ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607190010
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Margie Fisher
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
MARY PICKETT'S election to Roanoke City Council in 1953 marked a first and possibly a last.
Pickett was the first woman in the Roanoke Valley to enter the ranks of lawmakers, state or local. She was the last whose victory can be clearly attributed to the solidarity of women voters. About 100 women's organizations in the city and a slew of women leaders - some Democrats, some Republicans, many apolitical - coalesced behind her candidacy. As a result, the then-45-year-old grandmother led the six-candidate field, carrying 24 of the city's 28 precincts.
The coalition that formed for Pickett - a good decade before the women's-liberation movement of the '60s - didn't last. If it had, perhaps it would not have taken 23 years before another woman, Elizabeth Bowles, was elected to Roanoke City Council. And another 18 years after that before a third woman, Linda Wyatt, made it to the city's governing body.
Add to the Pickett-Bowles-Wyatt triumvirate the names of Jane Hough, elected to Salem City Council in 1972, and May Johnson and Athena Burton, elected to the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors in 1975 and 1981 respectively, and what you have is ... a very short list.
Too short by far, for a period of more than four decades.
And during that span, when virtually every other metropolitan area of Virginia elected women to the state legislature, the Roanoke Valley elected not one.
Consider, for instance, that Republican Charlotte ``Pinky'' Giesen was elected to Radford City Council in 1954, a year after Pickett, a Democrat who ran as an independent, was elected in Roanoke. In 1957, Giesen became the first Republican woman elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, at a time when only two other women served in the General Assembly.
Women since have made slow but sure gains in numerical strength and influence in Richmond. Western Virginia has added to the uptick: former Dels. Mary Sue Terry from Patrick County, Joan Munford from Blacksburg, Joan Jones from Lynchburg, all Democrats; current Del. Joyce Crouch from Lynchburg, a Republican. Indeed, it makes the Roanoke Valley's gender gap seem passing strange.
It would be foolish to suggest that male chauvinism runs deeper and wider in the Roanoke Valley than elsewhere. The united front of clubwomen that rallied for Pickett in '53, for instance, dissolved because it had so successfully established the role of women in politics. (Pickett, a sprightly 89 and still a political junkie, once described the reaction of male council members to her election: ``They were scared,'' thinking that every time she had an initiative, throngs of women would descend on City Hall and raise a ruckus if the men didn't go along. )
Times, in other words, changed - and mostly for the better. Though Republican Bowles had many women supporters, she ran for council in '76 on the businessmen-backed Roanoke Forward ticket. The coalition that elected Democrat Wyatt in 1994 included many women; the common denominator, however, wasn't women's clubs but the political activism of labor unions, teachers, and civil-rights and gay-rights advocacy groups.
Women have played a critical role - though too often behind the scenes - in building their respective political parties and electing enlightened males as state lawmakers. Maybe that's part of the problem. Their choices have been so good that there's been little reason to challenge incumbents.
What's bothersome is that when there's to be an open seat, the Democratic and GOP political machinery, male-dominated to this day, rarely cranks up for a qualified female candidate, of which there are many in the valley. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of local women who've ever gotten their parties' backing to run for the legislature.
Something's amiss. The valley's bipartisan League of Women Voters folds for lack of interest. Too few women candidates step forward, and 100 women's clubs probably wouldn't unite today to elect Mother Theresa. Where's the younger generation's great clubwomen and organizers - the Odessa Baileys, the Frances Garlands - and why aren't they getting organized to run for the General Assembly?
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB