Published on September 9, 2009

Former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin speaks in Newport on September 1. Photo by Joseph Gresser

NEWPORT — The audience for Madeleine Kunin’s talk here on Wednesday, September 1, was sizeable.  More than 70 people filled the conference room at the Emory Hebard State Office Building to hear the former governor and U.S. ambassador to Switzerland speak about women in political office.

The event was the first in the fall series of lectures sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  As such it was largely attended by women and men over the age of 50.

Many in the audience obviously recalled Ms. Kunin’s years as governor.  And most seemed receptive to her theme, which was based on her recent book Pearls Politics and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead.

But the Newport audience was not the one the book was written for.  Those readers are younger, female, and, with a bit of encouragement, the ones who Ms. Kunin hopes will step forward to seek public office.

Ms. Kunin began her talk by recalling the state building’s namesake, Em Hebard, who preceded her as chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives.  Ms. Kunin credited Mr. Hebard as being her mentor, back in the day when being on opposite sides of the political fence did not prevent mutual respect and cooperation.

She said that Mr. Hebard taught her an important lesson when she let her desire to increase support for child-care facilities lead her to propose taking funds from the state highway fund for the purpose.  Ms. Kunin recalled that Mr. Hebard opposed her suggestion and told a story from his days as a storekeeper.

Mr. Hebard said one can avoid spending money on the front steps one year, and maybe the next, but pretty soon the whole thing collapses.  Ms. Kunin’s idea was unceremoniously shot down.

Despite his folksy manner, Mr. Hebard had a Phi Beta Kappa key in his pocket, Ms. Kunin said.

“He was a real Vermonter in that he pretended to know less than he did,” she recalled.  Ms. Kunin says in her book that Mr. Hebard worked to make sure she would become chairman of the Appropriations Committee after he left the Legislature to become state treasurer.

Ms. Kunin says that her success in that position gave her the confidence to seek the governorship.

In explaining why she wrote her book, Ms. Kunin said that after she was elected governor in 1984 she assumed the question of women in politics was settled.

“I expected to turn around and see a whole contingent of female governors, female senators, people running for office in all areas.”  But although there are prominent women in public life such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, the numbers of women in elective office “aren’t all that great.”

Ms. Kunin, reading from the introduction to her book, pointed out that when she first arrived there the halls of Vermont’s State House were filled with portraits of former governors, all of whom were male.  She quoted nine-year-old Melissa Campbell, who visited the capital building in 2006 and came across Ms. Kunin’s official portrait.  “Finally, a woman.  It’s about time,” she said.

“Before November four in 2008 the percentage of women in the United States Congress was sixteen percent.  The day after the election it shot up to seventeen percent,” Ms. Kunin said.

With a flourish, Ms. Kunin let a long list of countries unfold until it hit the floor.  In that list, she said, the U.S. ranks seventy-third in the percentage of women in the lower house of the national legislature.  That places us below Afghanistan and Iraq, she said.  Ms. Kunin noted that both countries have constitutionally mandated quotas for the percentage of women in their parliaments.

“It’s not just politics,” Ms. Kunin said.  “This year women in corporate leadership on boards of directors and CEOs are at sixteen percent.  And it’s been kind of stuck there.”

She said she wished she had a clear, simple answer to the question of why the percentage of women in leadership positions is so low.  “Then we could set out to work to change it,” she said.

Among her thoughts on the subject was the idea that women tend to underestimate their abilities.

She said that while men look in the mirror as they shave and think, “I could be a senator,” women are likely to put off running for school board until they get take several courses to become fully conversant with all aspects of education.

Ms. Kunin’s book is designed to overcome some of the blocks that women can put in their own way.  Using her own story as a thread running through the narration, she provides good, practical advice to women who want to make a difference in the world.

In addition to drawing on her own experience, Ms. Kunin interviewed many female office holders from both sides of the aisle.  Their comments helped Ms. Kunin address issues such as the right time to run, how others have managed to juggle family responsibilities and the demands of office, and the dread question of fund-raising.

Many of the women Ms. Kunin spoke with did not think of themselves as potential candidates at first.  Some were encouraged by mentors, others were driven by seeing what they thought were unmet needs.

Ms. Kunin told her audience that her first venture into the public sphere came about because she wanted to see a signal light at a dangerous railroad crossing her children had to traverse on their way to school.

She said that she campaigned until the board that determines what crossings should be marked finally paid the site a visit.  “Then I had a stroke of luck,” she recalled.

A railway repair car went whizzing through the intersection while the board was making their inspection, causing them to dive for safety.

In her book Ms. Kunin reminds women that a political career does not have to be a lifelong endeavor.  She held various elective offices over the course of 16 years.

After deciding not to seek re-election for a fourth term, Ms. Kunin served as deputy secretary of education in the Clinton administration and then as ambassador to Switzerland, her native land.  Since then Ms. Kunin has written, taught, and built a nonprofit organization, the Institute for Sustainable Communities.

Ms. Kunin’s book was published in April 2008, and it strongly anticipates what Ms. Kunin worked for in that period, the election of Hillary Clinton as the first woman president of the United States.

Despite her disappointment in the outcome of Ms. Clinton’s campaign, Ms. Kunin told her audience that she believes that in 2016 both parties will run a presidential slate with a woman in either the first or second position.

In her book Ms. Kunin makes clear her understanding that all women do not think alike.

Elected women’s attitudes are similar to those of the men they replaced “roughly 85 to 90 percent of the time,” she writes.  “They made a difference because they brought other life experiences to their jobs.  This leads to a different ranking of priorities and, sometimes, a different way to achieve them.”

Ms. Kunin writes that matters such as domestic violence, rape, and child abuse are treated with greater seriousness today than in the past because women legislators persuaded their male counterparts that they are serious crimes.

In her speech, as well as in her book, Ms. Kunin argued that women’s increasing presence in the political sphere is not only an indication of social progress, but a driver of that progress.

Pearls Politics and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead by Madeleine M. Kunin;, published in 2008 by Chelsea Green Press in White River Junction; 222 pages; softcover; $14.95.