COLUMN ONE : Women Gain Clout in Capitol : Overcoming political differences, a caucus of female lawmakers is making itself felt on issues such as day care, sexual harassment, domestic violence and child support.

Cathie Wright is a conservative Republican. Diane Watson is a liberal Democrat. They don’t agree on much. But on one point their agreement is unshakable:

If family issues that male-dominated legislatures routinely ignore--from child care to domestic violence--are going to be shaped by law, the women in the California Legislature must stick together to make that happen.

So on the second Wednesday of every month, Wright and Watson arrive early at the Capitol to eat breakfast and map strategy with the 20 other women legislators. Away from the ears of lobbyists and the dictates of the legislative leadership, liberal and conservative women who may differ sharply on big political issues like taxes and spending sit down and doggedly sort through so-called “soft issues” of family and women’s legislation, working out ways to kill bills they don’t want and pass those they believe in.

“Republican women and Democratic women and liberal women and conservative women, North and South, rich and poor, black and while, Hispanic, all of these people are getting together and that’s a powerful group of people,” said Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles), who is black.

After years of standing at the edges of power, few in number and fragmented in purpose, the women of the legislative caucus have emerged in the last two years as a major bipartisan force in a male-dominated Legislature. The caucus has accumulated so much clout that male legislators sometimes solicit its help to pass their own bills.

“If anyone ever does a history of this place they are going to find they (the caucus women) are the most effective single block there is--and that comes from an old male chauvinist SOB,” said Assemblyman Richard Floyd (D-Carson), who credits women legislators with giving him the margin of victory on his bill requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets.

Seizing issues that often get only scant attention from the men but strike deep chords among many voters, the women have backed and passed bills dealing with child support, Pap smears, breast cancer, insurance for child-care providers, child custody, curbing distribution of free cigarettes to minors, domestic violence, divorce and sexual battery. The caucus met with Gayle Wilson, the governor’s wife, to urge her to lobby her husband with “pillow talk,” Watson said.

“If you look at the changes we’ve made in family law over the last three years, they’re dramatic,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-South San Francisco), the caucus’s current chair.

It is especially dramatic considering that this is the elected body whose first woman senator, Rose Ann Vuich (D-Dinuba), kept a bell on her desk to ring as a reminder every time someone stood up to address “the gentlemen of the Senate.” That was in 1976.

It is the elected body that remodeled the Capitol in the mid-1970s and chose not to install a women’s bathroom on the Senate side. “They did that in the ‘70s, not 150 years ago,” said Delaine Eastin (D-Union City). When asked why, several senators replied, “Well, we just assumed there will never be a woman (member),” she said.

Now there are 22 women legislators, and their caucus is serving as a model for women in statehouses nationwide.

To Watson, a Los Angeles Democrat who is active in national legislative conferences, the caucus is “light-years” ahead of such groups in most other states. Although women make up only 18% of the California Legislature, Watson says that it is more effective and better organized than those in states such as New Hampshire, where women make up one-third of the Legislature.

Showing their newfound determination to escape from the back benches, the women of the Legislature, outnumbered five to one by the men, have pushed their issues with well-publicized hearings on such topics as child-care licensing and Norplant, a controversial birth control device.

In September, they took the unusual step of staging a hearing behind bars at a state prison, where they heard tearful testimony from eight female inmates convicted of killing their abusive husbands. They left the prison determined to work for legislation to retool state laws on self-defense.

Despite opposition from the cigarette lobby, the women’s caucus helped pass a measure this year by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) that prohibits tobacco companies from handing out free samples in public places, where teen-agers could get them. Concerned that small day-care businesses in homes were being forced out of business because they could not get insurance, the caucus recently backed a bill by Speier that prevents insurers from canceling homeowner policies when a family goes into the baby-sitting business.

Next week, the caucus will examine the subject of sexual harassment at a hearing scheduled long before Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill made it an issue in Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

This new activism represents a recognition that in a male-dominated arena, women’s best route to power is often through solidarity.

That women are emerging as a unified force is seen as evidence that their caucus has finally matured politically, evolving from an intimate supper club that met in private homes so men would not feel “threatened” to a visible, action-oriented power bloc.

Thus, women legislators share a closeness in feeling like outsiders in a statehouse where they hold elected rank but still are often excluded from the camaraderie of the male majority.

“It’s this invisibility thing,” said Eastin. “That, damn it, we aren’t taken seriously. And so I think we do stand up for one another.”

Speier puts it more graphically: The Legislature “is a jock-ocracy. It has been and will continue to be until we dramatically change the numerical base.”

Early in her legislative career, Speier was puzzled when the Legislature suddenly and with no explanation took the afternoon off. Then she found out why. “There was some major sporting event somewhere else in the state that the male members had tickets to, or that they wanted to watch on TV,” she said.

As a freshman legislator, Eastin remembers a male colleague arguing for a bill to exempt the transportation budget from the state spending limit. When he insisted that the measure should be approved because it was important for business, Eastin decided to speak up. It was also important for business that the state have a good education system, she said. Why not lift the spending limit for school budgets too?

At that point, the bill’s sponsor interrupted her, she recalled, and angrily declared: “Business? I’m talking about real business, not some omelet shop that a girl like you would open.”

