The Distaff Delegate

Ever since the Trung sisters spurred Viet Nam toward independence two millennia ago, women have played a major role in the nation's life. They run not only their homes but shops, factories and farms as well. And thanks to the exploits of Mme. Nhu, everyone knows the pinnacles they can reach in politics. Last week, as South Viet Nam's fledgling National Constituent Assembly got down to business, a new femina politica was on the ascendant: Mme. Tran Thi Xa, the lady delegate from Gia Dinh.

Of 19 women to run for Assembly election, the Catholic mother of eight from the Saigon suburbs was the only one to win, and hence is the only female among the 117 South Vietnamese now shaping their nation's constitutional future. Her campaign symbol was a picture of a mother with her child in arms, the mother representing the nation and the child its people, and it helped Mme. Xa come in as the Assembly's third highest vote getter. So did her calculated demeanor. "A woman must al ways be more careful than a man because she is being judged closer than he is," she explains. 'That doesn't mean you can't be Machiavellian. But be modest. They expect it."

Deputy Will Do. Mme. Xa's brand of modest Machiavellianism has already made her one of the more powerful Deputies in the Assembly. She is speaker of the credentials committee and a member of the one on flood relief-the only two committees formed so far. When she demanded that all pregnant women be released from prison, the measure passed easily. When, in a burst of patriotic pontificating common to assemblies the world over, a draft resolution supporting the Vietnamese army at home and abroad was proposed, Mme. Xa raised her delicate eyebrows. '"Abroad?" she asked. "We are not fighting abroad. We have all we can do here." The phrase was struck.

Mme. Xa estimates that "I could wind up with enough strength to elect myself chairman" of the Assembly. But that, she says, would be "immodest," a repetition of the mistake of Mme. Nhu, who "forgot she was a woman and tried to play like a man." Instead she will settle for deputy chairman, she says, "and a hand in writing the social-justice planks in the constitution."

A Fresh Egg. The only daughter of a wealthy rice broker in North Viet Nam and the wife of a civil servant, Mme. Xa grew up "studying like a man" in a house filled with rosewood and mother-of-pearl paneling and glass windows "as blue as the sky." Strictly chaperoned, she learned social work, painted landscapes, wrote poems to the Virgin Mary--and, at age 14, snatched away the billy club of a policeman beating a street peddler. Her family supported the Viet Minh war for independence, then was turned out of house and home by the victorious Communists.

Mme. Xa and her husband fled south to Saigon in 1954, and she soon became known in the refugee-swollen quarter of Gia Dinh as a woman who got things done. She organized a neighborhood school, founded a Catholic Mothers' Association, arranged housing and relief allotments for widows.

In the Constituent Assembly. Mme. Xa for the first time has a platform to match her talents. "As the only woman here," she says, "I must accept the responsibilities that should have been distributed more evenly among the millions of us in Viet Nam. Everyone so far has been quite courteous about that." And why not? As Saigon Deputy Dang Van Sung admits: "Who dares attack her? You have to be as careful as you would holding a fresh egg in your hand." A mischievous gleam in her eyes, Mme. Xa concurs: "After all, I also represent the Deputies' wives."

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