Then and NOW : Despite Media Ridicule and a Right-Wing Backlash, the National Organization for Women Continues to Champion the Causes of Feminism Under New President Patricia Ireland

From the corner windows of her seventh-floor office, Patricia Ireland has a sweeping view up 16th Street. She chose this office, she mentions with just a hint of a smile, “so I could glare at the White House.”

Ireland, the new and much-discussed president of the National Organization for Women, has ambitious plans for leading NOW and its 250,000 members into their second 25 years. Her ideas are intended to make both Republicans and Democrats squirm.

For starters:

* A million members by the end of this century.

* Endorsement of a third major political party to “shake things up . . . get people excited about politics again” and to promote a feminist agenda. (“Where the choice is between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, what do we lose by putting forth an alternative?”)

* Weekly NOW-sponsored TV docudramas in which real people would tell real stories about sexual harassment, battering and job discrimination and NOW would tell viewers how to fight back. (“There’s no reason in the world why Jimmy Swaggart can have an hour show on television once a week and we don’t.”)

But Ireland takes over at a time when some feminist leaders are questioning whether NOW, having set the feminist agenda and having opened doors for women, is still in tune with their needs.

And, indeed, whether the movement itself will rebound from the backlash of the 1980s that saw women losing ground gained over two decades.

NOW was born in response to the shared anger of women at a conference on the status of women in Washington in the summer of 1966.

Although sex-based job discrimination had been outlawed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was not enforcing the law. Newspapers, for example, listed “Help Wanted-Male” and “Help Wanted-Female.”

The women found an ally in EEOC Commissioner Richard Graham. He told Betty Friedan, the most visible of the new feminists, “What we need is a political force for women’s rights.”

At NOW’s organizing conference that October, he was elected vice president. Today, semi-retired and living in Washington, Graham is frankly critical of the group’s direction: “The perception is that NOW is more interested in the issue of sexual preference than it is in sexual injustice. That’s the way it’s perceived in the political world and by most of the women I know.”

He adds, “NOW stands for issues that ought to be stood for, but NOW can’t understand the importance of accentuating the issues on which everyone can agree,” such as health care and child care, rather than abortion and sexual harassment.

Harriett Woods, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus, says, “I think women are ahead of the movement. . . . They don’t see themselves as outsiders who have to picket to get attention. They see themselves as players in the system. We have to catch up with them.”

NOW’s agenda is shared by women’s groups once thought of as very traditional, who are themselves shaking things up. Among them: the American Assn. of University Women, and Business and Professional Women.

“If NOW weren’t the radical edge, AAUW might look like radicals in the eyes of the public. We agree on most issues,” says Sharon Schuster, president AAUW, noting that when AAUW was formed in 1891, “college was thought to be detrimental to women’s health.”

Such groups as AAUW have worked quietly, keeping a low profile. But as NOW has changed women’s thinking, the quiet voices have grown louder.

Over the last decade, another voice has become louder, that of the backlash.

In her recent book, “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” Susan Faludi spells out how politicians, the media, the fashion industry, TV and films--together with the New Right--have conspired to put women back in their place.

“The feminist revolution has petered out,” she writes. “The possibility for real progress has been foreclosed.” Women, she concludes, feel “paralyzed.”

But Faludi now says she has changed her mind about that, in light of very recent events. “It’s not so much that feminists have lost their resolve,” she says. “It’s just that in the face of so much hostility and antagonism, women sort of went underground.”

The specter of losing legal abortion and the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas face-off, she believes, have “served to jolt women to action.” They have come to see they weren’t paranoid, after all.

Women are not buying any new push to send them back to their kitchens, says Karen Nussbaum, executive director of 9 to 5, an organization of women in non-professional jobs. “They know this really isn’t an option. There’s much less bewilderment, soul-searching or self-blaming than we found even a few years ago.”

Woods says the challenge today is to connect with the millions of women who may have been turned off by the militant movement but “are waiting for someone to sort of reach out a hand” to give them the support systems they need to prosper from the revolution.

She is critical of a “self-perpetuating” leadership that she believes is out of touch with the realities of women’s lives. Women know what they need--day care, parental leave. “We don’t have to knock them over the head.”

