| Chapter 2: | The Second Wave and Emily's List |
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office in 1982; they comprised 10.5 percent of all elected state-level offices.17 Women made up an even smaller percentage of officeholders at the national level. Twenty-three women served in the 97th Congress (1981–1983): twenty-one in the House and two in the Senate. Together, they comprised 4 percent of the membership in Congress. Women's groups used the failure of the ERA as a call to arms, claiming that the only way to protect and promote progressive women's issues was to increase the number of women in public office (Mansbridge 1986). That call did not go unanswered. According to data from the Center for American Women and Politics, between 1970 and 1984, an average of fifty women ran for U.S. Congress each cycle; in 1984 seventy-five women ran for public office, up 29 percent from 1980.18
Women's PACs were not ready for the influx of female candidates in 1984. Even though they benefitted from their status as SSFs, as mentioned previously, these organizations were constrained in terms of how much financial support they could provide candidates. Female candidates needed the money women's PACs could provide, but $30,000 (if all three women's PACs gave the maximum amount in the primary and general election) was inadequate to cover the costs of a viable campaign. They needed the money from parties, other PACs, and individuals. But these contributions would only come if the candidate could prove herself, which involved more than filing papers.
Proving one's viability required a multifaceted approach. The candidate and her campaign team had to understand polling, campaign ads, and so on. Women's PACs knew what it meant to run a viable campaign; that's why recruiting and training women to run for office were part of their mission. But up until this point, women's PACs were unable to build an effective recruitment and training program with enough viable women in the pipeline because of