PERSPECTIVE ON CONGRESS : A Slip-Up in the Sisterhood : Democratic women did little to fight bills aimed at the heart of their No. 1 constituency: poor women and children.

Did anyone notice that while Newt Gingrich, Dick Gephardt and others waged a sound-bite war over unwed mothers and government aid last month, the Democratic women of the House were strangely silent? Only 2 1/2 years after sweeping into office on promises of shaking up a male-dominated Congress, they took a back seat while the men and conservative women debated welfare reform, the prime “women’s issue” before Congress.

By failing to mount a united campaign against the Republican evisceration of programs that benefit poor women and children, the Democratic women betrayed the one constituency that needs them most.

Last year, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said, on the subject of welfare reform: “It is time for women to speak.” But that was before the November elections. Once Gingrich took the Speaker’s seat, the Republicans deftly redefined welfare as a bankrupt system that succors the poor with money taken from hard-working Americans. The Democratic congresswomen mustered barely a whimper. Individually, they sniped at the Republicans for scape-goating poor women and children. But the heroes who had claimed victory in the Year of the Woman in 1992 took no strategic action to fight a bill that would deny benefits to the infants of women already on welfare, cut off aid to mothers under 18 and lock in support at 1994 spending levels.

Explanations for the women’s inaction abound. According to Pat Reuss, senior policy analyst for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, the women Democrats were horrified by the punitive Republican proposal but too distracted by their internal disagreements over details of reform to mount a campaign against it.

Offering a different excuse, Waters insisted that if there’s blame to be laid, it should be at the feet of the Democratic leadership, which shunted women aside in the quest for party discipline.

Other congresswomen attributed their inaction to the confusion of life in a newly Republican Congress. They complained that their offices had been moved too far from the House floor (Republicans dealt with this inconvenience for 40 years) and that their schedules are constantly changing because voting can no longer be done by proxy.

But to the resourceless mothers on welfare, the bottom line remains the same: a House-passed bill that would drastically cut the support they rely on to protect their families. And, as a group, the 31 Democratic women of the House did nothing to stop it.

The irony is that for years, the Democratic women derided the Republican Party for hypocritical policies about women and children, complaining that it is easy to define a party position with rhetoric; the hard part, they said, is shaping policy. Now that they are members of the minority party, the Democratic women are in an ideal position to chip away at Republican proposals, and welfare was a plum pick. The nexus of issues it touches on reads like a greatest-hits list of women’s concerns: poverty, reproductive choice, domestic violence intervention, equal employment opportunity, child care, child support. But when met with an opportunity to bring these issues to public attention, the Democratic women were seized by a case of political stage-fright and sold out the families they were elected to represent.

The inertia of the Democratic women threatens to make a mockery of calls for female “parity” and the promises of female political empowerment. Their silence also calls into question the premise that women are necessarily better able or more willing to represent women. The most women-friendly welfare legislation of the 103rd Congress was introduced by a man, Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Sacramento). His bill included comprehensive child care, job training, medical care and education provisions--measures that progressive advocates have championed for years.

The Democratic women’s inertia has created a vacuum in mainstream female opinion, and moderate conservatives like Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman are eagerly filling the void. By toeing the party line, Republican women may well position themselves as the domestic defenders of the 1990s--bumping the “women’s agenda” over to the right.

The trouble is that women leaders are terrified of being called “feminist”--a tag even more corrosive than “liberal.” Perhaps, like their male peers, they are too addicted to the easy rhetoric of their days in the majority to organize strong action. Perhaps, like all politicians, they are reluctant to risk their political skins for an increasingly unpopular constituency of poor women and children.

Whatever the excuse, the Democratic women of the House gave up without a fight. If their sisters in the Senate follow suit, the losers will be not only the families on welfare, but also voters like me who expected something more from the victors of the Year of the Woman.