Women Today; Women's Political Movements

singer communications center at the university of texas at austin the longhorn radio network presents women today polls talking about issues about which people are immediately concerned you're going to start touching them and don't think that the wind speed is doing that very well right now and june women are experiencing increasing consciousness in today's society more aware that there are a majority many women question longstanding assumptions and that's about their role and many others question the questions this series is produced in association with the editors of the texan woman magazine mr hodges guests this week are jane hickey chairperson of the texas women's political caucus and lawyer bobby jay nelson we're pleased that you join

justin and bobby and i've just been sitting here talking about the reasons that they became interested in politics and they became i don't want to tell us i actually got out of college and start working probably my project in south texas for planned parenthood in quickly became convinced that their wares so no real attention being paid to the people they're these sort of programs they were designed to help this all of this activity going on and all these people who are suffering that connection between the center of the board members barely whitaker found for city council announced an hour to work and it was a real immersion in politics almost immediately that are you know not exactly in it and i think i would back that said i had a real different are staining of politics and like to keep that in mind while i'm talking this morning as i don't think that politics are limited to being an electoral campaigns i think

are human being as a political human being and their actions within their identified with an organization or not our political activity comes very important are the way i began activating our politics was i was mad as a woman i was really unhappy with the kinds of of opportunities there were for me to express the values that i felt very deeply that should be in a society and i was angry enough to to begin dedicating myself and working with others to to organize and raise questions and looked for ways to change the system that we live in do you suppose this is what is happening with women throughout the united states and texas that this is why suddenly there's a flowering of women seems to be a sort of flowering of women in politics should we maybe talk a little bit about the national national politics just simply the organizations and the kinds of women that come to mind would be a stranger to look at some of the history of women's movement the women's movement

began in the sixties coming out of the students for democratic society and women were sitting around hearing about all the oppressed peoples of the world and were really part of just doing or talking an nsa has said it was either that's really hot medium and it so it began on the last thing and has picked up on issues which touched women all over the country whether it was dyed care whether was talking about their interpersonal relationships whether it's talking about abortion he brought more and more women at that point a couple of other organizations began probably the best known as the national organization of women which began sana we have to do something about this in and the way that is being expressed on the left is a very adequate so let's go into like electoral politics now was to relieve the one of the first major organizations in only two years ago that ended the national women's political caucus begin to get off the ground is specifically related to their end let it is so the state caucuses which shines our and so it's it's really made in a different

direction and i think right now a lot of women are beginning to question the usefulness of putting more women into political office and what kind i don't know whether and whether i think that the depth questioning is his broader scale has set as another kind of thing that's happening and i think we are family as with all of the various organizations inactivity for women just now beginning to really test that women who have been it really cut off from any kind of a discussion any candid dialogue about themselves as women are tall and suddenly were warm we're being able to break into are or have some connection with the lives and waitresses the lives of old ladies unrest how he's now with the lives of women where domestic workers on welfare women who are mothers have kids and

miserable and all of a sudden this is it's finally beginning to detach there and i think that the entry of more more women into politics electoral politics we're even beginning to get some diversity like that i would say it is a great deal of difference between sarah weddington well meaning don't go for example to women who will be in the legislature next time he premiered harris county in wilmington del close prime prime concern in life is black children you know that's it and so i think it's a healthy maturity that jane are you thinking that perhaps it needs the battle cry of somebody running for office to rally people and to give them the focus so that for the people who are just beginning to be women just beginning to be interested in politics that it's almost essential that they have a specific to work toward where there can be a victory well you know it's not as much davis is there there is i believe a way of

behaving every level in this country which is to sort of have a buddy system that operates among older middle class upper middle class white me and who who really run things in hindu so sort of bad basses hitting themselves and talking with themselves and that's it heavily breaking into their very tightly held power thing i think and i through an electoral process we are we are we sort of force ourselves into that to rupture that very complacent old old me and sit around talking i'm really somehow jang think that's condescending all through the history of the united states those groups have been touched at one time or another and they've been touched when the articulate and the public groups on the scene began speaking to issues which concerned those creeps me if you're talking the waitresses they don't want hear about equal but i don't for the most part like their jobs and they don't like working at a restaurant we really see that their bosses

earning so much more money in doing less work and that there is less valuable people within our work structure is we now have it if you start talking about people it's not enough to save my rights social security you i mean they really are better places to live and not feel a little bit more secure they will have something to do with their life and any in this is really true the bank's i during the populist third of our country whenever you start talking about issues about which people are immediately concerned you're going start touching them and don't think that the wounds were event is doing that very well right now there was a national black women's conference recently in new york and that was one of the major complaints about the woman's name is a minnow why clients need it was not speaking to their neat and one of their needs was to really fight racism as much as talking about doing anything like that right and so once again i really hate to limit the definition of politics into the electoral arena because it it doesn't

