The media is a powerful force in shaping how Americans perceive women’s roles in national politics. Until the early 1990s, this media was limited to television, radio, and newspapers. With the advent of the personal computer, new tools have evolved such as instantaneous reporting on each major network’s internet sites (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News), streaming video (Google’s YouTube), and the blog (a contraction of the term "web log"). Unfortunately, much of the media uses these tools to demean females and help gain political advantage for their male counterparts.
In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed and women were finally granted the right to vote. With the successful end of the women’s suffrage movement, women were satisfied with their role in politics as being a vote caster, assisting with a local grassroots campaign, or the occasional party convention delegate. The traditional role of the woman was as a homemaker, house cleaner, and caretaker for children and husbands; they were polite and motherly. Quiet and unspoken. Reserved and reticent. Then came the social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s that stemmed from a public outcry against the Vietnam War. This resulted in a change in national political strategy and a springboard for additional social reforms; one of those being the feminist movement and women’s emergence into non-traditional political roles.
Among early pioneers of the female political movement were Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm; the revolutionary congressional representatives from the state of New York. Abzug was neither polite nor motherly. Her style was to demand, not ask. Her gruff voice and curt mannerisms were out of character for the traditional female. In a nation that was still recovering from the wounds of centuries of racism, Chisholm was considered a black militant by many whites across the United States and her bid for the presidency in 1972 reaffirmed it. How dare a woman, a black one no...