Byline: H.J. Cummins; Staff Writer
If one measure of an activist's relevancy is enemies, the continuing death threats to members of the National Organization for Women suggest it's still a player.
'We have been opening our mail with latex gloves for years,' NOW national president Kim Gandy said, referring to last fall's scare after letters to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw and Sen. Tom Daschle released anthrax spores into their offices. '... Our staff gets regular briefings from the FBI.'
The matriarch of the women's movement, NOW is sometimes accused of being out of touch. The organization neglects mothers at home, some critics say. Others contend that the great need now is for harmony, not more equality, between the sexes. And many young women - including a handful approached at random at the University of Minnesota - haven't even heard of NOW.
No wonder NOW is calling its 2002 national convention in St. Paul this weekend 'Linking Arms in Dangerous Times.'
NOW members say they picked the slogan because the notion that they support one category of women over another has always been a bum rap. They also say they worry that young women don't understand how many rights have been won in the past few decades - such rights as access to abortions and equal educational opportunities that they think are threatened by conservative judges and a Republican White House. And then there are the evolving women's issues to attend to: For example, with so many mothers working now, the need for good child care has grown.
'We've been in a defensive mode lately,' said Jill Pearson-Wood, president of Minnesota NOW.
'There are huge women's issues, and I don't see them going away any time soon,' said Debra Ness, executive vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, formerly the Women's Legal Defense Fund, in Washington, D.C.
The cause began in '66
It's easy to forget how much has changed for women since NOW started in 1966, advocates say.
Newspapers still separated their help-wanted ads by 'men' and 'women' into the 1970s. Janitors then typically out-earned librarians in the same building because as men, 'they had a family to support.' Little League baseball didn't open equally to girls until 1974.
It wasn't until 1981 that Minnesota law addressed poverty among older women by requiring all retirees - the vast majority being men then - to get their spouse's approval if they wanted to skip survivor benefits in favor of bigger monthly pension checks during their lifetimes.
'Before that, everyone saw it as his decision to do whatever he chose with his pension,' said Diane Cushman, director of Minnesota's Legislative Commission on the Economic Status of Women.
'I know 30 years sounds like a long time, and I am tired,' said Kathleen Ahrens, the local NOW conference organizer. 'But a lot has happened.'
Still, for those whose aim is equality, there's a long way to go.
Census data show women earned 73 cents to every $1 a man earned in 2000, up from 60 cents in 1980 but barely moved from 72 cents in 1990. At the same time, the research agency Catalyst, of New York, reported that the number of Fortune 500 companies where women were at least one-fourth of the corporate officers doubled in just five years. Still, that came to only 10 percent of the firms.
In politics, the Interparliamentary Union ranks the United States 55th among 180 nations based on the number of women in their lower houses of government - that is the House of Representatives in the United States or the House of Commons in nations with parliamentary systems, for example. The U.S. House is 14 percent women, tied with Slovakia.
Two other issues show how NOW is running just to stay in place.
Almost 30 years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, NOW is fighting to keep access to abortion clinics open by restraining demonstrators accused of attacking clients. That lawsuit, against Joe Scheidler and Operation Rescue, is before the Supreme Court.
And 30 years after Title IX mandated equal access to education - including sports - for girls, NOW is fighting new efforts by advocates of public girls or boys schools to loosen the law - remembering the historical problems with separate-but-equal education.
What's ahead
Nationally, NOW has more than a half-million members, Gandy said, and about 150,000 of those are active members and the rest supporters and contributors. Ten to 15 percent are men.
There's a dip in the '30-somethings' membership, she said, but the '20-somethings' picked up again.
Even so, Kristin Ahles of Minneapolis, 26 and a member of Minnesota NOW, said she thinks many young women take for granted the achievements of feminists through the 1960s and '70s.
It's a common problem with social movements over time, said Robin Gerber, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland Academy of Leadership in College Park. 'The labor movement is a perfect example,' she said. 'People think everybody always had pensions and health care.'
University of Minnesota sophomore Laurel McEvers, fresh from an 'Images of Women in Literature' course, said that to her, the word feminist means 'being for the empowerment of women.' But she said many her age would define it as 'a lesbian and someone who hates men.'
Gandy blames conservatives for tainting the word: 'It's like they worked on the word `liberal,' and now all liberals call themselves progressives.'
NOW's critics say it's more than that.
'The level of alienation between adult men and women is bringing about a gradual and slow death of our culture,' said Patrick Fagan, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. That undermines marriage, and that hurts children, he said.
But Ann Crittenden, author of 'The Price of Motherhood,' said she has found some NOW chapters open to her appeal to support mothers at home.
'Mothers' economic status is the big unfinished business of the women's movement,' she said. 'The economic bifurcation is not between men and women, but between mothers and others.'
NOW has always supported women at home, Gandy said. In any case, she said, their needs fit in the big tent of issues NOW sees as concerns to women - health, education, elder care, safety and equal opportunity.
'And there will be other things we haven't even thought of yet,' she said.
Staff librarian Roberta Hovde contributed to this report.
- H.J. Cummins is at hcummins@startribune.com.
2002 National NOW Conference
Schedule: Friday through Sunday. Speakers include Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal and Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.
Site: Radisson Riverfront Hotel, 11 East Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul.
Admission: Standard fees: $110 for three days or $35 for a single day. Also, sliding scale fee for NOW members.
