0 PINION Page 4 Friday, October 15, 1982 The Michigan Daily i .U Women's movement: Surviving, evolving The nation's conservative trend hasn't slowed down feminism, says Gloria Steinem, noted feminist and co-founder of Ms. magazine. Ac- cording to Steinem, the women's movement is more widely accepted now than ever., Steinem, who appeared on cam- pus last week along with feminist authors Kate .Millett and Alice Walker, fears, however, that the reproductive freedom of women may be in danger. In an exclusive in- terview with Daily staff writers Ann Marie Fazio, Julie Hinds, and Fan- nie Weinstein, Steinem discussed current challenges to feminism-in- cluding the Helms amendment and Phyllis Schlafly. ought to focus where it hurts the most. We should focus where there's the most injustice in our own lives. But I don't think we should make each other's agendas. Clear themes emerge, though. Reproductive freedom as a basic human right seems to be key now everywhere. Our reproductive capacity isthe one thing that unites women and it's our one difference from men. Establishing a basic right to have or not have children in safety, eliminating sexual violence, eliminating the idea that sexuality is only okay if it's direc- ted toward heterosexuality and having children, all that is important. The second theme is redefining work. Women suffer from a kind of semantic slavery. Most of what we do is called "not work." Women who work at home are called people who don't work- that's crazy. Daily: Do the current efforts by Jesse Helms to regulate reproductive freedom by limiting abortion rights worry you? Do you think they'll be suc- cessful? Steinem: I'm very worried about it. That it could have gotten as far as it did when 70 percent of the country opposes it is frightening. It means we really don't have a democracy. We've got to go to the polls in November and demon- strate that we will vote on reproductive freedom just as we won't vote for a candidate who doesn't support free speech. Daily: The recent Reagan appoin- tments of women to high office-Sandra Day O'Connor and Anne Gorsuch, for example-do you think they've hurt or helped the women's movement? Steinem: It depends who they are. To appoint an anti-woman woman is worse than having no woman. To have someone who looks like you and is fucking up is worse than having nobody. I think that Sandra Day O'Connor, while she was not on the list of women recommended for theSupreme Court by women's organizations, nonetheless is interesting as an example. When Reagan was really down in the polls with women even before the election, he apparently thought he surely could find one woman to appoint to the court who was as conservative as he was. Well, we're happy to say he couldn't. Though she is not ideal, she is more supportive than the men on the list of possible ap- pointees were. I think that's a plus. Anne Gorsuch, I think, is not a plus. She seems to be someone who doesn't want to protect the environment, something women are very concerned about. Daily: What is the next step for an equal rights amendment? Steinem: I think it will work, but it probably will take at least another decade. It's been, as you know, rein- troduced in Congress. We now realize that we have to focus on state legislature. For years we've been focusing too much on Washington. Daily: In the past, attention was focused on feminist leaders-yourself, Bella Abzug, Betty Freidan. Now Phyllis Schlafly seems to be getting more attention than anyone else. Do you think new feminist leaders are emerging? Steinem: Women are emerging. Take Ellie Smeal. She's emerged as the leader of NOW. No one would have known her as a housewife in Pittsburgh. Take Barbara Jordan or Yvonne Braithwaite Burke.. There is a wide variety of women speaking out today. Phyllis Schlafly is a creation of the fairness doctrine. Everytime you have someone speaking for ERA, the fair- ness doctrine says you have to have someone speaking against it. Schlafly happens to be the only nationally- known woman who opposes it. She gets to be famous. People don't knpw that the network used to call me up and said "Bring an 'anti' with you." They didn't know anybody who's against the equal rights amendment. I'm very grateful to Phyllis Schlafly. She's bad on every issue. It would be embarrassing if she were good on anything. She's rich, she's hypocritical. She does just what she tells women not 0 Daily: Do you think feminism is dying out in the 1980s? Steinem: I think I've been hearing that every Wednesday of every week for the twelve or fourteen years that I've been active. One of the ways a culture deals with a challenge to its justice is to say it's dead. First they say you don't need it, then they say it's -too radical, and then they say it's over. Clearly it's