Stepping Up to Power: The Political Journey of Women in America

Part autobiography, part biography, this political history examines how women have gained power in America. Long active in the legislative field, Woods uses her own career as a springboard for her discussion of the past three decades, during which women have gone from having minimal political clout to holding 20% of elected offices, while the past eight years of the Clinton administration have ushered in the ascension of more women into major positions of political power--including the first female secretary of state and attorney general--than any other presidency in history. Yet despite these changes, Woods contends, women remain woefully underrepresented in political office. Woods herself struggled to win and hold a range of elected offices including city council member, state senator and lieutenant governor in Missouri. She ran in two highly visible and maddeningly close races for U.S. Senate, losing narrowly in both by less than 1% of the vote. She has also played key roles in national Democratic politics, including the bid to place Geraldine Ferraro on the presidential ticket in 1984. Her book explores how the ""mainstreaming"" of feminism, the fight for an Equal Rights Amendment and prochoice activism have all helped push women into seriously pursuing political office, and how the Anita Hill debacle helped spur the 1992 ""Year of the Woman"" in politics. Representing politics as a ""men's club"" to which women have been continually denied access, Woods consistently reveals intriguing and disturbing facts about women's acquisition of political power in America, even if her styling turns out to be a bit prosaic. (Mar.)