The recent endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama by NARAL has re-opened the debate over why some women don't support Sen. Hillary Clinton in her bid for the White House.
Earlier in the campaign, in commenting on the incendiary sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama pointed out that African Americans who were active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s "continue to have a lot of anger and frustration" about race relations in this country.
I think the same is true for women. Those women who were active in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s continue to have anger and frustration about the obstacles women have historically faced and continue to face.
Something significant happened to the women's movement between the time Hillary's class graduated in 1969 and when their younger sisters left home in the early 1970s. It isn't surprising that 60 is a watershed age when it comes to support for Hillary.
Women over 60 entered their adult lives at a time when women were not taken seriously when they applied to medical school, tried to get a credit card, or reported domestic violence.
Even when those women rebelled, they weren't taken seriously. Protests and demonstrations by women in the late 1960s were ridiculed. Legitimate grievances against the strictures of sexism were trivialized as women having a problem with bras.
Male gatekeepers who decided whether to accept an applicant into a graduate program or hire someone for a job with the potential for advancement often dismissed female applicants. The thinking was that an investment in women would be wasted; women would only quit to get married and have babies.
Those who overcame those biases found new obstacles to advancement. They were isolated as tokens and subjected to sexual innuendo. If they tried to help other women they risked marginalizing themselves as "women's libbers," a harsh criticism that was understood to mean unattractive, castrating, and probably lesbian.
Donna Shalala, 67, president of the University of Miami, recently described how in 1971, after completing her second semester of teaching at a university, she was told by her department chair that the department would never tenure a woman, despite Shalala being an excellent teacher who had published more than the rest of faculty in her department put together. I suspect Shalala's endorsement of Hillary has more to do with the residual anger and frustration of this experience than the fact that Shalala served in Bill Clinton's Cabinet.
Women under 55 did not have an easy path, either, but they had a much different experience that perhaps accounts for more of them embracing the message of hope and change. Obama points out that he can be hopeful because his generation benefited from the efforts of the older generation to break down racial barriers. Similarly, women who entered their adult lives in the 1970s instead of the 1960s may not have had an easy time, but they may also have less cause to be cynical about hope.
On August 26, 1970, the Women's March for Equality attracted thousands of women all over the country, many of whom had not previously participated in women's liberation activities. It was the largest demonstration ever held for women's rights, and when it was over, it was clear that women's issues could not be ignored.
In the next few years, Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Title IX, and sent the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. Abortion was legalized. At the time, it looked like a new world for women.
Women who entered college around 1970 found that doors were suddenly open. Many of them boldly changed their college majors to fields that had been dominated by men. They became part of a surge of women who entered law, engineering, medicine, and journalism in the 1970s. Of course, many of those women found sexism alive and well on the other side of those doors, but they also found themselves in the company of a lot of other women, too.
If women in their 50s are more open to a message of "change we can believe in" than women over 60, this may be why. For women over 60, Hillary is a symbol, and an important one. If women that age see themselves in her in ways that women under 60 do not, it's understandable, and worth noting--just as it is worth noting that an African American in his 40s can be hopeful and conciliatory in ways a previous generation of African Americans find difficult.