The room fell silent, and a Republican legislator, a woman she hardly knew, slipped quietly to Eastin’s side. Although the Republican caucus had endorsed the bill, she assured Eastin that Republican women would now vote against it because of the man’s “outrageous comments.”

“Many of the women in the Legislature, whatever their political persuasion have felt some sling or arrow in their lives--discrimination, harassment or mistreatment at the hands of a judge at the time of divorce,” Eastin said, “and this gives us a common ground.”

Some male legislators have tried for years to pass these issues and have run into the same obstacles. Women have taken up the banner with more success, said Assemblywoman Bev Hansen (R-Santa Rosa), who shepherded a caucus-backed bill giving children representation in custody battles. “I find that very natural. I mean, how many women in the Legislature do you see that are experts when it comes to horse racing or hunting?

“We have some unique experiences that we share and that has drawn us together,” said Hansen, the divorced mother of five. “When you can’t feed your children because a court-ordered child support payment is not coming . . . it becomes an issue of life and death every day, and few of the men can relate to that.”

But their common ground has it limits. The caucus does not stray beyond the bounds of women’s and children’s issues. And even in these areas there is not always agreement.

Watson and Sen. Rebecca Morgan (R-Los Altos Hills), for example, have never gotten caucus agreement on a bill to require an absent parent to keep paying support for children from age 18 to 21 who stay in school.

And their ways of meeting common goals are sometimes markedly different. For a measure to get caucus support, two-thirds of the 22 women in the Legislature must approve. With nine Republicans, 12 Democrats and one independent, that means philosophical political differences come into play.

“I would say that where we split is getting the money to spend on things like training, on women’s nutrition, on infant nutrition, on parenting,” Eastin said. “If it’s going to cost the public money, then many of the Republican women don’t want to participate.”

Moreover, Hansen said the Republican women tend to oppose any measures with quotas.

Nor can the caucus reach agreement in areas such as sex education and family planning, and it splits along conservative-moderate-liberal lines on measures like a family leave bill. Two Republicans support the bill, but it still lacks enough backing to win caucus approval.

But Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) thinks the caucus may have gained more influence in the Legislature because it chooses its issues carefully.

“They are a force in the Legislature on specific issues, but not a daily force. They would quickly lose their impact if they were a daily presence on every issue. Because they pick and choose issues of special significance to women and to women legislators they have particular influence,” he said.

The muscle that women flex in the Legislature, however, was developed only recently, from timid beginnings.

Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) said the roots sprouted nearly 13 years ago, when the Legislature’s 11 women members, feeling unwelcome at nightly male legislative gatherings at bars, began meeting once a month for dinner. It was strictly social. Most of the women were adamant--they did not want to form anything as visible as a caucus.

“There were women that wanted to ensure that whatever we did, it must not be called a caucus because they felt the men would be threatened,” Moore said.

By the same token, Sally Tanner (D-Baldwin Park) said women of that day did not dare carry controversial bills on women’s issues like sexual harassment.

“I would have hesitated to carry that kind of bill then, not because I wouldn’t believe in it, but because there would be very little support for it,” Tanner said.

Then a 1985 incident galvanized the women into organizing a formal coalition. It happened in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Watson had decided to speak on the death penalty. Midway into her comments, Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), the committee chairman, broke in, admonishing her to stop her “mindless blather.”

“I hope I am offensive enough to make you leave,” he added angrily. He apologized a few minutes later but by then Watson had, indeed, walked out.

The first official act of the women’s caucus was to write a letter condemning the remark. Lockyer responded by apologizing a second time.

In its early incarnation, the caucus backed few bills, held no hearings and stayed out of the limelight. Its next plateau was passing a bill about child custody. At the time, California law presumed that joint custody was always best for the children of divorce.

That made for ludicrous situations where some children were being shuttled between parents--and sometimes even school districts--every six weeks. Morgan’s bill, backed by the caucus, said the foremost custody consideration had to be the “best interest of the child,” whether single-parent custody or joint custody.

When the bill came to the Assembly floor in 1988, the women lined up on one side and most of the men on the other. For hours, the votes seesawed until the women got enough male support to prevail. Flush with the victory, the caucus began taking on more issues, more bills. In the last two years, many women said they have elected two strong leaders--Morgan and Speier--who helped professionalize the organization.

At the same time, Watson said, the caucus was spurred on by the election of more women to the Legislature, a “whole new crop” who are “feminists, who are very much directed toward organizing,” she said. From the councils and school boards where they served, “They brought that same kind of zealousness for organizing here to us.”

Archie-Hudson, a freshman legislator, said she learned early in her political career that a bloc has more power than an individual. Over time, she said, the women’s caucus has discovered how to maximize that power.

“If a bill comes up and people know that this is a women’s caucus bill, that means there are 22 women who are lobbying, bringing people to lobby and speaking up on it and so they can’t ignore it,” she said. “If it’s my bill they can say ‘that Archie-Hudson woman is just crazy and let’s not worry. Let’s kill it.’ ”

Bergeson, who will chair the caucus starting in January, said in agreement: “Now, when a women’s caucus bill comes before a committee the assemblymen or the senators will take notice.”

But Hansen said the caucus would not have succeeded if women legislators had not first developed individual expertise on other issues. Many have become committee chairs, she said, primarily because of their knowledge of issues.