Feminist Reawakening

...That is odd, in a way...

...Supreme Court granted unexpectedly in its 1973 Wadev...

...Sympathy, of course, does not preclude disagreement, nor does it mean the determined will disappear...

...A few fiery militants brandishing a "piece of paper"—be it a Gospel, Declaration of Independence or a UN resolution—are not necessarily insignificant even if the Romans, the Redcoats or the Reagan-ites have won a few initial skirmishes...

...delegation in Nairobi, to calm American fears by calling the conference's final resolution "just a piece of paper.' And one can sympathize with the impatience of Republican leaders when their President's daughter began voting in Africa for social innovations her father blocked at home...

...This summer, a cluster of energizing, much publicized meetings—the conventions of the bipartisan National Women's Political Caucus in Atlanta and of now in New Orleans, as well as a conference in Nairobi marking the end of the United Nations' Decade of Women—made a new question appear more pertinent: What will women do next...

...At Nairobi's mid-July UN get-together, Maureen Reagan adroitly applied a strategy that combined cries of alarm and shouts of encouragement...

...Many women feel personally threatened by attempts to nullify the reproductive freedom theU.S...

...Like the ERA, which was an attempt to prevent blatant discrimination and not to guarantee novel kinds of progress, the movement's current emphasis is defensive, a harbor in tough times...

...To chants of "Let's Raise Hell" from her supporters, Smeal pledged that now will go "back out in the streets" and bring more than200,000 women to Washington next July for a prochoice march...

...Couples head three fourths of the nation's households, lone fathers 3 per cent...

...By contrast, today's battlegrounds are not about to produce major legislative breakthroughs that could lull second-wave women into complacency...

...dean of the women in Congress and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, a body that includes more than 100 men, summarized the prevailing feeling in a Los Angeles speech...

...Roe ruling...

...Third, while we are a separate movement, we have compatriots in the environmental movement, the peace movement and the civil rights movement, to name a few...

...Still, the goals by and large have remained beyond reach, so the search is on for new direction and tactics...

...Astute politicians sense that women, who mostly sat in the grandstands between the 1920s and the 1960s, are going to be permanent players in a very long game...

...Unattached women head the re-maining22 per cent, and four out of every 10 people in these families live below the poverty line, as compared with a bit less than 14 per cent of all Americans...

...Their membership totals about 170,000...

...First, both political parties need an independent progressive voice pushing for our principles and values...

...The upscale, white professionals running the Caucus decided they had to "reach out" to form alarger coalition with have-nots...

...Schroeder further observed, "Women have learned many lessons in the past decade...

...Convening in Atlanta at the end of J une, the National Women's Political Caucus rejected a bid by Georgia's Linda Hollen-borg—who was, if anything, handicapped byherstatusasawhite Southerner—and voted 312-262 to elect Irene Natividad of New York City as their new president...

...This conference—unlike its predecessors in Mexico City (1975) and Copenhagen(1980), where motions condemning Zionism as racism generated endless controversy— managed to approve a final resolution unanimously...

...Feminists have clearly united on an agenda—at bottom pretty much the same one you remember from the 1970s, summed up in the words "equal rights"— but not on tactics...

...The winter could well be warmer for them than they would like...

...Many male politicians here, however, continue to act as if all they need do to shake off the annoying women is pat them on the head and call them sweet...

...Finally, they feel threatened by the "feminization of poverty"—the growth in the number of poor single-parent families...

...On the whole it is compatible with, and was to alarge part inspired by, the longstanding aims of the American women's movement...

...These Left-wing loudmouths don't deserve all the media hype they get...

...Washington-'USA FEMINIST REAWAKENING BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington Just under two decades ago, as the National Organization for Women (now) was being formed, the questions posed by reporters and debated by early feminists revolved around an age-old lament: What do women really want...

...Actually it is closer to 220,000, a statistically meaningless difference.] now members make up 0.0007296 of the total U.S...

...None of those issues can be resolved easily, but that gives today's feminists a big, albeit ironic, advantage: After winAndrhw Mollison is the chief political writer for the Cox \ews/hipers...

...Recent setbacks include losing ground to the Reagan Administration's anti-abc.rtion offensive, its gutting of long-established civil rights laws, and its stacking the U.S...

...They also feel personally threatened by a nuclear arms race that is apparently expanding into outer space...

...Several weeks later, in New Orleans, former now President Eleanor Smeal took the organization's top spot away from Judy Goldsmith, an old friend and protege she accused of overreliance on "quiet lobbying...

...Such attitudes, female activists of every degree seemed to be declaring this summer, must be changed, along with the notion that important national and global policy matters are no concern of theirs...

...Arriving with a Peace Quilt that was stitched by hand in Boise, Idaho, they enlisted the help of Senate wives and arranged to have different Senators sleep under it for a night...

...Moreover, the basic feminist program has proved to be widely acceptable...

...Women, who constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world's income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property," shesaid...

...Wedecid-ed that women's depressed economic status could not be discussed without focusing on the lack of progress toward disarmament [because] the arms race has meant less money and effort going toward long-term solutions of economic and social problems...

...Second, we must set a progressive policy agenda and not just deflect attacks against our rights...

...set the female pace...

...In either case powerholders had better brace themselves for debate on three core topics that make many of them uncomfortable—abortion, nuclear arms control and the problems of poor families—because these issues bulk large in the feminist consensus of the mid-1980s, quite as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) did during the Ford, Carter and early Reagan years...

...Feminism's latest victories—the nomination of loser Geraldine Ferraro for the Vice Presidency and the passage (right before the 1984 elections) of minor changes in our pension laws—left most of their goals unachieved...

...One can sympathize with the bewildered reader of USA Today who, confronted by this summer's call to feminist activism, wrote the paper:" I would hke to state a few facts about this overblown group of radical feminists...

...population, or0.00114592ofthewom-enof thecountry—percentage-wise, approximately seven one-hundredths of 1 per cent...

...One can sympathize, too, with the mixture of guile and exasperation that prompted Maureen Reagan, leader of the U.S...

...In Washington, meanwhile, agroup of women who say " I'm not a feminist, but...

...She recaptured the office she left three years ago, after serving the maximum two consecutive terms, by winning 839 delegates to Goldsmith's 703...

...In sum, from inside, outside and alongside the women's movement, the men who still dominate the political process seem about to find themselves facing a renewed and determined challenge that melds feminist, domestic and foreign issues...

...Some will be working within the male establishment, others will be fighting or ignoring it...

...And yet, when President Reagan tal ked in midsummer about his newest health problems and referred to "the man sitting at this desk" in the Oval Office, he spontaneously corrected himself, adding "or woman sitting at this desk...

...Immediately following the bitterly fought contest, Smeal announced: "We doubled the membership every two years whilelwasin, and I hope we can go back to that...

...Twice recently the Democratic National Committee waived party rules requiring that women get half the seats on its various subcommittees...

...The Republicans blocked action on the proposed Civil Rights Restoration Act, intended to again forbid Federal financial support of colleges or universities having some component part (say, an institute) that discriminates against women...

...Commission on Civil Rights with members who seem to think that sexual bias vanished the day Sally Ride rode a rocket into space...

...ning Prohibition and the vote in 1919 and 1920, respectively, the first wave of the American women's movement promptly went to sleep for the next half-century...

...That difficult quest produced serious debates, deep disagreements and several instances of knuckle-busting power politics during the latest feminist forums...

...Representative Pat Schroeder (D-Col...

...On the core issues and a variety of others, feminist positions have consistently been backed by majorities in public opinion polls...