New “phenomenon” in U.S. politics

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33063, 2 November 1972, Page 7

New “phenomenon” in U.S. politics

(By

MAUREEN EPPSTEIN)

Rhoda Freir is a new phenomenon in American politics. She is an avowed feminist who has carried the banner of the women’s movement out of the rap sessions and the action groups, and into the male-dominated arena of party politics.

As the Democratic Party candidate for the twenty-second Californian Assembly District, her platform is environmental protection and zero population growth.

Until seven years ago Rhoda Freier’s life reflected the malaise of many American housewives whose children have gone off to school, leaving them with time on their hands. “I wasn't active in anything much. I dabbled in various ‘do-gooder’ organisations. Occasionally I dropped in on the P.T.A. I attempted bridge, and gave up in despair. I considered returning to teaching, but did nothing about it.”

Then seven years ago the Freiers moved to California. Suddenly all her latent dissatisfactions burst into full bloom. ‘‘California does that to people,” she says. “Maybe it s something in the air.” She went back to college to continue her studies in biology and to improve her teaching qualifications. She joined organisation after organisation, as her goals changed and expanded. First was the Sierra Club, an influential conservationist group. Her biology studies led her next to zero peculation growth. Environmental and population concerns began to coalesce into women’s problems.

“About two years ago Z.P.G. finally began to realise the significance of the role of women in our society, and upon the population. If one

relegates women into the home as the only means of expressing their personhood, then large numbers of them w>ll undoubtedly have more children than is socially responsible.”

Environmental conservation efforts also will fail, she feels, unless the country has a population programme that is realistic. Yet neither state nor local governments were doing anything about population problems. This led her to Common Cause, a citizens’ lobby which seeks to make government more responsive to the governed.

The National Organisation for Women (N.0.W.) was the culmmation of all these interests, and the one which has commanded her strongest loyalties. She became president of the South San Francisco Bay chapter two years ®B°- As the mainstream of the women’s movement moved towards politics as the only effective method of achieving equality for women, it pushed her along with it.

Diffident and unwilling at first, she surprised herself by winning the three-way race for the Democratic nomination for Twenty-second District with a handsome 50 per cent of the votes. The General Election next month is going to be a more difficult proposition.

“No matter how strongly you feel about an issue, you have to know how to go about it, and I really didn’t.” Her neophyte campaign organisation functions on a “crisis-to-crisis basis.” Like most candidates, she directs the emphasis herself, with help from consultants within the Democratic Party. It is a strongly woman - centred effort, drawing heavily from N.O.W. and Z.P.G. Her financial director is a busy young woman with a pre-school family and a part-

time job as a children’s librarian, who has still found time to organise events such as the garage sale which netted $6OO for the campaign coffers.

But by no means is it a female chauvinist affair. Mrs Freier’s husband is her campaign manager. Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” has taken time to speak on her behalf. Promises of help in the crucial pre-election work have come from prominent and experienced male members of the local Democratic Party.

Lack of funds is a chronic problem. Democrats, lacking the big business resources of the Republican Party, have traditionally relied heavily on union support This in Mrs Freier’s case has been conspicuously lacking, partly because of her own inexperience, and partly because of union opposition to the women’s Equal Rights Amendment, which she supports. The attitude of the local press, which consistently refers to her as “the Women’s Lib. candidate,” has also been an obstacle. “I have no qualms about being identified as a feminist But the term ‘lib’ or ‘libber’ is used in a denigrating way that is very damaging and insulting.” She does not feel that

being a woman is all that much of a handicap. But neither is it a conspicuous asset. A survey by the National Women’s Political Caucus showed that, of 30 new women candidates in the June primary election, only 12 are still in the race, and only two of these, including Mrs Freier, won contested primaries.

“It’s hard to know what the factors were: unwillingness to vote for a woman; inexperience on the part of the woman running; lack of money? We’ll never know. But I’m certainly not doing what I did initially, which was to point out that we haven’t even reached the level of tokenism in the number of women in the legislature. Some people may be concerned about this, but the vast majority clearly aren’t.

“Nowadays I tackle the positive aspects of my candidacy rather than the fact that I am a woman. I think it only makes sense. I have tried to promote myself as a candidate who is more knowledgeable than most of the other legislators in environmental matters and in the need for population stabilisation.” But she does feel that her candidacy will have' an impact on the image of women.