Reagan Has Promoted Cause of Women, Political Caucus Leader Tells Delegates

The chairwoman of the National Women’s Political Caucus said Saturday that President Reagan “has helped promote our cause” by changing his policies to attract female votes in the 1984 elections.

Kathy Wilson, a Republican who has been an outspoken Reagan critic as head of the 77,000-member caucus, told delegates to the group’s convention that the President, worried that women would cost him a second term, moderated many of his “most extreme positions and softened his anti-woman image” last year.

Wilson’s remarks apparently surprised many of the 2,000 delegates and were greeted with scattered boos and hisses.

Wilson said Reagan appointed women to “high visibility posts,” signed a number of women’s rights bills he had previously opposed and “dramatically blunted his aggressive rhetoric toward the Soviet Union” in an effort to attract women voters.