NOW president expects more subdued visit

Friday, June 18, 1999 | 11:24 a.m.

The last time National Organization for Women members brought their president Patricia Ireland to town, they picketed a car dealership and hosted a panel about prostitution and other sexually oriented business ventures.

Ireland's visit to Las Vegas Saturday promises to be a little more subdued than the one three years ago when Las Vegas was the site of NOW's national conference.

Ireland is visiting the Southern Nevada NOW chapter's regular meeting hoping to persuade a lot of Nevada members to attend this year's conference over the July 4 weekend in Los Angeles.

"We're going to be focusing a lot on images of women in the media and entertainment. And there's a particular type of entertainment in Las Vegas that I think will add to the discussion," Ireland said during a telephone interview Thursday.

That would be Nevada's legalized prostitution, which is a sticky wicket for NOW.

On the one hand, women who work in sex businesses say what they do with their bodies is up to them -- the same argument feminists have used to defend reproductive rights for years.

Some people, however, say such work exploits women and shows a need for better opportunities for women to earn good pay.

NOW's policy calls for de-criminalization of prostitution, but that is its only stance on the topic, said Amy Meedel, Nevada NOW president and director of the group's Southwest region.

"People from a conservative Midwestern town who came to Las Vegas (in 1996) were in culture shock. But then we have NOW members who are sex workers," Meedel said.

The topic likely will come up again in Los Angeles, especially if Nevada sends a strong contingent, Ireland said.

Members who attend the Los Angeles event will talk about how media such as movies and the Internet can be used to the benefit or detriment of women. They also will hone a mission statement to carry the organization into the 21st century.

Despite recent rumblings to the contrary, feminism is not dead, and women still need it, Ireland said. Women's progress is merely "a foot in the door."

"Progress is not equality," Ireland said. "It's not irreversible and I think there's been a significant backlash, especially from the men who were uncomfortable with working with women in that context.

"A lot of the work we have to do now is work-related, with sex and race harassment."

She recalled how women had no trouble landing well-paying assembly line jobs at the Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Ill., but then they became victims of widespread harassment and physical and verbal abuse at the hands of male coworkers.

Management turned a blind eye to women's complaints until a 1996 lawsuit brought the abuses into the public view. It was because of this situation that Ireland led a group of about 50 people who picketed a Las Vegas Mitsubishi dealership during NOW's convention here.

Such incidents show women still need the women's movement, she said.

"Those (Mitsubishi) women were very glad to have a feminist movement to help them," Ireland said. "Pay is not the same, and opportunity is not the same. And how do we raise and take care of our children? Men are helping out, but they are helping or babysitting when the wife has something else to do."

In the 150 years since the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Fall, N.Y., feminists have finally tackled the easy part, Ireland said. The 21st century brings a tougher challenge.

"It's easier to deal with politics and public policy than it is to discuss what you do with your private life," she said. She hopes NOW can continue drawing people into the fold in the 21st century with a mission statement that emphasizes the organization's role as a clearinghouse for all human rights, not just women's rights.

And she hopes NOW's members will continue pushing the envelope and questioning the status quo.

"I don't want us to be comfortably settled in. Our mission calls for challenging some notions and pushing past the comfort level," Ireland said. "I want us to be willing to take on issues other people are afraid to take on, and take on institutions that need to be challenged.

"I don't want us to lose that edge."