Women no longer out

HOUSTON The debate here last weekend was over which of two groups of women represented the mainstream majority of American

David S.

Broder

society. The 2,000 delegates and alternates to

government-financed

the official, National

Women's Conference and the thousands of sympathizers who joined them in voicing their support of the Equal Rights Amendment said they were that authentic voice.

The 11,000 women bused into Houston for the unofficial counterrally of the "pro-family coalition" took exactly opposite positions on ERA, abortion and lesbian rights, and asserted with equal vehemence that they were proxies for the American majority.

What neither side would concede even if they realized it was that they had both found their way into the political mainstream on the central issue of our domestic life: the size and role of the federal government.

In this perspective, the real significance of Houston was to bury the idea that so-called women's issues are a sideshow to the center-ring concerns of American politics.

Rather than being on the side, they are now swiftly moving into that center-ring debate on how big, how protective, how intrusive or how expansive the federal government should be.

The transformation of the rhetoric of the anti-ERA and anti-abortion women was striking. In their unofficial "minority report," they gave top billing to "a limit on taxation and nonessential government spending." a strong emphasis on national defense, and the return of power to local government. They demoted their anti-ERA and anti-abortion planks to sixth and seventh in importance.

At the official convention, the centerpiece resolution backing ERA was surrounded by no less than 25 other planks, endorsing everything from "blind" judging of musicians to reduced military spending to national health insurance. The manifesto resembled the grab bag of constituency promises that pass for national party platforms. And while no one could answer questions from the floor about the cost of the package, the thrust of the National Plan of Action was clearly in the direction of bigger, more expensive government.

At that convention, what little debate was heard under the cramped parliamentary procedures took on the classic lines of conservative versus congressional rhetoric.

A lawyer opposing ERA bypassed the emotional threats of unisex bathrooms and women soldiers in combat. Instead, she observed that its second section, giving Congress unrestricted power "to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article," sounded to her like an invitation to federal preemption of a wide variety of state laws.

On the other side, there were ringing declarations that only the federal government could provide the child care centers, the anti-discrimination protections and the welfare and other assistance that women need.

There are dangers for both sides in the submergence of their special concerns in the broader waves of liberal and conservative debate. Phyllis Schlafly, the most vocal of the anti-ERA women, seemed disconcerted when reporters questioned her about a section of the minority report opposing "any government controls and regulations" on private business. She promptly disclaimed that sweeping conservative language.

Similarly, some of the pro-ERA

politicians worried aloud about the wisdom of burdening their cause with such bric-a-brac as a plank calling for creation of a' cabinet-level Department of Women.

Such concerns are inevitably the lot of those who choose to leave the protected world of their special interest movements and play coali tion politics. But real power in America lies in coalition building, And today, both women's movements are recognized as forces worth bringing into the liberal and con servative coalitions.

no more

After Houston, they are stranger not to each other and not to any of the other players in mainstream' American politics.