DOCUMENT 2: Refusing to Be “Frozen Out”

During the 1920s, Eleanor became more and more involved in the work of the Democratic Party. She also forged strong connections with grassroots activists and community organizers, such as Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook. Together with other activists, many of whom were former members of the suffragist movement, the three women launched many campaigns to improve housing conditions in New York, to shorten the working hours of laborers, to prevent child labor, and to secure decent working conditions and compensation for working women. During these years, Eleanor honed her political skills and, while working to support Democratic candidates, emerged as a leading voice in the Democratic Party. Yet she and her female colleagues were met with strong resistance and prejudices. Many men and women of the time were skeptical about women’s capacity to serve in critical leadership positions. Thus, eight years after the fight for suffrage was won, women were still playing secondary roles in politics. In the 1928 essay below entitled, “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” Eleanor explains some of the challenges women faced and her definition of success for women in politics.

Women have been voting for ten years. But have they achieved actual political equality with men? No. They go through the gesture of going to the polls; their votes are solicited by politicians; and they possess the external aspect of equal rights. But it is mostly a gesture without real power. With some outstanding exceptions, women who have gone into politics are refused serious consideration by the men leaders.

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From all over the United States, women of both camps have come to me, and their experiences are practically the same. When meetings are to be held at which momentous matters are to be decided, the women members often are not asked. . . . Politically, as a sex, women are generally “frozen out” from any intrinsic share of influence in their parties. . . . Beneath the veneer of courtesy and outward show of consideration universally accorded women, there is a widespread male hostility—age-old, perhaps—against sharing with them any actual control.

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To many women who fought so long and so valiantly for suffrage, what has happened has been most discouraging. For one reason or another, most of the leaders who carried the early fight to success have dropped out of politics. This has been in many ways unfortunate. Among them were women with gifts of real leadership. They were exceptional and high types of women, idealists concerned in carrying a cause to victory, with no idea of personal advancement or gain. In fact, attaining the vote was only part of a program for equal rights—an external gesture toward economic independence, and social and spiritual equality with men.

How, then, can we bring the men leaders to concede participation in party affairs, adequate representation, and real political equality?

Our means is to elect, accept, and back women political bosses. . . . Perhaps the word “boss” may shock sensitive ears. To many it will conjure all that is unhealthy and corrupt in our political machinery. Yet when I speak of women bosses, I mean bosses actually in the sense that men are bosses. . . . As things are today, the boss is a leader, often an enlightened, high-minded leader. . . . I therefore use the word, as it is the word men understand.

If women believe they have a right and duty in political life today, they must learn to talk the language of men. They must not only master the phraseology, but also understand the machinery which men have built through years of practical experience. Against the men bosses, there must be women bosses who can talk as equals, with the backing of a coherent organization of women voters behind them.

Voters who are only voters, whether men or women, are only the followers of leaders. The important thing is the choosing of leaders.

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Certain women profess to be horrified at the thought of women bosses bartering and dickering in the hard game of politics with men. But many more women realize that we are living in a material world, and that politics cannot be played from the clouds. To sum up, women must learn to play the game as men do. If they go into politics, they must stick to their jobs, respect the time and work of others, master a knowledge of history and human nature, learn diplomacy, subordinate their likes and dislikes of the moment, and choose leaders to act for them, and to whom they will be loyal. They can keep their ideals; but they must face facts, and deal with them practically.137

Connections

1. Even after women achieved the right to vote, Eleanor believed that men continued to deny women real political power. What does voting achieve in a struggle for equality? What can it not accomplish? Why did women lack political equality with men?
2. What is a “gesture without real power”? What does Eleanor mean when she says that women are “frozen out” from any influence in politics? Historically, who else has been “frozen out”? What have they done to overcome this?
3. What does Eleanor mean when she says that women “must learn to talk the language of men”? Is it important that women do this? How can language change the way people think about a situation?
4. What does it mean for women to “play the game as men do”? What are Eleanor’s goals? Have you felt it necessary to play someone else’s game? How do the rules of the “game” get written, and why is it so difficult to change them?
5. In the 1920s, it was considered a great achievement that women had been granted the right to vote. What does Eleanor recognize as the limitations of simply having the right to vote? How has the American definition of “democracy” changed since the 1920s? What is political equality, and why is it important for democracy?