Women's Movement Under Siege

Feminists lament at a caucus in San Jose

"The woman's movement is in trouble," boomed C. Delores Tucker, secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. "We have lost direction and are mired in disunity." Few of her listeners at last week's biennial meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus in San Jose, Calif., were inclined to disagree. For the faltering feminist movement, 1977 has been a discouraging year. The Supreme Court ruling that states no longer have to spend Medicaid funds on elective abortions for the poor was an unexpected blow. The Equal Rights Amendment is stalled just three states short of ratification, and conservative anti-feminist forces are picking up strength in their fight against federally funded day care centers, ERA and other women's programs. The San Jose meeting echoed with sour charges of "betrayal," "desertion" and "ego tripping."

Who is responsible for the feminists' woes? Among those blamed were President Carter, the press, the radical right --and the American political system itself. Complained San Jose Vice Muyor Susanne Wilson: "We don't have real politics. It is not the politics of individuals but of institutions that men have created." Said Gloria Steinem: "Women are beginning to get very cynical about this. It isn't a crisis of the women's movement. It's a crisis of democracy."

One concern was a feeling of being abandoned by the press. "Let them move on to their next thing," said Jill Ruckleshaus, former head of the U.S. International Women's Year Commission. "They've done us no good." Boston University Professor Sally Lunt dramatically accused the press of "gearing up for a women-against-women bloodbath" at this fall's National Women's Conference in Houston.

Behind that statement is the fear that things could go poorly for feminists in Houston. Antiabortionists, members of the Total Woman movement and other conservatives have elected between 15% and 20% of the state delegates to the meeting. The Ku Klux Klan claims to control at least one official state delegation--Mississippi's--and has threatened to disrupt the meeting. Summed up one delegate: "It's kind of a reverse '60s, with the regressive forces threatening to disrupt us." But Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird Johnson's former press secretary and now a top leader in the ERA drive, had a soothing prediction: "Houston is not going to be a bad scene. We are going to emerge realizing we want the same things."

Steinem told the 1,500 delegates that the movement is just one victim of the burgeoning radical right. "The efficiently organized opposition to the women's movement," she said, "is simply an early warning system of a total right-wing attack on civil rights, gun control, unions and social legislation."

Aside from the defection of male politicians and the threat from the right, what bothered the delegates most was attacks on "reproductive freedom." Frances ("Sissy") Farenthold, a former Texas legislator who is now president of Wells College in New York, accused President Carter of "ringing pietism" for his stand on public aid for abortion, and sarcastically attacked the recent Supreme Court ruling. Said she: "Every case the Supremes have heard of late has resulted in constitutional disaster." Among the resolutions approved by the caucus was one calling on feminist supporters to avoid tourism in the 15 states that have not yet passed ERA, and to boycott products made in those states. The meeting was remarkably free of divisiveness. One reason: the sobering sense that the beleaguered movement cannot afford petty squabbles. Fears for the future produced chin-up rhetoric. "I am not predicting failure," said Steinem. "I have great faith in women and in some men who understand that this is a revolution." Translation: the movement is apprehensive, and at bay.

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