Eleanor Smeal

...Not so, she says...

...Now, 80 percent of the public think women should have comparable pay...

...Smeal: Yes, it's true the numbers are small in each...

...Smeal recalls that her mother wanted her daughter to do all the things that had been off limits for her (as a first-generation Italian American)—like riding a bike or going swimming...

...They talk as if military contracts were the only sources of jobs, when they know full well that the human-service sector creates far more...

...The more women in power, the more change there will be...

...But under the new regimen, a woman will be able to take a home-pregnancy test, and if she is pregnant, she will be able to use RU-486 immediately...

...So Ralph Reed's Christian Right takes the anti-women, anti-abortion issues and marries them to the deregulation issue...

...Where's it headed...

...Her public life started in the early 1960s in the civil-rights movement—pressing to integrate Duke University (where she was an undergraduate), picketing, and working for candidates who supported integration...

...I tried out my homespun theory—that often the women most active in the movement came from families where daughters took a sorry second to the sons...

...And the corporations, which want to deregulate everything, throw money to the reactionaries...

...And, where possible, to vote for women...

...She then went to the University of Pittsburgh, where, "because of the times and the presence of two feminist faculty," she shifted her focus to women's issues, writing her dissertation on women's attitudes towards feminist candidates...

...Smeal: The women's movement is growing, despite what is said...

...And theirs will be a more progressive vote, unless we let the right scare them—with things like the crime issue...

...Of course, another obvious change is that abortions were legalized and clinics now exist where women can obtain them...

...They frame the debate in the same way as the press, and no one talks about reducing military spending...

...When we started the crusade in the early 1970s, women earned fifty-nine cents to the males' dollar...

...Smeal: We start from a different premise, and emphasize different strategies, although we complement each other in many ways...

...In 1987, she co-founded the Fund for the Feminist Majority with Peg Yorkin, and has been its president since then...

...Nearly half of all women still have an abortion and the percent is even higher among Catholics and low-income minorities, because neither use birth control as much as other women, overall...

...Also, many are in the underground economy, like domestics, who earn near the minimum wage and can't report their income—because they can't afford to pay taxes...

...That's not good enough, but it's clearly an improvement...

...She soon moved into leadership roles—NOW's Pennsylvania president in 1972, national chair in 1975, and national president from 1977 to 1982 and 1985 to 1987...

...Q: The attacks from the Christian right, the Congress, and the candidates—all rushing to prove each is tougher on single mothers, welfare, abortions, criminals, and immigrants—keep escalating...

...And they are trapped in these jobs...

...Smeal: It will be extremely important, because it will reframe the debate...

...Smeal: Mainly, it's because it has tremendous money behind it, from much of big business—which sees liberals, who are pro-choice and concerned about issues like the environment, as people who also support regulations...

...Women are 60 percent of the progressive vote, and 60 percent of the Democrats are women...

...And it is very dangerous...

...More girls are going to college...

...However, the theory may have applied after all—just a generation off...

...And having power would help create a society that is more interested in human concerns.M Barbara Koeppel is a freelance writer in Washington, D. C...

...Now, we account for 25 to 30 percent of all professions...

...Because the debate is structured in this way...

...Before, there were quotas...

...We took on the opposition and are winning...

...Q: Why is it so successful at framing the debate...

...What about the others...

...They make page one on newspapers across the country, and the rhetoric seems to just get more strident by the day...

...On the surface, this may seem a minor improvement...

...It followed you when you went to buy a car—since salesmen asked your husband what he thought...

...My mother always said that if my three brothers could do something, so could I," she recalls...

...Her energy seems boundless...

...Smeal: First, I think it's important to understand that as a single-issue movement, the anti-abortion effort is collapsing...

...And by just talking about abortion and crime and welfare fraud, they keep business interests happy, because this shifts the spotlight off economic issues...

...Q: You have worked for many years with NOW and the Feminist Majority...

...It sued G.C...

...The economic issues—like how to have a clean environment, how to get people jobs in a post-industrial society, subjects that people would go for and that we're talking about— these aren't covered...

...So if you add them into the calculations, plus all the part-time workers who can't get more work and don't get benefits, you get a fuller picture...

...But Democrats are still different on some issues, like abortions, child immunizations, funding electricity for the elderly, and against the B-2 bomber...

...So many of the gains of the last three decades are being wiped out—like Medicaid coverage for abortions, even for rape and incest...

...Feminist ideas have permeated, especially among women, who do vote differently...

...All a woman sees is that she's bleeding...

...And it's important for men to understand that women getting paid less is a threat to their own wages, particularly now that they're in the service sector...

...Q: Why is this happening now...

...With this drug, it's hard to fool a woman into thinking she's killing a child, since when a woman aborts this way, it's at the embryonic or even pre-embryonic stage...

