Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (12 page)

As women like Arlene Horowitz throughout the country began to rethink aspects of their everyday lives they had never previously questioned, they generated a barrage of new issues for feminist policy activists. Suddenly, concrete evidence of discrimination was easy to find and to present to courts and legislatures. Wave upon wave of new leaders and organizations arose. The surge of energy around each issue could carry it forward with astonishing speed. When the National Commission on Consumer Finance initiated hearings on the problem of women and consumer credit in the spring of 1972, policy makers were stunned by the flood of complaints and demands for action. NOW, WEAL, Parents Without Partners, and the American Civil Liberties
Union all conducted investigations on consumer credit, finding that the credit industry consistently marked women as “poor risks.” If single, they might marry; if married they might become pregnant. In either case it was presumed that they would stop working, so their income was not considered a valid basis for credit. Divorced and widowed women found that they had no credit record. Married women’s income was commonly not considered in mortgage applications, although some companies would reconsider on the basis of a physician’s assurance that the woman was sterilized or taking birth control pills.
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Two NOW members, economist Jane Roberts Chapman and attorney Margaret Gates, established the Center for Women Policy Studies in March 1972 with a $10,000 seed grant from Ralph Nader’s organization. Later that year they garnered a $40,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to investigate the problem of women and consumer credit (an interest created when “a female employee of the Ford Foundation was turned down on a credit application and senior staff there became interested in this economic issue”).
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Their research, in turn, both galvanized other networks and produced a systematic body of “expert” information for presentation to legislative hearings and briefings for interested organizations. The result was the passage in 1974 of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, followed by 2 years of careful monitoring and pressure to ensure that the Federal Reserve Board’s regulations to enforce the EOCA would have the necessary “teeth” to protect women. Problems persisted, but credit was substantially more available to women by the 1980s than it had ever been.
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Another response to the revelations about women and credit was the creation of feminist credit unions and banks, illustrating again the two-pronged strategic approach that characterized the movement as a whole: change the rules but also build institutions that can function as if the world were feminist.

The most powerful organizational expression of the insider-outsider alliance was the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), which formed in 1971. In the tradition of the women’s suffrage movement, NWPC set out to use the vote “to influence the priorities of our nation away from war and toward dealing with the diverse critical human problems of our society.”
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“The time has come,” its leaders asserted,
“to assume our rightful place as decision-makers and to raise our voices for life-enhancing priorities.”
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The vision of NWPC was somewhat muddy at the outset, which turned out to be a strength, at least for a time. Fundamental was the demand for equality, for full participation on the grounds of simple equity:

Certain facts of political life still shock and anger us. Women are 53 percent of the population. They turn out at the polls in larger numbers than men. They do most of the drudge work in politics. But of the 435 members in the House, only 12 are women. Out of 100 senators, one is a woman. There are no women Governors, few big city women mayors, only a scattering of women in state and city government.
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They also suggested, however, that “women’s political power” could “redirect our nation toward peaceful goals,” a perspective that would have been very familiar to their suffragist foremothers. One of the founders recalled later the belief

… that women shared a common perspective based on their roles outside the power structure as nurturers and consumers or as victims of sex discrimination in education and employment …. Some [founders] thought consensus would arise out of women’s innate humaneness, an alleged quality which made them more responsible in relation to power than men. The assumption that women were by nature more humane made some of the women uneasy, but since the case for political equality did not depend upon it, it was allowed to pass largely unexamined.
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When Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinern, Representative Shirley Chisholm, and Representative Patsy Mink called an initial meeting to announce their intention to form a national women’s political caucus, more than 100 showed up. The initiating committee then invited women from across the country to attend an organizing conference on July 10-11, 1971, in Washington, D.C., the meeting that
Newsweek
described as “rowdy.” They articulated from the outset a “strategy of inclusiveness” that made NWPC one of the most racially diverse of all the new feminist organizations. For the first year and a half, the national leadership of NWPC consisted of a national policy council that included feminist media “superstars” like Friedan (originator of the caucus idea), Abzug, Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem; women with powerful media and political connections, like Shana Alexander (editor-in-chief of
McCalls
), Liz Carpenter (former press secretary of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson), Virginia Allen (former chair of Nixon’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities), Elly Peterson (former Vice Chair of the Republican National Committee), and Jill Ruckelshaus (aide to President Nixon); but also key leaders from minority communities, labor unions, and organizations of the poor: LaDonna Harris (Indian rights leader), Myrlie Evers (civil rights activist), Dorothy Height (President of the National Council of Negro Women and a leader in the YWCA), Fannie Lou Hamer (civil rights leader), Olga Madar (United Auto Workers), Beulah Sanders (Vice President of the National Welfare Rights Organization), and Wilma Scott Heide (NOW president).

At the organizing conference three caucuses formed immediately: black women, radical women, and younger women. Although the initiators were experienced with strong, national organizations, their inclusive strategy drew in many who preferred local experimentation and resisted centralized authority. As founder Rona Feit put it, there was no money and no staff and “infighting was common at every level.”
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Yet they launched a local organizing process that inaugurated 30 state caucuses by December 1971.

