Young women from across the country have begun meeting in a serious effort to create a forum for their generation to take a more active role in the women`s political movement.
Determined to mesh their ideas and ideals with the tenets of a movement founded 20 years ago, several dozen college-age and young career women came to Washington to attend the National Women`s Political Caucus convention earlier this month.
”Until I got to college, I wasn`t really exposed to how women`s rights are being put into jeopardy,” said Jennifer Arenson, 21, executive board co- chair of the Young Woman`s Caucus, who will be a senior at Connecticut College, New London, Conn., this fall. ”Many of us took these rights for granted, but they won`t be here forever unless we work to see that they are.”
Arenson says that while her contemporaries are vitally concerned about issues including choice, date rape and balancing their careers and families,
”unfortunately, young women feel they lack an outlet for action.”
”I think we need to be inspired,” she said. ”We need to shake each other up.”
And that is exactly what Arenson and other organizers tried to do at the caucus convention. There were special sessions for the younger women with the caucus founders, workshops on career options and setting a legislative agenda and a networking lunch on Capitol Hill with congressional staffers.
They held their own business meeting to elect officers and passed a resolution to add young women to each state board of the National Women`s Political Caucus by February, 1992.
Michelle Pickering, 19, who will be a sophomore this fall at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., took some of the money earned from her summer job to attend the convention. ”I wanted to meet the women who are the officeholders and political staffers,” she said.
Nancy Venator, 22, an inner-city minister`s daughter from Boston, said,
”I`m here because I want to meet more people, to tie into the women`s network and be a part of the future.”
Venator heard about the convention through the women`s studies program at Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., where she recently graduated. She paid her train fare to Washington and her college dean picked up the convention hotel tab.
Jennifer Gorman, 23, a graduate of Duke University now working in Washington for the United Way, is, along with Arenson, executive board co-chair of the Young Women`s Caucus.
”We came to share our dreams and inspiration and set our own platform and policies for the future,” she said.
As the young women traded addresses, resumes, business cards and thoughts, they heard a lot about role models, mentors, linkage and the lessons that one generation can pass to another.
They heard former U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug, a lawyer and caucus founder, speak of her earlier life, including how her application to Harvard University Law School was rejected with a letter saying the school did not admit women.
”Young people have an enormous capacity to make a difference in society,” Abzug told them.
Sharon Rodine, outgoing president of the National Women`s Political Caucus, offered her counsel: ”We have very few advocates for us unless we are advocates for ourselves.”
Caucus founder and author Betty Friedan and others underscored how fragile the victories of the women`s political movement have been and emphasized the need for the movement to reach out to younger women and address their issues.
”This generation is facing a different set of problems,” Friedan said.
”They don`t have to fight the way we did, but they have to fight in a different way.”
At one crowded workshop, the focus was on passing the torch of the women`s political movement to the next generation and the special bond between mothers and daughters.
”We share things in common, but we look at things differently,” former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said of her oldest child, Donna Zaccaro, 29, who was sitting by her side.
Zaccaro earned a master`s degree from Harvard Business School, then worked for a New York investment banking firm. She is co-founder and managing director of the Bedford Kent Group, a marketing/communications firm, and will do the statewide political coordination and scheduling for her mother`s U.S. Senate campaign in New York.
Zaccaro said that while women her age relate to the issues and support the underlying beliefs of the caucus founders, they do not want to be labeled feminists.
”They somehow feel that `feminist` is a dirty word. They associate it with a style that they can`t relate to,” she said.
While semantics may remain a problem, there is little doubt that the transition across the generations already is in progress.
”My daughter will never run for office,” Ferraro said.
But, she said, her daughter believes in her as much as her own mother does-a mother who convinced Ferraro that she could grow up to be anything she wanted to be.
”I`m the beneficiary of a feminist legacy-my mother and my daughter,”
Ferraro said. ”I hope I can live up to both of them.”
