BEYOND THE GENDER GAP: WOMEN'S BID FOR POLITICAL POWER

It is argued that what is new in American politics is not the gender gap in voting, which has existed for thirty years, but the fact that women are making successful bids for the power of public office. The proximate source of women's success at the polls is the emergence of political groups and coalitions formed during a decade of effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The new political organizational structure is in turn rooted in demographic and economic changes that have stimulated a new form of attachment to the labor force among women and a new form of gender solidarity in the workplace and polity. The paper ends with a discussion of women's impact once they become a significant force rather than a token presence in American politics.