Chisholm: Voting Trends Favor Women

BUFFALO, N.Y. —  Former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm told delegates of the National Organization for Women Sunday that 1988 is the year women have “their greatest opportunity yet” to exercise power in national politics.

Voting trends indicate that women may outvote men by 10 million ballots in the November election, Chisholm told delegates during the final day of NOW’s 21st annual conference, which opened Friday at the Buffalo Convention Center.

But she cautioned delegates not to use their power to demand painful promises from their favored candidate, referring to the perception that former Vice President Walter Mondale was beholden to “special interests” in his losing 1984 presidential campaign.

Using Their ‘Influence’

Chisholm said she hoped women would “use their new-found influence to broaden the political process and improve the lives of all women.”

At a news conference afterward, Chisholm, a Democrat who once represented Brooklyn, said the Rev. Jesse Jackson was the only candidate to address grass-roots issues--and women’s issues in particular--during the Democratic presidential primary campaign.

“He has really, really dealt with the issues that have to do with day-to-day living in this country,” Chisholm said. Yet, she added, “he has not gotten the support of the women in this country.

“Jesse Jackson said early (in the campaign) that he will put a woman on his ticket if he should get the nomination,” Chisholm said.

Chisholm advised the women’s group to work to unite all women in one common cause.

“My position is that we have to be able to reconcile the concerns of all women in this country if we are going to be a real force to be reckoned with,” she said. “If we’re talking about power, we’ll have to organize all women--black women, white women, red women, all women--into the movement.”

Earlier, on Saturday, National Organization for Women President Molly Yard said that enacting an equal rights amendment and increasing the number of feminists elected to public office top the organization’s agenda.

Yard made the comments during her keynote address to the conference, which attracted nearly 1,500 participants.

Other Battlegrounds

But the new campaign to get the equal rights amendment passed won’t be limited to lobbying Congress and state legislatures, Yard said. The ERA battle also will be fought at Social Security offices, on college campuses and other places where women are treated unfairly, she said.

NOW has called on its local chapters to stage sit-ins at Social Security offices to protest unequal distribution of benefits and at college campuses, where women professors have a hard time getting tenure and where predominantly male administrators are insensitive to campus violence against women, she said.

“We are going to have the equal rights amendment reintroduced (in Congress) in January of 1989,” Yard said after her speech. “We are determined to pass it. We are going to use different tactics than we have before.”

Those tactics will include a greater effort to have feminists elected to public office, Yard said. (The last time the ERA was considered, it was approved by 35 of the necessary 38 states before a 10-year time limit expired in 1982.)

A ‘Definite Plan’

“We want more dramatic gains, more quickly. So that is what we’re really working at,” she said. “It is a very definite plan which we will carry out in ‘88, in ‘90, in ‘92, in ‘94, in ‘96, until we have nearly equal representation.”

Yard said that NOW’s Women’s Caucus will be at the Democratic national convention trying to put more women’s issues into the party platform.

One of the priorities at the convention will be urging Democratic leaders to name a woman running mate for Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who is virtually assured of receiving the party’s presidential nomination, Yard said.

“So far, I’ve seen no move to put in any resolution endorsing any presidential candidate,” Yard said, although she noted polls indicate women are leaning heavily toward Dukakis.