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Show The Women's Room v' iv By Kate McCutchan This year, Congress has an all-time high number of women in . office: 19 . in the .House and 2 in the Senate. The five women to join the Congress as new incumbents are all Republicans and fiscal conservatives; only one has indentified herself as a believer in feminism, came the first woman to hold a major political office in Rhode Island. She is actively involved in alternative energy ener-gy groups and in the state Women's Political Caucus. She supports the . Equal Rights Amendment and federal fed-eral funding of child-care centers, stating, "The dollars dol-lars that come from year-end spending sprees by one agency alone could fund day-care nationwide." Schneider is also trying to get local businesses interested inter-ested in developing more services for battered women and displaced homemakers. She seems directly opposed to President Reagan's position posi-tion of increasing our defense de-fense budget at the expense of current levels of social funding. Bobbi Fiedler gained national na-tional attention in 1976 when she was a leader in the suburban Los Angeles anti-busing anti-busing movement. She was elected to the LA School Board in 1977 and continued her fight against busing streamling the budget, introducing intro-ducing stricter security measures mea-sures on campuses, and voting for reinstatement of corporal punishment. Fiedler's Fied-ler's congressional campaign was backed by the same ultraconservatives who backed Reagan, but she is quick to point out that she has been vocally opposed to the President's position on ERA. She does favor federal funding of abortions for poor women in the extreme cases of rape and incest, but would leave the funding debate to the sates. New Jersey's Maye Rou-kema Rou-kema became the Seventh District's first woman representative, repre-sentative, beating a male advocate of women's issues in the congressional race as a "supporter of a women's agenda." She believes Medicaid should supply funding for abortions. "The government should not decide de-cide on the basis of a woman's ability to pay. Questions of different kinds of abortions create artificial lines." Roukema is supporting support-ing reform of Social Security laws to correct inequities against women, but she probably will not support federal funding of child-care centers, battered women's shelters or training for displaced homemakers: "Many women's issues are better served at the local level." Paula Hawkins is Florida's new senator. She is a devout Mormon who calls the ERA "vague and ambiguous", opposes abortion, and believes be-lieves the family to be "the basic unit of government." She was chairperson of the state's Public Service Commission Com-mission and spoke out frequently against utility rate increases and corruption in government. She supports a balanced federal budget, tax cuts and more defense spending. Hawkins has the dubious distinction of being picketed by the state NOW. She calls them "militant women who want you to agree on their single issue." Lynn Martin was a state legislator for 3 years before becoming Illinois' Congressional Congres-sional representative. She supports the ERA and state funding of abortions. She leans toward "affirmative action as long as there are people doing the hiring who believe that women can never do the best." While crediting feminists with instituting in-stituting important changes, Martin states: "Now women's wo-men's issues are a part of the overall legislature philosophy philoso-phy I embody - and a relatively small part." The preceding information was exerpted from an article in February Ms. Magazine, by Ellen Sweet. |