"Friday Afternoon Massacre"

President Carter's firing of Bella Abzug, CoChairperson of the National Advisory Committee for Women, gave adequate proof (if any was needed) of the contemptuous attitude of the present administration toward women's issues. Following closely the public downgrading and firing of Midge Costanza, the President's action must be viewed as an insult to all women.

Carter was reportedly still angry with the refusal of the Committee to meet with him în November after they discovered he had allotted only 15 minutes to them. One can only speculate how much time would have been allotted to a committee representing steel manufacturers, or bible salesmen, for that matter.

Abzug's firing was precipitated by a Committee report, issued to the press before the meeting, criticizing the measures proposed by the administration to curb inflation. Those measures, the Committee pointed out, will increase unemployment and curtail social services, thus adversely affecting women. Women's options and opportunities for equality will be severely limited if, as seems the case, curbing inflation, rather than insuring human rights, is the priority of the Carter administration.

The report embarassed and angered the President; its delivery by Abzug, on behalf of a Committee he had appointed more as a showpiece than a policymaking body, enraged him. So he fired her.

Bella was an easy target. Her personal style, combined with her lifelong commitment to women and the other disadvantaged of our society, have inspired as much venom as praise. However, women know better than to believe her firing was a personal matter. Carter would never have fired the co-chairperson of any other committee representing a_constituency so large or with such potential political power.

The women who resigned from the Committee in protest of Abzug's firing are to be commended; the remaining Committee members can better spend

their energies in galvanizing the women in their respective groups to concerted and direct action against an administration which pays only lip service to the needs and aspirations of women.

-Mary Walsh

Women Prisoners Charge Sexual Abuse

(Her Say)-The U.S. Attorney's Office in New York has begun looking into complaints of abuse of women prisoners in the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. The women say they are subjected to sexual abuse by prison guards. The inquiry is said to be part of a continuing investigation by a federal grand jury into charges of corruption and criminal activity by personnel at the prison.

The chief correctional supervisor at the Center, Homer Holland, said he was aware of the accusations against the guards by the women inmates, and that he had passed the charges along routinely to the FBI. The FBI has denied ever hearing about the prisoners' problems.

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Women Take Over City

(Her Say)-Monrovia, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, is the only city in the U.S. where women exercise political and economic control in all but one of the top elected offices.

In the city of 31,000, the Mayor, the City Treasurer, the School Superintendent, the Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce and the Presidents of the Chamber Board of Realtors and School Board are all women.

How did it happen? Said one male council member, "It just seemed that one day I woke up and they were all there. Everyone in charge was a woman."

Women's Financial Identity

Washington, D.C., January 16, 1979-Seventyfive percent of American working married women say they play an equal role to their spouses in making decisions on savings and investing. This is one of the surprising findings of a national survey taken by the Investment Company Institute, the national association of mutual funds.

A further 15 percent of the women questioned say that they rather than their spouses make the primary investment and savings decisions. Only 8 percent say their spouses are the primary financial decision makers.

"The survey shows how strongly women have already moved towards establishing their own financial identity. They now exercise real influence in one of the last remaining areas traditionally dominated by men," said David Silver, President of the Institute, earlier this month.

"Women are being pulled by the prospect of achieving a greater degree of financial independence and pushed by the urgent need to save and invest their money wisely to combat ever-rising prices," he added.

The women in the survey are generally enthusiastic about their new involvement. Fully 64 percent of them said they enjoyed making financial decisions. Asked why, the most common answer was “I like to -be independent."

Doubts remain among the 36 percent who do not enjoy making these decisions. The most frequent reasons given were the fear of making the wrong choice and lack of information.

In the past two years, about 73 percent of those surveyed have taken out a credit card in their own name, 38 percent got a personal loan, and 19 percent bought stocks or bonds.

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The survey results were compiled from a 4-page questionnaire completed by a representative crosssection of 1,124 working women. The 1,124 respondents are included in the survey.

The median family income for married working women answering the survey was $21,890. For married, non-employed women it was $18,440 annually. Women answering the survey who were never married had a yearly median income of $12,440 and divorcees and widows $11,722.

-Investment Company Institute News

Drug Researchers Withdraw

(Her Say)-A poll by a U.S. drug addiction research publication has found that over half its readership would refuse to attend a conference in a state which has not ratified the ERA. The poll was taken by the U.S. Journal, the American arm of the Journal of Drug Addiction Research published in Canada.

The poll also found that over half of the respondents would specifically stay away from the 1979 National Drug Abuse Conference scheduled to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana-an unratified state-in 1979.

Mining Companies Find Treaure

(Her Say)-Mining companies have been quietly hiring women mining geologists, mining engineers, drafters, chemists and claim filers in the wake of federal pressure on the companies.

Four years ago there were about 35,000 geologists in this country, and about 3.5 percent of them were women. At last count, in 1977, the total was nearly 40,000, of whom 7.8 percent were women.

Alderson Closed-Sort Of

The National Prison Project recently announced that the Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to close the long-term Maximum Security Unit at the Federal Correctional Institution for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, within the next year. This is a clear victory for all those organizations and individuals who have made known their opposition to this newlyopened prison within a prison. But the unit continues its dirty work, with five women assigned there and another scheduled to join them soon. Pressure on the Bureau to release those in the unit and to make certain plans to close it are implemented should continue.

Carter: No on Nurses

(Her Say) The Dean of Syracuse University is warning that President Carter's veto of the Nurse Training Act may cause irreparable damage to the nursing profession. The Act was first passed in the mid-1960's to provide federal funds for advanced training of nurses.

Dean Thetis Groups is warning that several schools of nursing throughout the country will literally have to close down because of the lack of federal funds, and that in those schools which can staypen, the number of faculty members will have to be drastically reduced. Groups is warning that the eventual shortage of nurses which will result will have "dire consequences" for the health of large segments of the population.

President Carter has claimed that the bill is inflationary and that there is an oversupply of nurses.

Irish Sweepstakes?

(Her Say)—The Irish Customs Service reportedly seized over $8,600 worth of smuggled condoms and spermicide jellies recently.

The production and sale of contraceptive devices is illegal in Catholic-dominated Ireland, but they have been widely imported since 1974, when an Irish High Court decision ordained that the private use of contraceptives was legal.

Last year, an organization called Family Planning Limited opened in order to cut the price of Irish contraceptives by importing them in bulk and distributing them to needy clinics. Irish Customs, however, has seized the whole lot of them, saying that this constitutes "sale" of contraceptives.

Couples using the clinic services are reportedly having to go without, while Family Planning Limited contests Ireland's basic anti-contraception statute, the 1935 Criminal Act, to the High Court...

February, 1979/What She Wants/Page 5