| Chapter 2: | The Second Wave and Emily's List |
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Women's PACs
The first women's PAC, the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), formed in 1971 as a membership organization. Its mission was fourfold: increasing the representation of women in politics, recruiting women to run, providing them with campaign funds, and pressuring the political parties to support these female candidates (Salvin 1995, 445). At its inception, NWPC had a small but influential membership: 300 women, including Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) and Bella Abzug (D-NY) and the leaders of various women's groups. By 1975 the organization had grown to more than 30,000 members (Salvin 1995, 445).
While NWPC may have been the first, it was the Women's Campaign Fund (WCF) that became the PAC to beat (Salvin 1995). Created in 1974, the WCF and NWPC were similar in many ways. Both had been formed by a small group of elite female politicos, both stood as connected PACs, and both were bipartisan and focused on electing women to office. The main difference between the two was the nature of their connected status: the parent organization of the WCF was a nonprofit foundation, not a membership organization.12
Why is this such a critical difference? Throughout the 1970s, debates raged within women's membership organizations over engagement with the formal political system (Barakso 2005, 64). According to Freeman (1975), the debate was between “woodwork” feminists who were much more comfortable with lobbying and traditional politics versus more radical activists who felt that the only way to affect change was to upend the current institutional arrangements and power structures. The former group recognized that institutional change needed to occur but felt that the best way to accomplish it was through persuasion and piecemeal change. In addition, there were debates within the NWPC