From Poets to Women Execs: Peace Is Issue : Wanted: Women Executives Willing to Make a Peace Economy Their Business

I was the only woman in our history, I think, who ever sat in regularly at top-level foreign policy-making meetings. Those areas have always been closed to women, not only here but in most other countries. And it matters a great deal. It’s terribly important, maybe even to the future of the world, for women to take part in making the decisions that shape our destiny.

--Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

Mary Dent Crisp was in town recently to talk to local businesswomen about their role in the nation’s security and peace. The Kirkpatrick quote, “probably the only quote of hers I’ve ever liked,” was part of her presentation.

Crisp spoke at a businesswomen’s luncheon at Le Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood sponsored by the Southern California office of Business Executives for National Security.

Not much has changed since Kirkpatrick’s ambassadorship during the first Reagan Administration, Crisp said afterward. One has only to look at the summit meeting currently going on in Geneva. American women and Soviet women are not involved in any but superficial, peripheral ways. Even after watching a recent debate on television between representatives of Women for a Meaningful Summit and Phyllis Schlafly’s coalition in support of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), her criticism remained: While she found it good to see the groups, they were not official. Women are still on the outside.

Political consultant, writer and lecturer, Crisp directs Business Executives for National Security’s political action committee in Washington. The organization, with a current membership of about 4,000 in 50 states and 250 congressional districts, was started by Stanley Weiss, founder and chairman of American Minerals Inc., in 1982.

BENS describes itself as “a nonpartisan trade association of business executives, corporations, entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals who are concerned about the economic effects of the arms race.” It supports a strong national defense, watchdogs military spending and seeks ways to reduce the threat of nuclear war.

A Strong Economy

Weiss’ founding philosophy for BENS is that a strong economy is as important to national security as is a large arsenal. Its bottom-line conclusion about the nuclear arms race and business is, Crisp said, quoting Weiss, “being dead is bad for business.”

It goes step by step and keeps a narrow agenda, Crisp said. It has, for example, come out against the B-1 bomber as obsolete, the MX missile program as vulnerable, costly and unnecessary. It is lobbying for more competition in Pentagon procurement policies and, not surprisingly, has deplored the military management that has resulted in paying $748 for a pair of pliers and $400 for a claw hammer.

It commended Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, however, for “not throwing good money after bad” and deciding to scrap the Army’s DIVAD anti-aircraft gun. Weinberger sent them a polite letter of thanks in return.

Recently, BENS opened its Southern California office, directed by Michelle Syverson. It has about 100 members to date, few of them women, she said, naming just one, investment banker Kathleen Connell.

Turning People Away

“That’s why I put on a women’s lunch,” Syverson said afterwards. To ensure a group of 50, she said, she had sent out 300 invitations, ignoring warnings to send out more. She had to turn 25 people away--a good sign, she said, with respect to a larger event planned for February, which will feature Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae).

Crisp made the national news in 1980 when she left her office as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee on the eve of Ronald Reagan’s nomination as presidential candidate with a public denunciation of her party’s abandonment of its 40 years of support of the equal rights amendment and its call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion.

She is still a Republican (“Oh, yes. I think this person at the head is an aberration.”) and she is still a feminist (“I would never turn my back on women’s issues”). Her interests have deepened and broadened, however, and she has a new concern.

“The reckless talk of a limited nuclear war being winnable” that began to be heard in late 1980, she said in an interview, “put terror in my heart. I faced the nuclear threat of extinction for the first time. . . . “ It was, she said, a turning point in her life.

A Sense of Urgency

“Five years later, there is a sense of urgency. The most compelling issue of our time is our survival, and time is running out. I understand this intellectually, but I do not deny my feelings of fear that are appropriate to it. It is fear that drives me to action.”

Appealing to her audience as women, and particularly as businesswomen, she quoted Adm. Gene LaRoque (Ret.) of the Center for Defense Information: “Men have always controlled and directed the military. They have failed to stop or even slow down the nuclear arms race. Perhaps it’s now up to the women to do it.”

Crisp said after lunch that she is often challenged by those who say, “but wouldn’t women, given a position of power, act the same as men?” Her response, she said, is, “Until women have an opportunity, we’ll never really know.”

Beyond that, she referred to men’s and women’s negotiating styles, and said she thinks “we would look for very honest agreements. We’re more empathetic. We’ve been socialized that way. We would try to understand where the (other) person was.

“We would not approach the bargaining table in Geneva the way the President seems to be--so combative so much of the time. Also we would look to non-military solutions. Men look at things technically and compartmentally. Women tend to see things more humanly. We deal in long-term relationships, and we’re more creative regarding the rules of the game. We’d rather change the rules.”

She has a lot of cynicism and skepticism about what is going on behind the summit, she said, noting that she sees a diffusion of the real issue: cutting or stopping the arms race in the nuclear age.

“These two men have it within their grasp,” she said. “They have an opportunity to be creative, to have a summit with substance.”

Buying Less Security

At the lunch, she outlined BENS’ philosophy, stressing its conclusion that the present military situation of spending more and more on a bigger and bigger arsenal, especially with its negative effect on the economy, was making the country less and not more secure.

She reminded them that President Eisenhower had said the same thing in his farewell address, when he warned against the military-industrial complex. In January, BENS will commemorate the 25th anniversary of that address in Washington at an awards banquet hosted by Tom Watson of IBM.

BENS was taking Ike’s message to heart, she told them, and she urged them to join the effort. She had already told them what role women could play. As businesswomen, they were at a double advantage, she said. “You have inherent clout, because of what you do and who you are. When business speaks, Congress listens.”

She left them with a Chinese proverb: “If we don’t change our direction, we’re likely to end up where we are headed.”

She had not necessarily been speaking to the already converted. The audience’s response was polite and interested, but not one of spontaneous, “where do we sign up?” enthusiasm.

Scrutinizing Star Wars

California Appellate Court Justice Joan Dempsey Klein asked her where BENS was with Star Wars. The board had not yet taken a position, she said. It was scrutinizing the facts carefully, although as individuals, she said, many were opposed to it.

Klein also asked how BENS saw itself relating to U.S./Soviet relations and Crisp repeated BENS’ “narrow agenda” policy.

“We want to remain non-threatening to the conservative business community. . . . For us to become another peace group, we would not have the support we have now.”

Some of those present seemed to have that direction in mind, however, asking why BENS wasn’t involving itself with young women, with Soviet women, with the positive effects of a peace economy rather than the negative effects of a war economy.

Crisp and Syverson said they were pleased with the response, however. They had not expected people to sign up. They had wanted to expose them to the concept, get them thinking, and they thought they had done that.

“Women in general haven’t been involved in issues of national security,” Crisp said, adding that perhaps it was more difficult to recruit businesswomen than businessmen. “Women who have been very successful just haven’t had the time. They’ve had their careers, their families, whatever. It’s not a judgment against them, it’s a fact of life. But they are the women who will really make a difference when they speak. So we just have to keep reaching out.”