Less shock, more punch

WASHINGTON -The meeting

here of the U.S. National Women's Agenda bringing together for the first time every possible type of

Georgie Anne Geyer

women's organization to form and push a coherent agenda of women's rights questions for the next five to 10 years showed very clearly that the early, "shocking" days of the women's movement are gone.

It was easy, back then, for the upright, or even simply the cautious, to dismiss the bra-less avant garde (though unfairly) as simply “masculine," "lesbian," "misfit." This assembly, on the other hand, would not have looked out of place in the Baptist church of Plains, Ga. As dynamic young black Audrey Colon, president of the National Women's Political Caucus put it, "Today we have a sense of who we are

we're everyone." And indeed they were: from churchwomen united to black feminists to the girls clubs to the gay task force to neighborhood women.

To one who has seen (and often despaired of) the chaotic, self-conscious rites of the radical women's groups, the down-to-brass-tacks "strategy, strategy, strategy" aspect of this meeting was infinitely more inspiring than any amount of emotional railing against male oppression. As top strategist Heather Booth said in her "How-to-put-asystem-to-the-knowledge" workshops, "If you don't know where you're going, you're likely to end up somewhere else, like back where you were."

No one wanted that. So they talked about strategy. And they talked about how to break the divisive class and psyche lines between women. As Nancy Seifer, an attractive young woman who is director of the Center on Women and American Diversity said, "Although women are united by sex, we have no sense of community."

Then frail, elderly, deceptively sweet-looking Alice Hansen Cook, a professor emeritus of industrial and labor relations, gave some historical examples to the contrary: In the early part of this century, for instance, working-class women were supported by middle-class women in the coalition of the Women's Trade Union League. In effect, she was saying, it can be done. Barriers can be breached.

The women's agenda, put together by representatives of all the women's groups over the last year, is an inclusive, basically nonradical document. It calls for adequate pay, access to political and economic power, quality child care the basic issues most women now agree

on.

But still, there is the problem of a coalition. Every group and every member does not agree on every point -abortion, for instance.

What the group finally came out with was a plan that called for representatives to be elected to structure the coalition, to take these ideas back to the organizations to get their final approval and, finally, to form the permanent, organization that will work, lobby, push and do whatever necessary on on women's issues.

These women, in their well-styled clothes and carefully combed coifs and stockings and shoes and perfume and bras and lipstick clearly thirsted for recognition. It's been a long time coming, but this meeting showed that it has come. Though admittedly a difficult one, it symbolizes a new day for women. Costume has given way to content.

• Los Angeles Times