not. If you look at public opinion polls, there's been a steady in- crease in support for issues raised by the movement. Whether it's equal pay for comparable work or reproductive freedom, they all have majority sup- port in the polls now. Daily: What are some of the key issues in the 1980s on which women should focus their attention? Steinem: Well, I don't want to say to women, "You should." We've had that said to us much too much. Individuals Daily Photo by ELIZABETH SCOTT Steinem: "I'm very grateful to Phyllis Schlafly. She's bad on every issue ... If you put her in a novel, nobody would believe her." to do, take an active role outside the home. If you put here in a novel, nobody would believe her. Daily: Now that Ms. has had its ten- year anniversary, what do you see as its role in the future? Steinem: Women's issues are general. I think we suffer from the idea that men are the world and women are a single issue. I hope that there will be more feminist publications. Unfortun- ately, we're the only national one. Because of the advertising and com- mercial structure of women's magazines, they still feel they must do editorial features on cooking to get cooking ads, fashion to get fashion ads, beauty to get beauty ads. It isn't that the editors want to do this-they don't- but there still is no other magazine that's controlled by its staff, controlled by women. Daily: What do you think about con- servatism creeping back onto college campuses and how it's affecting women students? Steinem: I question whether conser- vatism really is creeping back. The problem is that activism was defined in masculine terms in the 1960s-bombing buildings and having demonstrations and so on. Transforming the power relationships on campus may be even more radical. The fact that women now have women's studies, and there are black studies and Hispanic sstudies, that's a very radical change. The fact that the median age of the female graduate is 27 nationwide is a radical change. Remember that progress lies in th, direction we haven't been in. Progress for women may be to become engineers and lawyers and carpenters and mechanics. It doesn't mean we're imitating men, it means that we're developing those areas of ourselves. Progress for men may be taking care of kids or being active at home. The minute women say they want a job, people say they're conservative: That's not conservative, that's quite radical for a woman. Dialogue is a weekly feature of:. the Opinion Page. Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Wasserman TODAN/ THAT FEe VOTE INNVM Z. 13UT THEY MDXNO Vol. XCIII, No. 32 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board I It's still a bad idea ^ 0 0 0o 0 =iz = , _ _____-o 0 'WosE PEOPL.E W~o o F'LA\N ToVOTE SH12OWER A SL~6T WREE-Cc- FOR... YOU KNW~.. - - ___ o , .r[ WN Ts SNaME .: sfl - r -- . =-- o ... , - - - o mil= -- 0 SOME 20 MONTHS ago, the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan tried to talk the Regents into going along with a "refusable/refund- able" funding program. At that time, the Regents wisely refused. Now, PIRGIM-apparently un- deterred by its previous loss-is trying again to get the funding plan approved. It has sought and received the endor- sement of the Michigan Student Assembly, and it has plans for a petition drive later this year to pressure the Regents into changing their minds. But despite PIRGIM's deter- mination, the "refusable/refundable" fee system remains as bad an idea today as it was before. As the system stands now, PIRGIM workers stand in registration lines and collect student verification form stubs from students as they go by. Those students who want to give money to PIRGIM indicate their wishes on the stub, and they are billed for the contribution on their tuition bills. PIRGIM complains that it isn't get- ting enough money under that system. The group says that the CRISP lines move too quickly for students to make an educated decision on whether they want to contribute. Instead, PIRGIM wants the "refusable/refundable" system, under which each student would be automatically billed for a $2 con- tribution to PIRGIM. spend each year collecting SVF stubs. But PIRGIM's convenience is not the issue; at issue is whether the burden should fall on PIRGIM to collect its funds, or on individual students to refuse to contribute. We believe that burden should fall on PIRGIM. The University should not compel students to support any special interest group, no matter how well- intentioned that group may be. By giving PIRGIM the right to bill studen- ts for. contributions, the University would be turning the PIRGIM con- tribution into a fee-a fee which could be declined by students, but a fee nonetheless. PIRGIM supporters argue that the group represents all the students, through