: A Sociohistorical Analysis
(Albany, N.Y., 1992), 40; Harrison, “Politics and Law,” 154. For a broader discussion of child
care, see Sonya Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America’s Child
Care Policy (New Haven, 1999).
72. Office of Policy Development Staffing Memorandum, “The Feminization of
Poverty,” n.d., William Barr File, OA9095, folder “Women’s Issues,” 2–3; White House
Office of Policy Information, “Issue Update,” no. 7, 2.
73. Perlez, “Women, Power, and Politics”; Steven R. Weisman, “Facing the ‘Gender
Gap’ with Conflicting Advice,” New York Times, 16 August 1983.
74. Chavez, “Pay Equity Is Unfair to Women.”
75. An exception is the successful override of Reagan’s veto of the Civil Rights
Restoration Act of 1988.
76. Susan Milligan, “GOP Women a Rising Force in the Party,” Boston Globe, 13 June
2010, http://www.boston.com/.
77. “Our Mission,” Independent Women’s Forum (accessed 5 February 2011),
http://www.iwf.org/about/.
78. “Free Market Feminism,” http://freemarketfeminism.com/about/ (accessed
5 February 2011); Michelle D. Bernard, “Why ‘Feminism’ Should be Erased from the
American Lexicon.” U.S. News & World Report online, 15 June 2010, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/06/15/why-feminism-should-be-erased-from-the-americanlexicon?PageNr=2.
79. The gender gap has continued to be a factor in national elections. See, for example,
Center for American Women and Politics, “Gender Gap Evident in the 2008 Election:
Women, Unlike Men, Show Clear Preference for Obama over McCain,” 5 November 2008;
Center for American Women and Politics, “Gender Gap Widespread in 2010 Elections:
Women Less Likely than Men to Support Republican Candidates,” 4 November 2010.