There may be no better place in America for a referendum on male domination than the U.S. Senate. All white, mostly over 50, cosseted and toadied to by fawning aides, uninhibited by women, the Senate may be the most visible concentration of full-frontal prefeminist thinking left.
If it weren't for that, the Judiciary Committee might have found a way to evaluate Professor Anita Hill's charges against Judge Clarence Thomas confidentially. But it was easier to consign her to the category of she- devils, like Fanne Foxe, Elizabeth Ray, Tai Collins, Donna Rice, who rise from a public official's past to bring down a man simply for being, well, a man. In this postgraduate Skull and Bones, most of whose members hardly need to worry where their next million is coming from, it is hard to empathize with someone worried enough about her career that she would overlook offensive conduct until it became literally a federal matter.
Senators don't interact with women as colleagues -- they have only two -- and most of the other women they come in contact with are subservient. According to a 1991 study by the Congressional Management Foundation, women hold 31% of the top four positions on Senate staffs. Among those, women account for 24% of the very top post of administrative assistant. They earn 78 cents to every dollar their male counterparts pull in. Still, the preponderance of females is found in the catchall legislative jobs, where, as one staff member says, "taking good notes and neatness count."
When the Senate is not operating like a men's club, it behaves like a family -- a patriarchal, dysfunctional family. Not only does the Senate have all the institutionalized forms of sexism common in the corporate suite, but by dint + of its privileges and power it is one of the few places where acting like a cross between a rock star and the dictator of a banana republic is tolerated. One of the sessions during orientation for congressional spouses is on how to live with a celebrity. It's an atmosphere, says former Missouri Lieutenant Governor Harriett Woods, who now heads the National Women's Political Caucus, where "Senators prey on women as if they were groupies." One wife has remarked that a reason members spend so much time at the office is the adoring staff. There's too much reality at home.
Despite an overabundance of leather, the offices resemble living rooms. There are 14 dining rooms, a gym with a sauna and steam room, and a pool; the women's facility, by contrast, has been described as "six hair dryers and a Ping-Pong table."
In the absence of production quotas or a bottom line, the only measure of performance in the Senate is how much one pleases the boss. Much of the work is servile, not intellectual or history-making. Getting coffee is not a courtesy but part of the job description; being sent to the boss's house to pick up a tux and a change of underwear is all in a day's work.