Women: Still Number Two But Trying Harder

The angry rhetoric has cooled, the marches are less frequent, and so are the ritual roastings of that familiar foe, the male chauvinist pig. A more mature feminism has come to focus on the drive for equality on the job, in the home and in the nation's political life. Three years ago, in a special issue devoted to an examination of "The New Woman" (March 20, 1972), TIME set out to report, among other things, where she stood in politics, business, the professions and other fields. Since then, events have sharpened the American woman's perception of herself and her future.

By many measures, the women's movement continues to grow. In the years since TIME'S special issue, for example, the membership of the National Organization for Women, the largest feminist group, has grown from 12,000 to 55,000. The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress in March 1972 and has been approved since then by 34 of the 38 states required for ratification. (Recently, however, the momentum for ratification has slowed, and North Carolina's rejection last month destroyed any chance for final approval this year.)

At the same time, the arrival of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s has been particularly hard on working women. Eleanor Holmes Norton, chairman of New York City's Commission on Human Rights, voices a typical concern that "layoffs stemming from the recession could wipe out all the women's gains of the past five years."

Despite modest advances in the arts, science, show business, education and publishing, those gains have been impressive in other areas. Some examples:

POLITICS: A Hobby No More

As New York Representative Bella Abzug has proclaimed, 1974 was the "Year of the Woman." Connecticut's Ella Grasso, 55, became the first woman to be elected Governor without following in her husband's footsteps. New York chose its first female Lieutenant Governor, Mary Anne Krupsak, 43. No woman made it to the Senate. ("A stag Senate," quips Abzug, "is a stag nation.") In the House of Representatives, 18 women won seats, up from 14 in 1972. In the states, more women tried for legislative office than ever before; about 1,200 women candidates were listed on ballots, one-third more than in 1972. More than half (604) were successful.

Explains Jane McMichael, director of the National Women's Political Caucus: "In previous years, women were running for office--lower office--as a sort of hobby at age 56. Now more and more young professional women are making politics their career." Yet only a few, like Carla Anderson Hills, 41, the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, have been able to break into what is still a male bastion: appointive jobs in the Executive Branch.

BUSINESS: Revolution by Timetable

As TIME'S issue on women went to press three years ago, corporations that held Government contracts were working desperately to meet a far-reaching new Labor Department dictum: under threat of contract cancellation, the companies had to draft goals and timetables showing that they would "take 'affirmative action' to remedy the underutilization of their female employees." Since then, the Government and various feminist organizations have filed hundreds of sex-discrimination suits against employers.

Today the Labor Department says that, while the overall ratio of women to men in the work force has not changed significantly in the past few years (38% are women v. 32% in 1972), many more women have moved into professional and technical job categories. Nearly 32% of the nation's 36 million working women are now employed in these higher rated areas, up from 14.5% in 1972.

A few, like Vice Presidents Dorothy Gregg of Celanese Corp. and Pamela Flaherty of First National City Bank, are now holding high executive positions in major companies. Sister Jane Scully, a Roman Catholic nun and president of Carlow College in Pittsburgh, recently became the first female member of the board of directors of Gulf Oil, joining a growing number of women corporate directors.

A sharp increase in the enrollment of women at business schools suggests that many more will be holding high-paying managerial jobs in the future. At Stanford's Graduate School of Business, for example, 60 of the 310 students in this year's entering class are women, up from 21 out of 294 in 1972.

THE LAW: Desexifying the Bar

"You're getting a divorce?" "No, my client is." "You're the secretary?" "No, I'm the lawyer." "You're the lawyer?" This recent exchange between an incredulous judge and Lucia Fakonas, 23, a third-year student at Harvard Law School, demonstrates the struggle of women lawyers to be respected--and even recognized--in the legal profession. But the women are making impressive headway. In 1972 2.8% of the nation's attorneys were women; today, says the American Bar Association, women make up between 5% and 7% of the U.S.'s 400,000 practicing lawyers.

