Quo vadis, women's movement?

...The initial hurdles for getting such an issue to fly are obvious...

...Two of its major objectives have indeed been ravaged...

...Hosts of women inherently fear war, and suffer most acutely from the economic impact of defense overkill...

...Smeal's pronouncement just doesn't hold water...

...deserve nothing less...

...I don't feel like explaining...

...The issue of meaningful female congressional representation is significant on two fronts...

...Today's feminine activists may be confident that they know what's "right" for women...

...Legions of non-committed females (who could, by no measure, be termed "Happy Housewives," "Queen Bees," or "Neanderthals") perceive some or many of the movement issues as demanding statements of conviction which they cannot, or will not, give...

...without the A." It is allied with church forces which seem to make subordination of women an item of faith...

...the economic situation will take care of that.'' So declared Eleanor Smeal, President of the National Organization of Women, at NOW's last convention...

...Equal pay," a sterling candidate for consensus during the early seventies, somehow got sidetracked...

...If the enormous potential of "closet" feminists is to be recruited and utilized as a bulwark against the tides of female diminishment it will be, primarily, by organizing around an issue that guarantees a comfortable, dignified space at the women's movement table for all feminist-minded females...

...Otherwise, American females - for the indefinite future - will be locked into the old tender trap of their foremothers: free to learn, to work, to vote, and to be discriminated against...

...The reality of "guns without butter" elicits interest, concern, and respect...

...day's anti-equality zealotry recalls that which marked the final stages of the struggle for suffrage...

...Women once eager to do something about vital economic demeanment gradually backed off...

...Not, at least, in terms of activating visible support from millions of wary women who are by no means "anti-female" but nonetheless remain on the sidelines...

...That may be considered their privilege, but it is also their albatross as far as efforts to recruit mass support are concerned...

...For time is running out...

...In addition, a high-priority, long-term campaign for women in Congress would be proof that American feminists have reached political maturity...

...The financial means, on the other hand, are now lacking for most qualified, politically-oriented females...

...Still, there is always money available, often from unsuspected sources, for just and well organized causes...

...Of course, to the jubilant opponents of sexual equality, now exulting in political triumph, today's movement is as good as dead already...

...It is compelling on a very basic level: emancipated, qualified females have a right and responsibility to participate equally in the making of laws that affect every living American and generations to come...

...For the women's movement is not growing...

...The fact is that counter-action will require drastic changes in familiar women's movement techniques...

...The women's movement should not attempt to synchronize the consciences and interior gyroscopes of an intensely variegated female population...

...American women deserve nothing less...

...There may be other, better issues for unifying a renewed and determined feminist movement...

...It must be obvious and viable enough (as was the final organized demand for suffrage) to thrust itself, umbrella fashion, above the inevitable jostling due to economic crises, flip-flopping administrations, and inevitable conflicts between female leaders...

...By contrast, in the face of today's blatant roadblocks against further female self-determination, nothing resembling a massive outcry of protesting females has materialized...

...These demand from many women a reshaping of time-honored conditioning, loyalties, and self-image...

...The nightmare possibilities of a nuclear holocaust is hardly a popular topic at female gatherings...

...an influence in the shaping of our national welfare and destiny, of not quite four percent...

...With more than sixty years of political suffrage behind us, and accounting for more than fifty-one percent of the population, American females hold 21 congressional seats out of 535...

...Adversity, however, is nothing unusual for feminism...

...The list of more or less official movement issues is lengthy, including such items as abortion, child-care, gay rights, females in the pulpit, the drafting of females, etc...

...Like too much other women's-movement rhetoric, Ms...

...I grant that show-of-confidence is an integral component of effective politics - so long, that is, as claims do not cast doubt on the credibility of the claimant, as in this case...

...To operate as an effective catalyst, such an issue must appeal to the female intellect and spare abrasions to complex, interpersonal sensitivities...

...Organized movements of women have risen and fallen before, and there is much that today's movement - the third in U.S...

...The supply of qualified women is there...

...And so is the necessary encouragement, recruiting, and training of candidates...

...We need help and information before we take action," a group of hospital housekeepers agreed...

...As one battle-scarred feminist, I fervently wish that the women's movement, unless its strategists are guarding some happy secret, would clamp a lid on bravado rhetoric such as that...

...ToDOROTHY ESTHER CONNORS is a training consultant who writes on labor and feminist issues...

...That the women's movement"package" has created doubts among even essentially liberated females is hardly surprising...

...At that time, under the "single priority" policies of Carrie Chapman Catt, the final suffrage offensive attracted the active commitment of more than two million women - and that is a conservative estimate, made about an era when the nation's population was roughly half of what it is today...

...The new era, in short, calls for a new feminism, to be initiated after scrupulous review of past errors, which have much to do with the besieged position in which American feminism now finds itself...

...For many, that possibility inhibits any form of feminist activism...

...IN TALKING with women of widely-varied circumstances and ideologies in different parts of the country, I find three feminist concerns that could be counted on for lively, reasonably harmonious reactions: equal pay, nuclear war, and proportional female representation in Congress...

...without a miracle, ERA will expire in June, and legal abortion, once thought by its advocates to be irrevocably secured, is far from secure, legislatively or judicially...

...Beneath the genial facade of a presumptuous concern for the "protection" of females, these equal-rights opponents entertain a grim determination to return womanhood to the image and circumstances of "the girl who married dear old Dad...

...Let them be heard, carefully considered, then utilized to their fullest worth...

...Some of the resistance to movement issues can be attributed, without apology, to marrow-deep moral precepts and family concerns...

...However - and somewhat surprisingly - the staggering price of "national defense," with its lack of public accountability and its effect on the poor and disabled, is...

...I'd hit the trail for ERA," a female labor negotiator said, "but I gag on the movement's attitudes toward abortion, and I'm still not all that sure that my two kids are going to benefit from a childhood of day-care...

...Only if American females are vigorously encouraged to send qualified women to Congress, will we know whether money for the cause can be found...

...Mobilizing them is precisely the kind of growth crucial to the movement's survival...

...The administration in Washington is openly dedicated to "E.R...

...Rather, it should provide an issue that demands nothing more from its proponents than a genuine, expandable concern for female justice...

...Just as often, however, objections emerge from intellectual concerns about the wisdom and veracity of movement demands and claims...

...Although requiring a massive consensus on this total agenda is neither feasible nor necessary, numerous non-active feminists perceive that public support for any given movement issue is interpreted as a signal of support for the whole movement agenda...

...history - must do if it is to avoid interment besides its older sisters before this decade is out...