In Ireland, NOW has a new leader--its eighth--who is forthright, politically savvy and both fervent and funny.

For the record, she mentions, NOW is not planning to lead a march of bare-breasted women down Pennsylvania Avenue to call attention to the breast cancer epidemic, as she has been quoted. (“The danger of amusing oneself in front of reporters.”)

But, she adds, “we do have a woman on our national board who said if she could get 100 women to do it with her, she wants to strip in front of the Supreme Court to emphasize that they have stripped us of our rights.”

Titillating headlines have plagued Ireland, 46, as she settled into her $90,000 a year job, heading an organization with a $10 million annual budget and 750 chapters.

She has acknowledged having both a husband of 25 years, artist-businessman James Humble in Florida, and an unidentified woman “companion” in Washington. That’s all she’ll say. “I don’t talk about my sexuality. I’m not into public sex.”

Ireland knows these are “hard times” for the women’s movement. The enemy is declaring once again that feminism is dead. NOW, with its high visibility, is the primary target.

At its core, she says, the backlash is motivated not by religious fundamentalists but by the economic interests of entrenched leaders of business and industry.

In a recent Gallup poll, only one-third of women identified themselves as feminists. This doesn’t mean they’re not for women’s rights, says Ireland, who blames a calculated campaign to portray feminists as undesirables: “The image that comes to people’s minds is ugly, hairy, man-hating, humorless and, probably, a dyke. A dyke on a bike, with leather.

“Physically and style-wise I look much more like a corporate attorney (which she was) than a wild-eyed radical feminist, and I think somehow that’s disarming to people,” she says.

Rather than lobbying on Capitol Hill for NOW-backed legislation, she’ll be probing the records, finding out “who is paying the professional lobbyists, who’s pulling Congress’ strings, who’s pulling the strings at the White House”--so NOW can let everyone know.

But NOW will still take to the streets April 5 with a march in Washington for women’s reproductive rights. Ireland says, “People in power will not give us what we need because we’re nice, because they like us.”

NOW has won some battles, lost some. Failure of the federal Equal Rights Amendment in 1982 was a major blow.

But women can attend once-male schools, get credit on their own and hold once-male jobs. Ireland says, “We’ve changed the language so we talk about police officers, camera operators, reporters. As a result, more women have moved into those jobs.” Yet there are few women in the highest echelons of industry.

And one statistic defines political power at the top: There are only 2 women in the U.S. Senate. Women are only 5% of Congress.

Do the political statistics reflect a failure by NOW?

“Well, of course. We’re disappointed as anything,” says two-time NOW president Eleanor Smeal, who now heads The Fund for the Feminist Majority. “We’re not lying to ourselves. We know that we’ve gone from about 3% women in state legislatures to 18% since the early ‘70s and you can say, ‘My God, you’ve quintupled it.’ But how many did you start from?”

And, she adds, “the action . . . is at the federal level.”

NOW PACs give about $500,000 a year to feminist candidates, and its volunteers recruit women to run and help them organize campaigns.

The NWPC’s Harriett Woods is encouraged by “seeing a lot more of a new kind of younger woman who is running for office as a kind of career.”

If many Americans favor the issues of the women’s movement, as polls show, why are they represented in Washington by lawmakers who don’t?

Voter apathy, says Ireland. “The existing political parties have become incumbent protection clubs. That’s their goal, and they do it across party lines. They feather each others’ nests.”

But Woods says that when women are most of the voters yet their issues--no matter how mainstreamed--don’t have the support of public policy, “you’ve got to stop and say why. You can’t just say we’re going to keep on doing what we’re doing.

“It’s kind of hard to liberate the movement because there is such a sense of commitment and such concern if you break the lock step.”

NOW is disillusioned with both major political parties. So this summer members will vote on whether to endorse a third party, at least temporarily called New Party USA. At NOW’s instigation, the party has been incorporated.

Some dismiss it as a crazy idea, but Smeal says, “I’m not worried about being called nuts. What I’m worried about is that we don’t try enough things.”

NOW’s impact has been that it “came out fighting and has remained fighting,” says Ruth Mandel of the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers. “It is not a discussion group. It is not a reading group.”

