Panel on the Status of Women Balances Rewards, Obstacles

Mary Ann Jarvis reached into her handbag and pulled out a blue envelope, folded in half. Inside was a handwritten note from a woman, new to Orange County, who had found Jarvis’ name in a newsletter published by the Orange County Commission on the Status of Women and had called her to talk about finding employment.

“It’s nice to know there are women like you out there,” the woman had written to Jarvis, a member of the commission.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I only spent about 10 minutes with her,’ ” Jarvis said. “It’s little things like that that make it rewarding.”

Next month marks the commission’s 10th anniversary and, while some who have worked with the 15-member advisory panel suggest that it has little real power to change conditions for Orange County women, others, including some county officials, say the group has been unusually successful in focusing public attention on their needs.

‘Have to Take Action’

“If you present enough information and let the Board of Supervisors know that there is an important issue, then they have to take some kind of action on it,” Jarvis said. “And if enough people are made aware of a problem and nothing is done about it, then it goes back to voting.”

The commission was the brainchild of former Supervisor Ralph A. Diedrich, and was created to provide women with a direct line of communication to county government. Among its accomplishments are persuading the county manpower commission to increase the number of minority women in the now-defunct Comprehensive Employment and Training Act program and helping to establish an Orange County conciliation court to assist divorcing spouses in working out property settlements. In addition, it a sponsored a conference on domestic violence, designed to inform police officers about shelters available to battered women.

County officials and staff members say the commission has played a pivotal role in making the public aware of the need for more child-care centers in the county. After a Stanton police officer shot and killed a 5-year-old boy who had been left at home because his mother couldn’t afford a baby sitter, the commission held public hearings throughout the county to find out more about the need for affordable child care.

Commissioners analyzed the testimony and assessed the needs in a 50-page report called “How Can We Work and Care for Our Children,” which won a National Assn. of Counties award earlier this year. The report led to the formation of a county consortium on child care that is working to increase the amount of child-care funds available to the county from state and federal agencies, as well as encouraging private employers to provide day care for their workers’ children.

Important Issues

“It’s one of the most important issues a commission like this should be addressing, because nobody else is,” Supervisor Harriett Wieder said.

Ron Melendez, who oversees the commission and five other programs for the Community Services Agency, said the commission is now performing a valuable service with its new series of open forums. After sending out 5,000 questionnaires asking what issues Orange County women were most concerned about, the commission found that child care was at the top of the list and made it the topic of the first forum in June.

“There were about 60 people there,” Melendez said. “I expected to hear all the same things (as in the report) reiterated, and I didn’t. The commission heard from parents who were having problems with disabled children and day-care centers that couldn’t get insurance, problems they hadn’t heard about before.

“When you look at how it impacts that part of the community that this group advocates for, I’d have to say, yeah, awareness helps.”

Difficulties Facing Women

A second forum, on domestic violence and homeless women, is planned for Oct. 21. The commissioners expect to hear testimony about the difficulties women face in escaping abusive husbands, finding affordable shelter and getting off of welfare.

Despite these accomplishments, however, some women who have worked with the commission believe that it cannot always be an effective advocate for women because it is essentially an advisory arm of the Board of Supervisors, who appoint its members for three-year terms.

“They (the commission) are with the county and are constrained by the priorities of the board,” said former Executive Director Anna Phillips. “For instance, we can only talk about areas the board has decision-making power in, like child care. We can’t take on something like abortion.”

Because it was conceived as a nonpolitical group, the commission is also constrained by the positions taken by the county’s Legislative Planning Committee, which develops county positions on legislation affecting its operations. “The commission can’t as a unit go out and lobby for something the committee says it’s against,” Phillips said.

‘Can Be Disappointment’

Vivian Engelbrecht, who was appointed to the commission in 1978 by Supervisor Ralph Clark and served on it for six years, said: “There are ways we could, as individuals, write letters or do things like that. But how effective is an individual? It can be quite a disappointment to career women joining the commission.”

Engelbrecht said the commission’s relative lack of autonomy has caused attrition within the commission. “We’ve had some very, very outstanding women who . . . have joined the commission with great aspirations of being effective and are stunned that this commission cannot take a stand on something that women think is very worthwhile. Maybe after six months they say, ‘Look, I’m too busy. My time is more important than to spin my wheels.’ ”

However, Commissioner Haydee Tillotson said that the issue of conflict with the county Legislative Planning Committee has never arisen since she was appointed to the panel in September, 1982.

“It’s fair to say we haven’t really gone after any piece of (state) legislation; there are so many other positive things that are coming our way,” she said. “We’re all working women and we don’t have the time to dedicate to too many issues and problems.”

Plagued by Frustration

The commission also has been plagued by frustration and high turnover among its executive directors, said Phillips, who left the county staff position in July after 19 months to join the Job Training Partnership Agency as administrator. “It’s a high-burnout situation,” she said. “The good days were very good, but there’s just not enough staff. There’s only one person who’s responsible for doing reports and outreach and providing staff services to the commissioners and everything else.

“When I was there, I went through about two burnouts,” she added.

The executive director must walk a tightrope between the commissioners, who want administrative tasks performed quickly, and Melendez, who insists that county procedures be followed to the letter. The resulting tension has caused personality conflicts that commissioners say hastened Phillips’ interdepartmental move and contributed to Melendez’s firing of temporary secretary Hannemarie Kresonja last week.

“It’s an extremely difficult job balancing the desires of the commission and the county,” Commissioner Bonnie Castrey said. “(Former Executive Director) Karen Klammer’s aspirations were not in the county, so she had a lot more freedom than some others who felt that if they went out on a limb with something, their career path would be blocked forevermore.

‘A Dead End’

“So the executive director’s position is looked at as a dead end, and that’s been a problem in our keeping qualified people and slows us down in our ability to function,” she added.

Last year, the commission requested funding for a staff aide in addition to the two part-time workers already assisting Phillips and her secretary. The request was denied because commissioners did not submit enough information to indicate that the expense was necessary, and because there was a countywide hiring freeze at the time, county administrative office staff analyst Vickie Gray said.

However, commissioners say the problem is simply that the Commission on the Status of Women is a comparatively low priority when it comes to budget appropriations from a conservative county.

One Obstacle

“One of the obstacles has been that each year, we have really had to defend our being. That’s made it extremely difficult to operate out in the community,” Castrey said.

Commissioners compare their panel to the Human Relations Commission, which is allowed six staff members even though its cost to the county is twice that of the Commission on the Status of Women. Although the supervisors last week approved budget requests for both commissions ($104,485 for the women’s commission for 1985-86) without discussion, analysts on Supervisor Ralph Clark’s staff had been studying the possibility of merging them.

According to Jan Goss, executive assistant to Supervisor Harriett Wieder, advisory panels such as the Commission on the Status of Women will always be vulnerable at budget time as long as county coffers are low.

“When you have a mandated program like the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the county pays only a portion of that; so, you can make a big cut in the program, but not in the budget,” she said. “But when you take a program like the Commission on the Status of Women that is 100% funded by county general funds, whenever there’s a shortfall, these programs are always scrutinized.”