Winning the Midterms as a Feminist Issue

Two longtime Santa Barbara feminist voices are making an explicit case that the upcoming midterm elections should be treated as a feminist issue — and that the effects of federal policy rollbacks are already being felt by women and families on the Central Coast.

In an opinion piece published October 3 in the Santa Barbara Independent, Lois Phillips and Beth Schneider — both PhDs with deep roots in the local academic and activist community — argue that many gains of the women's movement have been reversed in recent years, and that voting is the minimum response required.

"Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least," the authors write, quoting Gloria Steinem, the writer and activist who they credit with inspiring their generation's pursuit of political power and workplace equality. "To have a democracy, you have to want one."

Who Are the Authors?

The piece carries particular weight locally because of who wrote it. Lois Phillips is the founder of Antioch University Santa Barbara and a communications consultant to candidates and executives who writes about gender and rhetoric. Beth Schneider is a professor emerita of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, a scholar of political and social movements, and a founding member of the UCSB Department of Feminist Studies — one of the oldest such departments in the country and a longtime anchor of women's scholarship in the 805 region.

Both describe themselves as products of the Steinem era: activists who spent decades cultivating women candidates, mentoring younger women into leadership roles, and working to elect women to political office.

The Rollbacks They Cite

The authors enumerate a series of federal-level changes they argue have disproportionately harmed women — several with direct California implications.

Among them: the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which they say has produced "chaos, confusion, and tragedy" as states diverge sharply on reproductive health care; a stall in gender-balanced leadership in high-tech sectors; and the retreat from diversity, equity, and gender-equity initiatives at universities and corporations, which they say has raised concerns about advancement for women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ people.

They also single out the SAVE Act — a federal election bill requiring proof-of-citizenship documentation to register to vote — arguing that continued discussion of the measure without acknowledging "the stark and specific impact on married women's right to vote is unconscionable." (Critics of the SAVE Act nationally have pointed out that many married women's current legal names do not match their birth certificates, a documentation gap that could complicate registration; supporters contend the measure protects election integrity.)

The Local Trickle-Down

The essay's most concrete claims concern how federal policy translates into California and Santa Barbara–area effects. The authors point to:

• Changes in the representation and advancement of women in senior government and military positions, coinciding with the dismantling of diversity initiatives.
• Proposed changes to military physical standards and health assessments that they say would reduce opportunities for women and sexual minorities in the armed forces.
• Federal workforce reductions that have hit Black women particularly hard, given their historic share of federal employment.
• Proposed changes to federal education funding and teacher-training programs, which they warn could limit leadership opportunities for Latina educators — noting that in California, Hispanic teachers make up roughly 25 percent of the K-12 teacher workforce.
• Federal restrictions on reproductive health funding that have affected organizations providing cancer screenings and contraception.
• A reorganized Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, raising questions about whether Title IX discrimination complaints will be investigated at all.

The authors also note that despite ratification by 38 states, the Equal Rights Amendment has not been added to the Constitution.

For a community like Santa Barbara — home to a major UC campus, a significant education workforce, and a large nonprofit and health-care sector — these federal shifts are not abstract, the authors argue. They frame the piece's subtitle as a question of priorities: "Who needs a ballroom?" — a nod to Steinem's characteristic framing that democracy matters more than comfort.

Women as the Deciding Electorate

The political core of the argument is arithmetic and exhortation. Women, the authors note, have been a majority of the American electorate for the past two decades — and if women voted as a bloc, they suggest, they could transcend the differences that divide them and decisively shape the midterms.

The piece is an opinion column rather than a news report, and its claims about federal policy reflect the authors' perspective. But it lands in the middle of a midterm season in which reproductive rights, education funding, and election administration have all been active political fault lines in California, and it adds local scholarly voices to a national argument about whether women's political power is at an inflection point.

For Santa Barbara readers, the practical takeaway is straightforward: the authors are urging women across the 805 to register, show up, and treat the November midterms not as a routine off-year election but as a referendum on decades of gender-equity gains — many of which, they argue, are already being unwound at the federal level and felt in local classrooms, clinics, and workplaces.

The full opinion piece is available at the Santa Barbara Independent.