And more are coming. The number of women in the nation's law schools has climbed from 3.6% of total enrollment in 1960 to 9.3% in 1971 and to a high last year of 20%. Many schools have added special courses on women's legal rights. A few even use a "desexified" casebook written by two Harvard professors: it presents an equal number of women and men in prominent roles.

MEDICINE: Goodbye, "Gentlemen "

That old medical-school staple, the nude girlie pictures slipped in among the anatomy slides, is gradually disappearing along with the practice of addressing classes of students as "gentlemen." Says Dr. Helen Shields, a fourth-year resident in gastroenterology at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital: "The locker-room humor that I often heard in medical school back in the late '60s is frowned upon now." Women are entering medicine in greater numbers than most other professions. Last fall nearly one-fourth of the nation's incoming medical students were women, up from 13% in 1972. Increasingly, women are specializing in areas that have long been male strongholds: surgery, gastroenterology and ophthalmology.

Whatever their field, the women are determined. A recent report in the American Medical Association Journal suggests that, unlike in past years, more male medical students than female are dropping out of the grueling first year.

RELIGION: Wearing the Cloth

The Episcopal hierarchy was outraged when eleven women were ordained--perhaps improperly--as the first female priests in the church last July, but the episode typified a growing push toward clerical equality that is affecting virtually every major denomination. The United Methodist Church has 500 ordained women, up from 332 in 1970, and the United Presbyterian Church has 189, compared with 103 in 1972. The Lutheran Church in America, which began ordaining women in 1970, has 24 women in clerical posts. U.S. Judaism recently gained its second female rabbi. The number of women wearing the cloth is sure to expand soon because many more are in training. The proportion of women enrolled in the 195 schools accredited by the Association of Theological Schools is now about 14%, up from 10% in 1972. But there have been greater changes in some of the leading schools. Women account for 41% (v. 31% three years ago) of the current first-year class at the Union Theological Seminary, and 35% (v. 17%) at the Harvard Divinity School.

THE SEXES: Help with the Mop and Broom Many husbands are now assuming their share of domestic duties, greatly easing the burden for 34.5 million women who choose to remain in the home. Some innovative families have even formalized housework and child-care arrangements into "marriage contracts." Paternity leaves (unpaid leaves of absence granted by the New York City Board of Education, the University of Michigan and other employers) now mean that some wives no longer have the sole responsibility for the care of their newborn babies. At the same time, an Internal Revenue Service ruling that permits parents to deduct child-care expenses has enabled more housewives to take on a moderate workload, hobbies and other activities. Those who do volunteer work in social agencies find that there is a strong push to urge industry to consider voluntarism as "experience" on job applications--should the housewife some day opt to work.

SPORTS: Up the Locker Room

Liberation in the locker room has been dramatic on virtually every level and for every age group in the past three years. As a result of court rulings, qualified girl players are being allowed into Little League dugouts across the nation. Government guidelines set forth last June have spurred many colleges that receive federal aid to increase their athletic budgets for women. Colleges are also increasing the number of athletic scholarships awarded to women.

In professional athletics, too, women have come a long way. Starting from far behind, they have benefited relatively more than men from the explosion in prize money in recent years. For example, Chris Evert, only 20, has rolled up more than $200,000 in tennis winnings so far this year.

Meanwhile women Sports, a new monthly dedicated to female athletics, reports that no fewer than seven women's pro football teams are now on the gridiron. In Arkansas a sports promoter named Orwell Moore is organizing the nation's first pro basketball league for women. And other small but telling female firsts continue to accumulate. Micki King, a 1972 Olympic diving champion, will soon become director of women's intercollegiate sports at U.C.L.A. Even the International Olympic Committee, that Maginot Line against modernity, says that it is ready to change its 81-year-old tradition and let women into its ranks--as soon as a "qualified" woman member can be found.

These impressive gams seem to demonstrate that feminism is not a fad, as men--and many women--once believed, but a strong and enduring social force. Still, the progress of women has been severely hampered by tokenism, chauvinism and women's own reluctance to abandon their submissive roles. Until they overcome these obstacles, the time is far off for the real "Year of the Woman."

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