Word: caucuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...many women as possible elected, or selected, as delegates to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Democratic Party reform gave women an opportunity by calling for fair representation of all groups within the party. If at least half the delegate spots do not go to women, the caucus threatens to challenge the offending state delegations. Presidential candidates have been scrambling to put more women on their slates, and in some cases begging for them. Less committed to internal party reform, Republicans have not shown the same alacrity; but President Nixon, at least, is well aware of feminine voting power...
...caucus is strictly bipartisan...
Says Democrat Steinem: "I get along much better with female Republicans than I do with Larry O'Brien. I will go anywhere to work for a Republican woman running for office-or if it would help more, I would not go." While the caucus has its share of familiar liberationists like Betty Friedan, it also includes Liz Carpenter, the tart-tongued Texan who used to be Lady Bird Johnson's press secretary; Businesswoman Virginia Allan, who served as chairman of President Nixon's task force on women's rights; and former Republican National Committeewoman Elly Peterson...
Beyond the immediate delegate hunt, the caucus has been lobbying hard on Capitol Hill. It helped persuade Congress to pass a national program of day care, though the bill was vetoed by the President. It is fervently backing the Equal Rights amendment, which bans discrimination based on sex. The measure, which has passed the House, will probably come to a vote in the Senate this month. Senator Sam Ervin, who opposes the amendment as superfluous, recently told a meeting of the National Council of Jewish Women: "God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers." For its part, the Women...
While the caucus hopes to promote a new political force of acutely aware women, American politics has a way of absorbing one-issue movements. There is too much else at stake in politics. Already, the Women's Political Caucus in Manhattan has begun to split into any number of sisterhoods under the pressure of competing interests. Caucuses have been formed within caucuses. Various ethnic groups have taken turns packing meetings to get their own people elected and others eliminated. A Dominican woman recently complained that the white liberals were siding with blacks against the browns...