...So we feel we need a strategy to empower that majority to find a way to enable feminists to govern...

...But even that wasn't enough, because we then had to show it was wrong—since the thinking in those days was that it was OK for men to earn more at the same job, because they had to support families...

...Also, there's more funding for women's diseases, like breast cancer...

...We feel we have to activate the political gender gap, since studies on this clearly show that women are more concerned about social issues...

...Even then, we have to be honest and qualify this...

...As a result, we have a rightwing Congress defunding school breakfasts and nutrition programs, refusing to cover abortions for rape and incest, and deregulating the environment...

...Second, women are very underpaid and are not economically independent...

...The National Organization for Women (NOW), which had begun in 1967, was growing fast in the Pittsburgh area—already having amassed 2,000 to 3,000 members by 1970...

...For the poor, it's because the pill, plus the doctors' visit for refills, are expensive...

...Q: Let's talk about the women's movement...

...What is most important is the change in consciousness, both for women and men—but mostly for women...

...Smeal's mother died a few years ago, but lived into her eighties—long enough to know that her daughter has indeed helped change the lives of all of us...

...Now, we're 40 percent of both...

...Its concerns are much broader than just abortion...

...To do this, we concentrate on initiatives and state r?f?rendums, like the one on affirmative action in California, on abortion in Oregon, and equal rights in Iowa, in 1992...

...Also, because of a 1978 law, women can't lose jobs when they become pregnant...

...Smeal: Because of affirmative-action laws, a lot more job categories opened up to working-class women—say, as police and firefighters, or in construction...

...But we feel strongly that we need to enter these battles...

...What effect will this have...

...In fact, we need a new party, one that's truly progressive...

...In the 1960s, people didn't even think discrimination existed...

...Q: And why is that...

...It's because big money sees these conservative concerns as dovetailing the deregulation issue...

...In fact, for a Democrat to win, he or she needs 60 percent of the women's vote...

...And politicians—from both parties—are supported by these interests...

...Also, the public finally recognized that violence against women is widespread—and that it cuts across class lines...

...We need to mobilize more women to vote...

...From our polls, women want different things, and empowering them will lead to change...

...But given where we were just three decades ago, it's more like an explosion...

...Though the numbers are still small nationwide—for example, women are just 8 percent of all police—they account for as much as 40 percent in a big city like Pittsburgh...

...But where we are now, when we don't have such a party, if a Boxer is running, she will need a surplus of women's votes...

...Smeal: We won in Oregon and lost, by only four percentage points, in Iowa...

...Q: What can we expect of the women's movement now...

...And when women take an active role in these struggles, they also learn how to empower themselves...

...She also headed the Equal Rights Campaign nationwide, from 1977 to 1982...

...What's going on in this country...

...And in the end, the public thinks he's the guy who's against killing babies...

...We took on the opposition, and we're winning.9 Smeal: At the management level, the press has clear economic interests, and people often forget that...

...That said, we have to understand that public opinion doesn't mean power...

...Unpretentious and passionate, she gesticulates, springs out of her chair, and paces back and forth when she builds up steam on the issues that have propelled her for the past three decades...

...The traditional party labels make less and less sense...

...Q: It's hard to see a difference between Republicans and Democrats these days...

...Q: How did you fare with the r?f?rendums...

...She joined NOW at a time when it was intensely involved in discrimination suits...

...It's also important to see that when we don't mobilize, the opposite occurs...

...NOW, which is a chapter-based grassroots movement, believes we have to raise consciousness and educate the public...

...We won the bulk of the abortion r?f?rendums—to the point that you don't see these so much any more...

...In the 1994 race, when the debate was framed around the issues of crime, taxes, and welfare, women didn't come out and vote...

...Although I have to say there are always contradictions, since the Republicans can have a Christine Todd Whitman, who is better on some of these issues than a Sam Nunn...

...But the Feminist Majority feels consciousness has already been raised, that we already have majority support...

...Smeal: You're right...

...It sued the Pittsburgh Press for publishing separate want ads and won in the Supreme Court in 1974...

...Jesse Helms takes money from and supports the tobacco interests, rants against gays, and wants to deregulate the environment, and the next minute talks about the evil of killing babies...

...What hasn't changed...

...And this is what's so dangerous...

...And, it will be much cheaper...

...Before, it was behind closed doors...

...She crosses the continent the way others commute to the suburbs...

...What do you think are its most important gains...

...Q: But women still don't account for a large proportion in the occupations you mentioned...

...The Feminist Majority organizes around the affirmative-action message—making the point that it keeps the doors open for them, that it has made a difference to their paychecks and kinds of jobs they can now work in...

...Just as important, it will allow abortions to come earlier...

...You see, part of the reason the gap has closed is that men's wages have dropped—because the higher-paid, union, manufacturing jobs have been lost and men are earning far less at service-sector jobs...

