“It’s my prediction that women will take over,” Abzug announced Sunday of last week in San Francisco at the State of the World Forum.
Abzug, a former U.S. congresswoman now in her mid-70s, joined five other internationally active women on a panel. Before an audience of 600 to 800 at the Masonic Auditorium, panelists discussed their gender’s leadership roles in the aftermath of the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women.
Despite declining health — Abzug used a wheelchair and occasionally a cane throughout the forum — the Jewish American activist spoke forcefully about women’s ability to transform politics.
“Women don’t wish to be mainstreamed into a polluted stream…Women want to change the stream,” said Abzug, who wore one of her trademark hats — this one in royal purple.
The five other panelists, who included author Betty Friedan and primatologist Jane Goodall, offered various analyses of women’s influence in the international arena.
“Women…share one thing. They have very little say in the public decisions that affect their lives,” said Mahnaz Afkhami, executive director of both the Sisterhood is Global Institute and the Foundation for Iranian Studies.
Worldwide, she said, women hold less than 11 percent of national legislative seats and about 6 percent of top-level government administrative jobs. Highlighting the discrimination that women continue to suffer, Afkhami pointed to the current Muslim fundamentalist takeover of Afghanistan.
She condemned the Taleban forces for announcing that half the population — girls and women — can no longer attend school or work outside the home.
She also chastised the global response.
“The international community remains almost silent,” she said.
If any government announced it would exclude all blacks, Jews or Christians from these same activities, she asked, “what would then be the reaction of the world?”
Focusing on U.S. politics, Friedan said she hopes the country is witnessing the last clashes between “machismo” and a new, more nurturing American political culture.
“It would be a mistake to call [this culture] feminine. It is a fully human political culture,” said Friedan, a Jewish American whose 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique” catalyzed the modern women’s movement.
“Women’s values are the values of human life.”
Goodall, who is world renowned for her work with chimpanzees in Tanzania, offered women one note of caution.
After studying chimps for decades, Goodall has observed the effect of poor or neglectful mothering on these apes, which have 98 percent of their DNA in common with humans.
As increasing numbers of women work outside the home, Goodall said, society must make better provisions to care for the young.
Overall, she said, the staffs of child-care centers are overworked, undertrained and constantly changing. This doesn’t allow youngsters to form trusting, long-term relationships with adults.
“The question is: What is this doing to our children? Is it tied to juvenile delinquency?” Goodall asked.
Several panelists apparently feared that Goodall was suggesting that women return to the home en masse.
Society must create more flexible working hours, better maternity leave programs and improved day-care facilities, Abzug said.
“Fathers have to participate as well as mothers,” she added.
Goodall said she wasn’t proposing that women stop working outside the home, but that both men and women should discuss the issue of child-rearing.
“We have to share the responsibility,” she said.