Feminists’ Convention Has Heroine and a Villain : Schroeder, Bork Top Women’s Caucus Agenda

“One is our friend and the other is an enemy,” said Mildred Jeffrey, a founding mother of the National Women’s Political Caucus, speaking of the two personalities who have dominated the unofficial agenda at the organization’s biennial convention this weekend.

The friend to whom Jeffrey, a retired UAW organizer, referred is Colorado’s Rep. Patricia Schroeder, whose prospective candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination has stirred enthusiastic support from the 1,000 or so delegates to the four-day gathering, which concludes today.

The enemy Jeffrey had in mind is Judge Robert H. Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court has provoked equally energetic opposition here.

Leaders of the caucus, a bipartisan but mostly Democratic group that calls itself the political arm of the women’s movement, had planned this gathering to call attention to the increasingly professional character of its membership of 77,000. Women are now more interested in politics as a career than as a cause, said Irene Natividad, the group’s president.

Causes Fuel Enthusiasm

Yet from the start of the meeting, it has been clear that it is the old-fashioned zest for a cause--as embodied in the support of Schroeder and the opposition to Bork--that still makes politics come alive for activist women like those in attendance here.

To be sure, the delegates have dutifully trooped to convention workshops on nuts-and-bolts political skills such as fund-raising, lobbying, polling and media relations, but most of the excitement came at the opening session Thursday night, when several hundred women made the Hilton Hotel ballroom rafters ring with cheers for Schroeder as she outlined her vision of a national “rendezvous with reality.”

Schroeder declared her qualifications for the presidency to be as good as or better than those of any man running--even in the supposedly unfeminine area of national defense.

Referring to her 15 years on the House Armed Services Committee, she said: “I’ve been to every hot spot in the world.”

The delegates also shouted their approval of a telegram, signed by Natividad and the leaders of three other women’s organizations, protesting Schroeder’s exclusion from a presidential campaign debate today in Des Moines, Iowa.

Urged to Block Bork

They were equally vociferous in applauding U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Francis Berry, who urged them to rally against Bork’s placement on the high court because of his views on racial equality and civil liberties, and particularly because of his opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding a woman’s right to choose abortion.

“The stakes are too high for us to sit back,” Berry declared as the delegates, many wearing anti-Bork buttons, signed petitions urging their senators to vote against Bork’s confirmation.

“This (Supreme Court) nomination is a big focal point for women activists,” Bella S. Abzug, former congresswoman from New York and another founder of the caucus, told a reporter.

The women seem to realize that Schroeder’s chances of gaining the presidential nomination are slim, if she does decide to run, and many who cheered her here may ultimately choose to back another Democratic contender. (Schroeder apparently picked up significant help from oil and entertainment billionaire Marvin Davis, who was reported here to have agreed to be host of a major fund-raiser for her.)

The delegates also know that the odds are against stopping Bork’s confirmation. Yet, whatever the outcome of either battle, many here believe that the emotional energy they are generating may help the women’s movement recover from some of its disappointments in recent years.

ERA, Ferraro Setbacks

One big setback, of course, was the equal rights amendment’s failure to win ratification by the states in 1982. Another cause of distress was Geraldine A. Ferraro’s 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidacy, which became embroiled in allegations about her husband’s legal and business affairs and in controversy about her own views, as a Roman Catholic, on abortion.

“There was disappointment because she was a strong candidate with things to say, and never got a chance to say them,” said Alice Travis of Pacific Palisades, Calif., who chaired the caucus’s Democratic Task Force and is deputy political director of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis’ presidential campaign.

Since the ERA’s defeat, its women supporters have modified their approach to the amendment, which has been reintroduced in this session of Congress.

“Interest has shifted from it being an end in itself to a means to an end, a reason to elect more women to office,” said Ann Lewis, chairwoman of the caucus’s political planning committee and a longtime Democratic activist.

As for the Ferraro candidacy, most here see that episode as a long-range gain for the women’s movement. “She served as a role model for a lot of little girls in the second and third grade,” said Washington state Sen. Nita Rinehart of Seattle.

Schroeder as Role Model

She added that Schroeder’s candidacy would have much the same effect, although Rinehart herself is considering supporting Illinois Sen. Paul Simon for the Democratic nomination.

Other forces, in addition to the examples set by prominent figures such as Schroeder, are drawing women into politics. One important factor, said Donna Tyner, vice president of the Portland chapter of the caucus, is the increasing number of women in the work force. “There are more women working and trying to figure out how to support themselves,” Tyner said, and that stimulates interest in issues such as equal pay for equal work.

Whatever the motives for women’s involvement in politics, the obstacles they face are many and complex, and some stem from the very nature of femininity, Vermont’s Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin noted in her thoughtful keynote speech to the convention.

“We have been taught to heal the sins of the world as peacemakers, arbitrators, conciliators,” she said. “At some gut level, the art of politics--combative, competitive, self-asserting--is sometimes difficult to integrate with our feminine selves.” But, she concluded: “We will not accept that there is a permanent dichotomy between being in charge and being feminine. Our goal is to humanize this world by combining both; let us begin.”

Parade of Candidates

Looking ahead to the 1988 Democratic presidential campaign, though Schroeder clearly was the early sentimental favorite among the women here, that did not deter four male Democratic presidential contenders--Simon, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr., civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt--from coming here to bid for support.

Each in his own way sought to establish a link between his own candidacy and the feminist cause.

Gore pointed out that his mother was the first woman graduated from Vanderbilt Law School in the 1930s, and said: “If you don’t think I got an early dose of feminism, you are mistaken.”

‘The Mess We Are In’

He said that half of his campaign staff is female, and that one of the reasons for “the mess we are in” on arms control is that women have not been allowed to participate fully in that issue.

Jackson, in his address, sought to relate blacks and women as co-victims of discrimination. “We dare not have misgivings about a woman’s ability to run for President and do a good job,” he declared.

“We have to fight the image of women as sex objects and partners, not as leaders,” Jackson said. And he said that the ERA “confirms citizenship and personhood” and “takes the hypocrisy out of democracy.”

Gephardt on Bork

Gephardt, after praising the delegates as “experienced, capable, successful politicians,” won one of the biggest ovations of the convention for proclaiming his opposition to Bork, although, as a member of the House, he cannot vote on his confirmation.

“If Bork becomes a Supreme Court justice, the Reagan era will live on to the next century, and that must not happen,” Gephardt said.

In answer to a question, he would not promise to pick a woman as his running mate, saying only that he would select someone who would make a good President and help him get elected.

Simon put in a good word for the ERA and cited his past support of maternity-leave legislation. Noting that women make up a disproportionate percentage of the poor and unemployed, he pointed to his proposal to make government guarantee that jobs, at the minimum wage, would be available to those out of work.

On education, he argued for higher pay for schoolteachers. On the international front, he emphasized his concern with arms control and with stepping up educational exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union.