say anything to me to have sarah weddington elected into the legislature has done nothing for my life and i'm convinced that it had been rumored for other people's lives no ways do i think it's going to be much for black children from east are going to be elected and we really talked about having a society where children are valued and they are okay here's i think of course of the spirits he's strong jet set sarah n her and the work that she did was important but how how do we combat in the electoral process is as i say it's the best forum that we have far the aid discussion of those issues that that do you know directly touched the lives of people i'm not talking about opportunities to go into restaurants and waitresses and a new bat for prices as a forum to address issues that that the end you know i really like i don't understand how the prevention of arrive to live thank our compulsory pregnancy

they'll analyze jeff sessions are you know didn't it didn't affect you came out of africa nice enough about the credit card and this kind of thing in jane if there are elected women elected to the legislature then it's not a matter of they're winning but the fact that they are there to voice a direct vote on things that are of importance to win but because otherwise that group a good noble s would sit down and really never pay any attention to talk to two women to the black schoolchildren to anybody one right there in the moment bobby goes on to say that i would like to inject effect when you start talking about national organizations there was no mention of the league of women voters which has been perhaps dealing with sorrow for a long time in a nonpartisan way to what is seen to be and peter as they have been so in a row for a long time when we speak of history there's been a continuity hasn't there are concerned now they may not have been as a militant or is as direct a son

young women have been even have a history of that we shouldn't forget it and it not it's in this country we had one of the most militant movements of women in this country it wasn't as widespread as now because we didn't have the media mix there but there were women going around who were just really fantastic they were talking about the issues that were just now beginning to talk about in women's movement and that particular moment was killed when the suffragettes began to organize and begin to concentrate all their energies in getting getting about saying that was seems think we are really pay attention they're kind of history always as to what is happening out there to couple things our talk about one is like how it touched me that the right to lifers bill you know did not go through the legislature are still can't get an abortion in austin texas if i get pregnant that's what touches me and i don't think that it's going to happen through the legislature se i firmly believe that that supreme court decision not come down because there were some good lawyers on either so i think that because women were in the streets all over this

country yelling we to me in the right to abortions we got this report decision but thats recognizing that does none of men are really a political body and they're going to go with what the way the winds are going after and we believe that all that organization had gone on we would have that decision and so on and i've been working with groups trying to get abortions here and i don't think we're going to we get angry again and i don't think it's going to happen through the legislature by bad as sarah the lawyers in the case they walked out in front of the court building four for as long as they need to continue the war but until that that as she was brought into the context in with which those not only the deal have to slide down a thousand dollars one weapon that she eats but i don't think we ought to get some narrow that we forget why things happen and it doesn't happen because you go into court it happens because there's a certain time in a lot of people getting angry i i think about the time and place and so on there are all the

kurds and it isn't either or ever it's always a combination of things and when we started out talking about national organizations and we didn't really get to what kinds of things are going on in texas in an organized way either names that besides the political caucus that come to mind are other groups that are organized under banners of some sort of a quote before we forget i think that we really do need to mention some of the women's groups that you mentioned like the later when voters that the old democratic clubs the republican discussion when the republican party in texas these women working as well as the iaea dead the owners are the club and bmg debbie and in this whole thing and we really do do something i can remember the first time that her mind who will ask a student and made a statement on the floor of the organizing conference at the texas weren't political caucus and what nobody knew who she was and there's a woman he's been lobbying for twenty five years

about equal rights that's a terrible criminal thing to do that one and indeed all of the people who work but it's not enough for young men than it is really it's just a sign of power our real trouble that we do not know the names we have no recess but that's a real good example to point out that she did lobby twenty five years before the legislation when the equal rights amendment was filing past it was because she had been lobbying for twenty five you're not he was finally passed because of the mycenaean that was going on all over the country needed foreign become a nation i agree with you that it perhaps or maybe i'm not supposed to retaliate i would say that the eventual eventual happening comes when it's gotten ripe enough but if the other twenty five years of devotion hadn't been there i could not have occurred to me almost everything that that does have a natural ripening process on the thing and sometimes it seems like it takes

years and years to long for something to come to its particular time doesn't have any it's our system really encourages us to continue talking to continue electing new in better and different candidates on me i used to be really acting like to hourly in the nineteen sixties and you know you always keep saying well i may not like either of the candidates but i like one a lot more than any other when somebody go that direction and really believe that something's gonna happen to work for a candidate to unite and that's a date then in the nineteen sixties when you were working in a wide these towers busy with the thing about the radical when i grow up and busy organizing marches and stuff and then moved into really into this this democratic party electro profane and her family came and it's an honest to goodness billy soule i personally vouching that i've i really disagree that things in this country are going to change by going through that process and i think our history

