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It is possible to evoke in people a genuine desire to transcend our more selfish interests and to respond to a larger vision that gives us a sense of purpose, direction, meaning and even community. Real political leadership provides that very thing; it offers to lead people where, in their best selves, they really want to go. —Jim Wallis, The Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change I Changing the face of today’s feminisms will not be easy. It will require the leadership of women from all walks of life. It is not entirely clear that these leaders will come from the ranks of today’s feminists. In the twenty-first century, feminist leadership will require women to be committed to finding common ground without resorting to shallow co-optation or false compromise. It will require women to combine personal transformation and public change. Feminist leadership will need to build strategic alliances based on mutual self-interest and ethical consensus rather than on political orthodoxy. Reconciling diverse interests has often been a goal of feminist rhetoric, but successfully integrating gender, class, and coalition politics as a practical matter continues, more often than not, to elude us. On the national level, feminist activists often use strategies that strain their credibility with the constituency they claim to represent. For instance, many black women felt that when Congress reauthorized the Hyde Amendment in 1993, women’s groups were too timid to point out that poor women’s reproductive choices were inappropriately limited by the total ban on taxpayer-supported abortions. Although supporting federal subsidies for abortion under any circumstance, including the life and health of a poor woman, would have been highly controversial, a reproductive-rights agenda that excludes them from access to the reproductive choices enjoyed by the wealthy and the middle class is reprehensible. Yet few mainstream feminists took this position. This example suggests how difficult it is to organize women across class differences and still develop an ethical and coherent political agenda. 7. Feminist Leadership for the New Century 81 From a clear-eyed organizing perspective, mainstream feminism still lacks the skill and the diverse base needed to frame issues that a broad range of women can support. For example, liberal feminist activists favor child-support enforcement but often fail to connect the economic plight of women who have divorced deadbeat dads to the need for increased income support for working women whose ex-husbands’ child-support payments are not enough to support their children . Millions of children live in poverty, but equity feminists often exclude issues such as job training, child care, welfare reform, adequate health care, affordable housing, equity in school financing, and juvenile justice from their equalpay -for-equal-work agenda. The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 demonstrates how little influence feminists have on poverty policy in America. A recent study reports that 71 percent of recent welfare recipients with earnings in 1998 earned wages below the poverty line. In 1999, more than 9 million poor children lived in a working family. In short, significant poverty continues to exist while $54 billion over six years is being cut from the former entitlement system. Feminists should vigorously support changes in the current law. For example, the workforce participation rates that states are required to maintain should be reduced to eliminate harsh sanctioning policies and practices that have the effect of rationing needed services. Also, barriers to employment should be assessed, and the law should allow extensions of benefit time limits to ensure that a woman has adequate skills to obtain employment before her welfare benefits are cut.1 Few women are demanding a feminist politics that vigorously addresses poor women’s concerns. White middle-class feminists have benefited from the feminist revolution, but they cannot sustain successful coalitions that include both working-class women and women with limited economic opportunities. Yet organizing women across class distinctions is critical to influencing state policy initiatives that are developing in the wake of the federal government’s movement away from broad social-welfare policy. State initiatives involve a host of human needs, including taxes, jobs, education , social welfare, housing, and economic development. These issues will not be affected by isolated racial groups or by women who are perceived as wellmeaning but politically marginalized. Organized constituencies will need to come together to affect relatively conservative state and local legislatures, which listen most frequently to politically active and powerful segments of the...

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