Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [93]
Despite health problems, Genora and Sol took another trip to Europe in late summer 1984, and it made up for some of the miseries of the previous year. In Lisbon, Sol brought a copy of the International Herald Tribune, with the headline, “Mondale Names Ferraro as His Running Mate” blazing out. Genora felt “like shouting all over the streets of Lisbon that a woman was, for the first time, a serious candidate for vice-president of the United States!” If only her mother could have seen this headline. Women could not even vote in the United States until after Genora was born and had always been the “property of their husbands after they left their fathers’ homes.” If women went out on their own they were called old maids, and all kinds of jokes were made about them. “And now, today,” she exulted, “a big stride has been taken.” She knew that Ferraro favored a nuclear freeze, and Genora said, with some understatement, “This is a good day!” She was not so naive as to expect the Ferraro nomination to end discrimination against women or inaugurate a golden age of feminism. It was an acknowledgment by Vice President Walter Mondale that women were as capable as men in just about any field, including politics. She believed that Ferraro’s elevation vindicated what she herself had sought to accomplish over the years and thought it her duty to ask any and all Americans she met about their feelings toward Ferraro. Two young girls in a shoe store had missed a day of touring just to listen to the news reports on the radio. She heard a young couple speaking “American” English on the streets and queried them: “Yippee!” they both yelled. In a cafeteria Genora again heard American English being spoken at a table where six people dined. “Their enthusiasm and support,” she claimed, was “quite something to hear.” The first remark came from a man of about fifty. He exclaimed, “Well, it’s about time!” Genora’s insistence on “American” English was due to her belief that the English “would not be excited at all” about the Ferraro nomination. After all, they had Margaret Thatcher, “the Iron Lady—a most reactionary” politician—as their prime minister.11
When Genora got back to her room, she wrote a lengthy and heartfelt letter to vice presidential hopeful Ferraro. On a personal level, she expressed the joy of all women at this turn of events. Congresswoman Ferraro should neither be “pressured” nor “beholden” to foreign or domestic advisors among the men now surrounding her in Washington. The vice presidential candidate, she claimed, had a constituency “greater” than any male counselors. By this statement, Genora narrowed her focus, perhaps unduly, on the presidential campaign of 1984. While Ferraro’s nomination was a great day for feminism and the women’s movements in general, it was as symbolic as it was real. Ferraro ran on a ticket that included feminism but did not make it the chief impetus.12
One would have thought that Genora Dollinger’s exuberance would cause her not only to vote for the Mondale-Ferraro ticket but actively work for it as well. She did neither. Back in the states, she monitored television ads, radio announcements, and newspaper stories. Though believing that the nomination of a woman for the number two spot was a step in the right direction, she decided that the Mondale-Ferraro ticket was as “totally subordinate” as Reagan-Bush to Fortune 500 CEOs who “really rule the country.”13 Other observations confirmed her changed opinions about the Ferraro nomination. What did her candidacy mean for the United States, the Democratic Party, unionism, and women? “Not much,” one poll after another indicated. Though Ferraro’s nomination was a significant historical precedent, it was not—much to Genora’s consternation—a “breakthrough” for American women in the context of national politics.14 As often before, both Genora and Sol stayed home on election day; there were no fit candidates to vote for.15
For two years