says that i think our history has really important if i'm going through the history of the nineteen sixties you know how did we get as far as we got on issues of racism on the issues of the vietnam war on the issues of talking about welfare of the issues which we have not very far out the nsa is for is we get on those issues not because of being involved in electoral politics but because people were organizing in a radical way in making demands and showing their anger and i think we're going to have to find ways to do that again and then i'm going to use the electoral process for that angered too to rub off on me and the elected officials so that they will hold you wish them to are you suggesting really badly out a tall radical turnover of the kind of government we have yes i said certainly are there a number of young women who feel that way for a number of young women in me and i'll bet there are definitely a number of young

women across the country one of the things said and they had an intimate because a comic from a completely different thing completely different party is that i suppose it has to face the fact that i really do they want to see women controlling more capital and that would help sunday that we have a women's bank that we have a real part of their that whole lung whole thing that i want us to have resources you are in texas women's political caucus in their eyes so much life in activity throughout the state caucuses working and you know i have to spend most of the day we're in because we don't have a typewriter and a falcon when we have no resources with which to do the work that made everybody thinks that we ought to

do so i'm really interested in the accumulation of resources and challenged resources for women everywhere and i can do we really structured it so that not only are you moving from one job of a category that hadn't we have employees to own own parts of this that the operation that he's terrified because if one wants a change in focus in the government and one wants to do what is called revolutionized things does one do it through the political process we have now or does it mean violent kind of revolution you're not talking violence are you at when i have talked to young people it doesn't seem to me that they're advocating violent overthrow the government they're advocating getting into that political process and turning it upside down so that perhaps there's a different but they're going to have to use different tactics and i think that whatever we do in this country is going to have to be innovative thing or no models worst followed were very few gigs and certainly some principles were

settling on a stage where that even becomes a question there are a lot of ways that we can work around sustaining our hands to begin raising issues in but one of the hardest in and once again it's it's acknowledged two histories in the sixties when the organizations were best going that were on the levee there began a considerable amount of oppression infiltration by government dissolving giant and watergate hearings one of the reasons some of those organizations failed was not because energy was last year driving but because there was that kind of compression going on would have me get better this time around and i think we're only firmly believe that that is to get back to the question the jains are saying that i don't really wanna see women as bankers and see women as policeman and see women as fbi agents and unless there's just such a completely different set of values by stone i wanna see places in point where one person earns more money than the other because they have more years of education i think we really have to re examine the kind of values which leads to that ami and

i don't ever want to be i don't ever want to be turkey for a really really no that's not only thinks it would give me any chance a section life but i really do feel a responsibility and some larger since two to not to say that i did not affected there are in women who do want the turkish farmers and i won the turkey farmer so badly because if your questions turn off the way i look at is i don't want to i don't wanna see a woman in any position which impresses other people and the banking system in america has impressed so many people as have the police systems as having fbi systems we go on in all kinds of jobs and i think that's how i look at it even if when mark sutton says you know the owner of a bank and say that's fine if we can work out a way that number one we really need banks and it's a bicycling our society and number two it does not the press and the p and

that's my question always in those kinds of jobs it was fascinating to me is i listen to the two of you and the price of view which i'm sure people throughout texas and everywhere else but there must be at this point what what sort of thing do you think the image of the young woman is guys you go around what would you really think the image of the woman's movement and in women changing and i think that finally i mean i think that families when men and man are beginning just now beginning to see that there is in facts and diversity that they're there how bobby had both exist under some sort of a thing where we at least now log out of that about women and they can see now when people are like attacks on the equal rights amendment which they're still doing in the john birch society there are there is a diversity of women who say no wait a minute that's me tate and so there's there are rail changed

a broadening cunningham and a real mixture wants to be i think it will be a big indicator of thing to look at is what really the only widespread national magazine that has come out of the women's movement that's ms magazine and i think it's really important to read that every month and it gives you some real indication that a kind of letters that are written in our bills are coming and what women are doing all over the country what kind of issues women are rising i think it's also interesting in this last issue that pointed out that you received the most response to the article published to an article from a woman that's been underground for the last three years because of her political activities unless they were critical the letters were instantly some fashion and i think that's really interesting to see that as a gauge of how women are thinking and no longer just signed one i'm real excited that i now start mowing business and he called me is whatever and that that i'm really thinking about how we change things overall i think that i'll be really central question whatever direction

movie and an end they are really be the basis of dialogues between this and i think it ought to be done in a sense not saying you know do we have our two not that water are occasions of living what are the genes of the society that we can be this is china's next week from today do you have another conversation about women today as guests were jane iggy chairperson of the texas women's political caucus and lawyer bobby jindal join us again next week for another program about the increasing consciousness of women in today's society this series is produced and distributed by communication center university of texas at austin in association with the texan woman magazine comments and suggestions about the program are welcome and maybe set to po box twelve sixty seven

austin seven eight seven six seven that's bach's twelve sixty seven austin seven eight seven six seven production for women today is coordinated by frida word executive producer stewart well this is the long war in radio network yet