its public interest activities and that it is therefore entitled to University help in obtaining funds. PIRGIM certainly has worked on behalf of numerous admirable causes. They've contributed essential support to legislation which has benefited all University students and the state of Michigan as a whole. But PIRGIM has also taken a number of political stan- ces as part of its "public interest" work. While we support PIRGIM's position on many of these issues, it is far from certain that most University students do. It is blatantly unfair to bill all students $2 to support such political activities. PIRGIM says the new system will be "more effective and efficient" than the current system, and they're right. It will be an effective and efficient 0 ------_.._..._.1 i LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Why to vote against GEO s contract'. To the Daily: The Sept. 30 GEO membership meeting resoundingly rejected the proposed agreement with the University. This fact caused no "uneasiness" for the. GEO mem- bership, which is interested in a decent contract. It did, however, cause a great deal of uneasiness for 1) the University ad- ministration, and 2) the minority of contract supporters (many of whom were themselves bargaining team members). The University was uneasy because they wish to extract the greatest amount of labor from the teaching assistants and staff assistants possible. The bargaining team was uneasy because they had the unenviable job of trying to sell a worthless contract to the membership. It is unfortunate that the GEO contract will be ratified in a mail vote. Mail votes were designed by the trade union bureaucracy to atomize union members and to stifle useful union debate on the contract before the membership. Here are some points concerning the bargaining process which my fellow GEO members should take members, only six were present during the bargaining process, and no union meetings were called while the contract was being negotiated. The bargaining team did not actively seek mem- bership input on the negotiations- including those negotiations on issues in which the team had no direct interest (such as affir- mative action: the team was all white). This process was in blatant disregard to the bargaining guidelines which the membership discussed and voted on last Mar- ch. Contrary to the impression given in Daily articles, the proposed contract is a three-year agreement with no guaranteed wage increases for the second or third years. Since the University hasn't yet announced the average wage increase for the faculty for this year, we don't even know what our current raise is. If the wage increase turns out to be about 6 percent, it will be offset immediately by the 15 percent in- crease in tuition for most TAs. This does not even account for in- flation (about 8 percent), so once the average faculty pay increase will be significant next year. GEO would have done better to tie its wage increases to the rest of organized campus labor; AF- SCME received a 7 percent in- crease last year. Further, this situation is made even worse by the failure of the bargaining team to obtain guarantees on class sizei. " Kaboolian argues that rejec- tion of the contract will lead the University to take a "hard line" on negotiations. But it is clear that the University already has taken a hard line in the negotiations. The bargaining team gave up all of GEO's priority demands at the table. The affirmative action plan was ceded to the University without even the opportunity for non-white GSAs to fight for it! The declining enrollment of black students (the number of black GSAs is down by half since 1976) and the 12-year take-away of the Black Action Movement agreement is evidence of the University's "commitment" to affirmative action. 9 Kaboolian has played a par- can call for such a decertification election. The University does not wish to take on GEO in such an open fashion. It lost the last open con- frontation in 1976, when GEO struck for recognition by the University. Instead, the University; strategy since 1976 has been to handcuff GEO (as it did in the court case). The University, would like nothing better than for GEO to ratify this agreement, since it would cripple the union for another three years. The tentative contract agreement makes one wonder who the bargaining team is working for, although I do not; place all the blame for this: situation on the bargaining team.' The present agreement is the, result of the ov'erall weakness of; GEO, although the inexperience, ineptness, and spinelessness of some bargaining team members contributed. GEO must vote down this con- tract. New negotiations will- require a new bargaining team, under well-outlined membership control. Negotiations will give