After 25 years of NOW, Mandel says, women “have moved from invisibility to spotty visibility to some influence. We have not moved to power.”

Gene Boyer, a founding member of NOW, says, the women’s movement has been hampered by an inability “to put aside competitiveness and territorialism” so as to make lawmakers accountable to it.

With the backlash, Ireland says, women’s organizations have had “to get closer, circle the wagons. It’s put a lot of the fighting to rest.”

Today, most women who support women’s rights don’t belong to any group.

Ireland says, “Women are stretched within an inch of their lives, trying to keep their heads above water. . . . They do their feminism on their jobs, in their lives.”

Because of NOW, she says, “we now have women’s-rights supporters throughout the society, in all the major institutions that shape the culture. They’re bunched up against the glass ceiling, perhaps, but they’re there as role models, as mentors, in media, business, law, medicine, labor, religion.”

Ireland says, “I want history to reflect that we were there when it was hard, when it was scary, and we brought a lot of other people along behind us.”

Milestones for NOW and the Women’s Movement

Aug. 26, 1970: NOW strike for equality, commemorating 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage. 25,000 march in New York, 10,000 in Los Angeles, 15,000 in Chicago.

Jan. 22, 1973: U.S. Supreme Court declares abortion legal.

July 21, 1975: For the first time, NOW endorses a candidate for political office, Rep. Bella Abzug (D.-N.Y.) for the U.S. Senate. She loses.

July 9, 1978: ERA march in Washington draws 100,000.

July 12, 1984: Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale chooses Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate.

July, 1988: Ann Richards, then treasurer of Texas, is keynote speaker at Democratic National Convention.

May, 1988 to Present: Abortion-rights advocates and Operation Rescue clash in Wichita, Kan., Atlanta, other cities.

Sept., 1989: Leanne Bollinger of Long Branch High School, N.J., is first girl to score in a varsity football game in New Jersey.

January, 1990: Capt. Linda Bray leads troops into battle in Panama, receives congratulations from White House. Army reiterates opposition to combat roles for women.

September, 1991: Anita Hill confronts Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas at Senate hearing on sexual harassment charge.

The Past Presidents of NOW

BETTY FRIEDAN, 1966-71

At 71, Friedan is finishing “The Fountain of Age,” a book that will take on “the mystique of age, the obsolete definition.” She divides her time between her New York home and Los Angeles, where she heads the Institute for the Study of Women and Men at USC. The feminist movement is everywhere, she says: “It’s not a question of NOW or nothing.”

AILEEN HERNANDEZ, 1971-73

Hernandez, an urban consultant in San Francisco, remains an ardent feminist. Achievements of her presidency include “focusing attention on the problems of employment of women” and the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality. The women’s movement, she says, should pay more attention to the needs of women of color.

WILMA SCOTT HEIDE, 1973-75

Heide died in May, 1985.

KAREN DeCROW, 1975-77

DeCrow practices law in Jamesville, N.Y., focusing on gender discrimination. She also lectures at colleges and is finishing a book. Under her, NOW became involved in national politics. DeCrow says: “NOW put me in touch with the passion of my time. Feminism and gender issues are so important . . . thrilling, exciting.”

ELEANOR SMEAL, 1977-82, 1985-87

Smeal is founder and president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. The group’s priorities include a campaign demanding that the FDA lift its ban on RU 486, the French abortion pill that may be effective in treating some diseases. Smeal sees the feminist movement as global: “It’s everywhere, fantastic, even in the poorest countries.”

JUDY GOLDSMITH, 1982-85

“The centerpiece of (my era) was the Ferraro nomination. It lifted the lid off women’s aspirations.” Goldsmith is special consultant for equity and affirmative action at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. She is not active in NOW. Defeated by Smeal in a divisive fight, she says, “I’m not bitter. (NOW) did some very wonderful things for me.”

MOLLY YARD, 1987-91

Despite suffering a stroke in May, Yard is still working for NOW, focusing on RU 486 and the new ERA. Looking back to the April, 1989, march for women in Washington, she says, “I do think it kept the (Supreme) Court from overturning Roe v. Wade then.” Will she participate in NOW’s march for reproductive rights April 5 in Washington? “Of course.”