This post is part of a series about my new book Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court, co-authored with Hannah Brenner Johnson. The first post offered an overview of the book. The second shed some light on how we found the women profiled in the book. The third examined what it means to be "shortlisted." And now I turn to a shortlisting featured in the new FX show "Mrs. America."
Are you watching “Mrs. America”? If not, you should, if for no other reason than to enjoy the star-studded cast that includes Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly, Niecy Nash as Flo Kennedy, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem, Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm, Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan, Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug, and more. As my University of Houston colleague, the historian Leandra Zarnow, recently wrote in the Washington Post:
Covid-19 has denied political junkies the daily twists and turns of a typical presidential race, and left Americans scrambling for entertainment. This has helped turn the FX show “Mrs. America,” currently streaming on Hulu, into the latest quarantine hit. “Mrs. America” resurrects the dramatic final chapter of the protracted battle to secure an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, first introduced in 1923. It carries viewers from the heady moment when the ERA passed both houses of Congress in 1972 through the unexpected failure to ratify the amendment by a 1982 deadline. Conservative crusader Phyllis Schlafly is the figure driving “Mrs. America.” Creator Dahvi Waller dreamed up the show thinking former secretary of state Hillary Clinton would be well established in the West Wing by the time it aired, and a show about Schlafly would be a study of a vanishing force in U.S. politics. Clinton’s unexpected loss, however, created a series in which the anti-hero is the conqueror.
The series reminds us of forgotten moments in the women’s rights movement and illustrates how the politics of the 1970s are still very much at play today. Spoiler alert—you might not want to keep reading if you haven’t seen the series finale yet. (Otherwise, continue on to read about a shortlisting of Schlafly and to see some gems I uncovered while researching presidential archives.)
In the series finale—“Reagan”—the show suggests that Schlafly herself was "shortlisted" as we define it in our book—qualified but not selected from a list that creates the appearance of diversity but preserves the status quo—not for the Supreme Court but for Reagan’s cabinet.
I wish I could tell you whether Reagan’s archives confirm that he shortlisted her for a cabinet position, but unfortunately my time combing through thousands of his presidential papers was focused on Supreme Court nomination files and not files for other appointments. Even so, I did come across Schlafly’s name among those suggested by different groups for the Supreme Court both in Reagan’s papers (above) and in those of Gerald Ford (below).
(Those are telegrams, by the way. Both presidents' archives are jammed full of messages like these on delicate paper offering recommendations for the Supreme Court and other advice, the world before e-mail and tweets.) And, I can confirm that Reagan was briefed for a 15-minute meeting with Schlafly in the Oval Office on March 21, 1983, though according to notes on his talking points the purpose of the gathering was only to thank her for support, with no mention of a seat on his cabinet.
Some contend that Schlafly’s active pursuit of a political appointment was hypocritical given her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. But she’s not alone among women with professional aspirations who did not support the constitutional change. Of the women profiled in Shortlisted, some supported the ERA and some did not, and at least one lobbied publicly against it, Susie Sharp, the first female Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. We conclude in Shortlisted that this is among the many reasons why it is important for women to hold leadership roles in numbers equal to men, because there is no singular “woman’s voice.” Men in leadership have represented wide-ranging political and social and moral perspectives for centuries. Why shouldn't women do so as well?
While Reagan gave us our first female Supreme Court justice, his record on women was otherwise not great. As we note in the book, Congress conducted oversight hearings on Reagan's judicial selection toward the end of his presidency in an effort to make sense of his dismal record in appointing diverse candidates. (Less than 10% of his appointments to the lower federal courts were women.) He did place one woman into a cabinet-level role, Jean Kirpatrick as the permanent representative at the United Nations. But even Schlafly complained of Reagan's failure to move more women from shortlisted to selected.
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