Discreet Victory

While American feminists are still smarting from 1975 setbacks to the drive for federal and state equal-rights amendments, British women are celebrating--discreetly, of course--a major victory on the same front. Traditionally a man's land, Britain late last year began to see the effects of wide-ranging laws guaranteeing women equal pay and opportunity in government, business and education. An Equal Opportunities Commission headed by Laborite Betty Lockwood has been created to enforce the new laws, and unions are preparing test cases for female members. In its first two weeks the commission was inundated with more than 2,500 inquiries about sexual discrimination.

Nerving Women. One big catch to British-style equal rights is that the new laws are not the result of a militant feminist campaign or a change in public sentiment, but rather have been lobbied through Parliament by progressive Laborites. Feminist leaders say it may take years before social attitudes catch up with the laws. The commission is also finding it difficult to nerve women for court battles over their grievances.

With decorum the unwritten law of the land, the acts so far have produced the first ripples of change. London's Sotheby's, the internationally famed art auction house, has named Libby Howie, 24, as the first female auctioneer in its 232-year history. Linette Simms, 43, black and the mother of six, is now tootling along as the first woman among 350 male London school-bus drivers after previously being turned down because of her sex. And in advertising, notices now solicit "secretaries" instead of "dolly birds."

The one well-publicized exception to dignified behavior, an invasion of all-male drinking territory, washed out completely. When four female journalists plunked down a five-pound note and demanded drinks at the bar of El Vino, a Fleet Street bistro, they were rebuffed. Righto, said one veteran equal-rights advocate, female novelist Storm Jameson, who fired off a letter to the London Times calling the quartet "damnably undignified and ill bred."

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