...And this affects lower-income women even more than upper-income ones...

...Some people feel these fights are too costly for us to get involved in, that we should use our resources, which are small, in other ways...

...Generally, they, along with kids and the elderly, are the ones earning the minimum wage...

...At the same time, we accounted for less than 1 percent of dentists, veterinarians, and engineers...

...There is still room for a Paul Wellstone, a Barbara Boxer, and a Ted Kennedy in the Democratic Party, where you just wouldn't find them among the Republicans...

...Another gain is that we now have sex-discrimination laws, and society recognizes that everyone has the right to work without being harassed...

...Or we galvanize women through marches, as we did in 1992 in Washington, when 700,000 marched...

...Now, women are 52 percent of all undergrade...

...Now there are hundreds...

...She's not Paul Wellstone, but it's relative...

...Before, there were only a few battered-women's shelters...

...In the 1960s, women were in only 20 percent of all job categories, mostly in those predominantly filled by women, such as secretaries, teachers, and nurses...

...Older women also have to be reached, which we can do with absentee-ballot campaigns...

...Also, pay scales have been narrowed...

...Now, women have to wait until the sixth or eighth week, because the suction method works best then, when the uterus is firmer...

...Professors told me not to go to law school, because women didn't practice law" (so she went to graduate school in political science...

...Was this what propelled her...

...Why can't we frame the debate...

...Smeal: It's a combination...

...Also, the pill will make abortions much more accessible, because many areas in the country don't have doctors willing to perform them...

...Q: What about the drug, RU-486, the French abortion pill that might be legalized soon...

...That said, we still calculate about half the gain in women's pay has been due to our wages having risen...

...We exposed the problem and now it's well known—four million women a year are badly beaten, and violence is the leading cause of women from fifteen to forty-four entering emergency rooms...

...My mother always felt she'd been cheated and encouraged me to do everything...

...Now, women get a bit over 70 percent of what men earn overall...

...Murphy for discrimination among its warehouse workers, and won a settlement of about $600,000...

...To make this happen, we launch various types of campaigns...

...We can't even get the press to talk to us...

...And consciousness-raising was crucial in all these areas...

...But if you add them all together, they're substantial...

...Smeal: First, there's the obvious—education...

...How do they differ...

...Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., the group works to empower women in politics...

...Q: A lot of advances in education and job opportunities have benefited mostly upper-income women...

...So the public doesn't see the conservatives—and I would call them reactionaries—as people trying to subsidize industries that hurt the nation's health...

...It followed you as you read the newspaper want ads, since they were separated for men and women—with the obvious differences in the jobs being offered and pay," she notes...

...Discrimination was everywhere in your life," she recalls...

...Smeal: If you look at predominantly women's jobs, like secretaries, they are still the lower end and terribly underpaid...

...These changes are particularly important for low-income women, who use the clinics most, because rich women could always get abortions if they needed to...

...Q: How does this square with your statement that women are in many more occupations and the pay gap has narrowed...

...In Oregon, where the referendum was on requiring teenage girls to get parental consent for an abortion, only 20 percent opposed it when we began...

...Q: Now for the down-side...

...So why emphasize the distinction...

...We even passed a pro-choice referendum in Nevada in 1992...

...And it's important to recognize that after this, some progressives were elected...

...Before the late 1960s, women were just 3 percent of law students and 8 percent of medical students...

...Second, we have more choices about the occupations we enter...

...Not that he's the one who keeps the B-2 bomber flying—whose budget is $20 billion, while that of the NIH is $10 billion...

...Smeal: The worst thing is that there's still horrific violence against women—in all economic groups...

...Their average income is still very low—less than $14,000 a year...

...It sued the University of Pittsburgh for discrimination in granting tenure (a suit NOW lost)—"and women are still only 12 percent of tenured professors, nationwide," Smeal notes...

...What makes it particularly upsetting is that it's so hypocritical...

...The business interests—which form the financial base of the rightwing—are trying to piece together a coalition of interests, subtly appealing on the one hand to low-income southerners on the race issue, and on the other, to groups like the fundamentalists on the abortion and morals issues, and to workers on the affirmative-action issue...

...For example, when I went to Duke, the university wouldn't accept more than 25 percent female students...

...All the polls show the bottom is dropping out and demonstrations are smaller...

...So we had to first prove it did—for example, documenting that women were paid less for doing the same work...

...Where affirmative action has worked, as in education, it has equaled things out...

...But to galvanize women to get out the vote, candidates have to focus on issues that matter to women, like Social Security and Medicare, instead of crime...

...What has happened is that the virulent far-right movement has taken over the Republican Party at the grassroots and has gained tremendous power...

...For example, we go on campuses, to get the younger women registered...

...Is it ideological or economic— or both...