Making Quite a Difference

Women win two key issues and half the seats on party councils

I came here for Jimmy Carter, and I for myself. The question of this convention is: Now that women are 50% of the delegates, what difference does it make?" So said Ohio Delegate Dagmar Celeste on the second day of the Democratic Convention. Soon afterward, Democratic women proved that on their own issues at least they could take control of the convention and win. "They played politics and we got trapped," admitted a male Carter whip. Said former New York Representative Bella Abzug, who helped run the women's floor operation: "We did it without trailers or red, white and blue phones."

By forcing the passage of two minority reports--ignored by Kennedy and actively opposed by Carter--the women added platform demands that candidates who are not in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment be denied party funds and that the Government pay for abortions for poor women. The result was to further tip the platform toward the feminist viewpoint. The platform already included planks demanding equal pay for women, improved child-care programs and support for boycotts of conventions in states that have not ratified the ERA.

Slightly surprised by their success, exultant women's leaders held a victory press conference at the New York Statler Hotel. Midge Costanza, who in 1978 was forced out of office as Jimmy Carter's liaison to women's groups and minorities because she was too outspoken, deftly turned a Carter line (borrowed from John F. Kennedy) into a barb.

Said she: "Today we told Democrats that life indeed is unfair."

It was not an overnight victory. In 1900 Suffragist Elizabeth Cohen was the only woman delegate at the Democratic Convention. By 1968 the number of women delegates had risen to only 13%.

In 1972 it climbed to 40%, but dropped to 34% in 1976. At the 1978 mid-term party convention, women pushed through a recommendation, adopted as a rule in 1979, requiring that delegate seats be equally divided between men and women. The Democratic result in 1980 nearly met the requirement: 50.77% men and 49.23% women.

The women included political neophytes, hand-picked party workers or their wives, union representatives and elected officials. Also present were hundreds of members, both men and women, of the National Organization for Women, the National Women's Political Caucus and the National Abortion Rights Action League. Preconvention polling by these groups showed that they had the votes to win on major issues, but no one knew how the delegates would react to high-pressure politicking by the Carter forces.

As it turned out, most of the women, along with many men who were sympathetic to their stand, stuck together. The message spread by NOW President Eleanor Smeal got across that fifty-fifty means nothing if women can't move the party forward. In this spirit, Carter delegates, especially members of the National Education Association, began defecting from the President's position that denying funds to anti-ERA candidates would help Republicans and hurt Democrats, especially in the South. Said Wisconsin Delegate Virginia Foley: "We've got to put our money where our mouth is. Obviously, what we have been doing isn't enough."

Negotiations with Carter forces failed to produce a compromise, and finally, as ERA Coordinator for NBA Linda Tarr-Whelan said, "it seemed to come down to the fact that we were either for ERA or we weren't, and we couldn't let the message get lost --Democrats are for ERA."

As far as many women delegates were concerned, the strength they showed on the convention floor was just the beginning. Said an elated Daphne Gratiot of Woodstock, Vt.: "It is only a taste of things to come." She may be right. Further bolstering the women's position was passage by the convention Rules Committee of a measure requiring that future conventions, the Democratic National Committee, state Democratic committees--in fact, all Democratic Party bodies--be composed equally of men and women. The consequence: women have good reason to expect that they will soon be moving into positions of power in the party's councils. And as Wallace Hyde, a member of the Carter-Mondale Finance Committee, said, "In politics, votes are power."

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