Giving Women the Facts : Politics: Creator of ’50 Simple Things’ books produces a voters guide for women designed to outline the issues for ’92.

Berkeley publisher John Javna operates on the principle that individual actions can make a difference, even in today’s mass-marketed world.

He first tested his theory in 1989 when his small EarthWorks Press published “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth.” It worked. “50 Simple Things” topped Publisher’s Weekly trade paperback bestseller list in 1990, sold 3.5 million copies in the United States, was translated into 17 languages and had people around the world snipping six-pack rings and turning off lights to help the environment.

Then came 10 more environmental books--and Javna’s trademarking of the phrase “50 Simple Things” when imitators started popping up.

Now, he’s turning to politics.

His new book (no, not “50 Things Women Can Do to Save the World,” but “The Women’s 1992 Voting Guide”) is an action-oriented handbook that uses the familiar EarthWorks format of tight writing, catchy “factoids,” and accessible charts and statistics.

“We are giving people information that gives them power,” says Javna in a telephone interview. “This is a new way to present politics--you lay out the issues and make it clear the voters can do something about them.”

Despite its title, the “Voting Guide” is not a checklist to take to the polls, and it doesn’t endorse candidates or parties. Instead, the red, white and blue paperback summarizes 11 so-called “women’s issues” (child care, pay equity, abortion rights, sexual harassment) along with background, a good-news/bad-news progress report on pending legislation, congressional voting records and state legislative summaries.

“One of the deep impulses we feel right now,” Javna says, “is the need to make a difference. Everybody agrees our culture is floundering and we want to help it right itself, but you can’t do that without information. If you care about women’s issues, there are one or two that get covered over and over again, but then you just run into a wall of ignorance.”

This is information that voters--women and men--want, insists Javna, 42, a husband and father of one. The American political body, he maintains, is struggling to change direction and he is ready to help it along.

“He’s breaking ground again and his timing is impeccable again,” says Charles Winton, president of Publishers Group West, a marketing and distribution firm for independent publishers.

As an independent publisher creating his own niche, Javna symbolizes the part of the industry that is flourishing in generally tough times, says Winton.

“It’s one of the most interesting aspects of the media business today--entrepreneurs with original minds who are keeping the idea-generation process going,” he says. “With ’50 Simple Things’ John led the charge in making the environment a household concern, and certainly the timing was right. I see the same thing happening with his voting book.”

Javna had already nudged EarthWorks into the political arena last fall with two book projects, “Vote for the Earth” and “The Republican Ruins” (both scheduled for early summer publication). Then came October’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Anita Hill’s sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, which struck Javna as a “crystallizing moment” in American political history:

“The realization that those men were just not sensitive to what she was saying was like a magnifying glass, focusing the energy that was already out there.”

For the women at EarthWorks Press, the idea for the guide “just erupted,” says associate publisher Dayna Macy. “We’d been talking about doing a women’s action guide for quite a while, because we thought it was the next wave of things to come,” she says. “People were beginning to sense that a lot of women’s issues were not being addressed in government, but it was rather vague--this kind of amorphous sense of something being wrong.”

But with the hearings, she says, “it become clear, right on national television, that women aren’t being represented in the political process. I think all of us were just amazed and outraged--we could not believe what we were seeing. And I think our reaction was typical.”

A voting guide seemed natural because there is no single source of information on the issues commonly known as “women’s issues,” although, says Macy, “why child care is a woman’s issue is beyond me.”

With staff writer Catherine Dee as project editor, they dubbed themselves the Women’s Political Action Group and got busy with phones and faxes, combing through volumes of material to sort out the 11 issues that seem most pressing, researching the current bills in the Senate and House, checking Congressional vote records and talking to women’s organizations in every state for the legislative summaries.

The research was compiled by Dee, using the user-friendly style of “50 Simple Things.”

“I learned so much it blew my mind,” she says. “The statistics are incredible--86% of the women who work are working to support themselves and their families . . . abortion rights are currently at stake in 25 states . . . 15 million women in America don’t have health insurance . . . women still earn an average of 71 cents for every dollar men earn . .

“We’re not trying to alienate men here,” she adds. “It’s people’s issues we’re talking about.”

Considering the turbulence of this election season and society’s appetite for how-to books, the impact of the printed word should not be discounted, says Ruth Mandel, director of Rutgers University’s Center for the American Woman and Politics. “This is a culture where a book (Betty Friedan’s ‘Feminine Mystique’) started a social movement,” she notes. “I think in a year when women voters are looking for a way to support women candidates, the book will find a real audience.”

Washington political analyst Fred Yang has a similar reaction: “It’s unusual for a book or pamphlet to have a huge impact on an election, but this year is different,” says Yang, a senior political analyst for Peter D. Hart Associates, which does polling for Democrats at all campaign levels. “If I were scripting a perfect candidate for ‘92, this person would start out by being a woman. I’ve never said that before. And the issues are complicated--a book that acts as a checklist and educates the public could be influential if it got well-distributed.”

John Deardourff, a Republican political consultant in the Washington area, says the book could have “enormous impact” if widely distributed, although he questions whether that’s possible. “I think the concept is interesting, but it does require that someone fork over $3.95 and that they have a sufficient threshold of interest to read it.”

“However,” he adds, “I do think women voters in particular are more sensitized to this year’s election. If you could get the price down to distribute significant numbers, it would make a wonderful mailing.”

Although EarthWorks Press will offer discounts in bulk buying for women’s groups and interested political candidates, Javna doesn’t think he’ll have to push it. “I think women want this book,” he says.

He likes to explain that being a baby-boomer gives him credibility as a social forecaster. “We were the first television generation,” he says. “We grew up with the same influences. When I’m thinking about something, so are millions of others.”

He has produced dozens of books since 1983 when he entered the field with a whimsical trivia book. Although he has stayed on the sidelines of the guide, he says he has learned a lot.

“I would have taken umbrage at the statement that we need more women in the Senate, but having done this book, I feel differently,” he says. “Women in office have effected legislation in a positive way, and there are burdens that just naturally fall on women.”

The EarthWorks voting guide, he thinks, catches two developing trends:

* One is the emergence of women as a political force. The voting guide preface by Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) and Rep. Olympia Snow (R-Maine), notes that, since 1920 when women got the vote, their participation has climbed slowly but steadily. It wasn’t until 1980 that an equal number of men and women went to the polls. Today women compose 54% of the country’s registered voters, and, for the first time, “women’s issues” have moved to the front burner.

* Second is a growing appetite among voters for solid information. Says Javna: “We’re increasingly being asked to make life-and-death political decisions based on sound bites and TV commercials. And what passes for a voting guide is literature from special interest groups whose sole purpose is to promote their candidates . . . What this book does is show the substance of women’s issues and justifies them, for an average person.”