Enthusiastic state caucus founding meetings focused on gaining access to party presidential nominating conventions in 1972.
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The result of this effort was astonishing. Both political parties increased the representation of women enormously. Female delegates to the Republican Convention rose from 15 to 30 percent, Democrats from 13 to 40 percent.
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Each party also included a “women’s plank.” Shirley Chisholm’s presidential candidacy (the first black woman ever to run) and the influence of feminists in the McGovern camp made the Caucus extremely
visible at the Democratic convention. Chisholm never really had a chance. McGovern supporters withheld some commitments out of concern about Caucus members’ loyalty to Shirley Chisholm, but she and her strongest supporters were distressed at the weakness of her support. It stung that even Bella Abzug was unwilling to cast an initial, symbolic vote for Chisholm on the first ballot.
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By 1973 the Caucus was ready to hold a founding convention in Houston, Texas: 1,500 women came to establish “… the organizational basis upon which to build a national political movement for women.” Shirley Chisholm argued that “the function of the National Women’s Political Caucus is not to be the cutting edge of the women’s liberation movement, but the big umbrella organization which provides the weight and the muscle for those issues which the majority of women in this country see as concerns.”
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Arvonne Fraser was assigned the impossible task of chairing a workshop to design the structure for NWPC. Those who envisioned a muscular, centralized, and efficient organization quickly realized that power and responsibility would have to reside with the state caucuses. A wave of antielitism, emanating from the grass roots and reflecting the spirit of the women’s liberation movement, led current “superstar” leaders, one after another, to offer to step aside in favor of grassroots leadership. Chisholm was the first, urging others to do the same. Friedan and the rest followed.
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Perhaps most startling about the NWPC—apart from the fact that it survived its own centrifugal stresses—was its sheer diversity. Mary Ziegenhagen wrote in a report to members in Minnesota,

As we listened to speaker after speaker, each more impressive than the last, we were struck by the astonishing diversity of the crowd. Gloria Steinern said what we’ve always known, “You see, women come in all sizes, shapes and colors,” and to be in the midst of it was a kaleidoscopic delight. A vast room crammed to the corners with every description of female persons: worried blue permanent waves, smart Afros, long black braids; silk print dresses with pearls, blue jeans, pants suits, who-cares-which-dress, and a delegate from California in a sun-colored muu-muu and lavender head
scarf. And no less varied and diverse were the political hues of that rainbow, as we were soon to learn when we got down to the business of deciding what shape the Caucus was to take.
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In contrast to more radical feminist groups, women of color were part of NWPC from the outset. At stake was access to public power: representation in parties, in elected office, in appointments. Avis Foley, an African-American delegate from Minnesota, reported that “there must have been nearly 100 black women at the conference—enough to be truly visible and that really set the stage for me.” After noting the diversity of black women there from across the country and their varied political persuasions, she described their tactical solidarity: “An unexpected opportunity for black solidarity arose when Gwen Cherry, Chair of the Convention and Democratic Florida State Legislator, was threatened with removal.” Criticism focused on Cherry’s failure to control the unruly crowd, many of whom were unaccustomed to abiding by parliamentary procedure. In response, members of the black caucus “… stationed ourselves at each mike to prevent monopoly by one person or group, guarded access to the rostrum until aisles were clear to ensure true count of a standing vote. No more was heard of Gwen’s removal.”
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Similarly, a Chicana caucus made up of members of La Raza Unita Party functioned as “a highly disciplined group with articulate and feisty leaders.” One observer reported that “with no small amount of courage and by paying attention—and undoubtedly, suppressing internal disputes—they succeeded in electing three of their members to the national steering committee and in gaining substantial concessions….”
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NWPC incorporated these diverse groups by agreeing to the formation of permanent minority caucuses for blacks, Chicanas, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans with representation on the National Steering Committee. It also guaranteed representation of Republicans (who were in a distinct minority). In subsequent years, permanent caucuses emerged also for Asian-Americans, lesbians, and Capitol Hill staff members.

It was a black Congresswoman from Texas, Barbara Jordan, who reminded the assembled women that the Declaration of Independence
was not written overnight nor was the Constitution drafted without conflict and strongly worded dissent. Toni Morrison later articulated the vision that made a diverse group of women willing to go the distance despite inevitable conflicts:

The winds are changing, and when they blow, new things move. The liberation movement has moved from shrieks to shape. It is focusing itself, becoming a hard-headed power base, as the National Women’s Political Caucus in Washington attested last month. Representative Shirley Chisholm was radiant: ‘Collectively we’ve come together, not as a Women’s Lib group, but as a women’s political movement.’ Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi civil rights leader was there. Beulah Sanders, chairman of New York’s City-wide Coordinating Committee of Welfare Groups, was there. They see, perhaps, something real: women talking about human rights rather than sexual rights—something other than a family quarrel, and the air is shivery with possibilities.
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Shortly after that founding meeting, Lael Stegall walked into the Washington NWPC office with her 3-week-old son on her hip. After a stint in the Peace Corps she had returned in the late sixties “to be part of the social revolution at home.” Interested in policy, she worked in Bella Abzug’s first congressional campaign in 1970 and in 1971. After that she threw herself into George McGovern’s campaign. It was a Republican neighbor who said to her late in 1972, “Have your second baby and [come] help us form the NWPC. We need women like you.” That first step through the door “began a decade of politics for me.” Despite the high-powered group at the helm—a set of accomplished women including Doris Meisner, Myrlie Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Sissy Farenthold, Millie Jeffrey, and Ronnie Feit—Stegall remembers a sense of revolutionary new beginning that echoes the experiences of women’s liberation groups. “[We were] clueless about how to build an organization. Dues? Planning? What do you do with a steering committee? Next thing I knew someone said ‘someone has to learn how to raise money around here; do development; go talk to Roger Craver at Common
Cause. You are entrepreneurial, why don’t you do that?’ So I said, ‘oh, OK.’ In those years, you just did it …. By 1979 I knew as much about women, money, and power as anyone.”
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