My Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster marks International Women’s Day with the story of a pioneering politician from my home state, Maine: Margaret Chase Smith.
You can listen here, or read the text below:
Have you ever been challenged – by a woman?
Have you ever been challenged – by a woman?
Today is International Women’s Day. Organised by the United Nations, this year’s theme is ‘Choose to Challenge’. The idea is that we can all choose to challenge gender bias and inequality. As the UN puts it: ‘from challenge comes change’.
Growing up in Maine, my state history textbooks told me about Margaret Chase Smith, whose career in national politics spanned 33 years. She was the first woman to serve in both the US House of Representatives and in the Senate.
The nation was entrenched in the Cold War, fearful for the future. Smith’s fellow Republican Senator, Joseph McCarthy, had become infamous for his allegations that communists had infiltrated the Government, universities and the film industry.
Smith’s ‘Declaration of Conscience’ was one of the first public rebukes of McCarthy’s outrageous campaign. She was the only woman serving in the Senate, and McCarthy sat two rows behind her as she delivered her 15-minute speech. Smith did not name him. But she said his actions had ‘debased’ the Senate to ‘the level of a forum of hate and character assassination’.
Former Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch reportedly said that if a man had given that speech, ‘he would be the next President’.
McCarthy was not formally censured by the Senate until 1954. Gradually, and with much hard work, Smith and her allies helped to create a more open and moderate political climate. But few would dispute that it was Smith’s initial challenge that sparked change.
Images of Smith in our history textbooks always showed her with gray-white hair, wearing pearls and a single red rose. She looked like a kindly grandmother: an unlikely woman to confront a demagogue who was gaining popularity.
In days as uncertain and fearful as our own, and even less hospitable to women’s leadership, Margaret Chase Smith chose to challenge and her choice changed American politics. Have you ever been challenged by a woman? Her example certainly challenges me.