Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    Wow! what an achievement..... Well done to them.
    
    I wish feminists in the UK were as 'powerful'/taken more seriously.
    I fear the 'right' in the UK is still powerful enough to win the next 
    general election (.... am I being defeatist?!)
    
    News like this is always a welcome boost for the Women's Movement.
    
    Janice
    

re: .2 

One possible response is, there are still a lot of people who believe
that anything done once is worth doing again, and who are very aware of
*any* person's gender when making decisions along those lines. You
obviously don't fall into that category. You are convinced that most
other people in power (all levels of management in all businesses, all
politicians, all officers in the military, etc.) are like you, and are
equally uninfluenced by considerations of gender, and by what "others"
are doing? 
	Mez

The Icelandic election isn't the first where block voting by women
influenced the results.  Several (5-10) years ago, the woman's movement
in Norway pulled off a coup by using one facit of the Norwegein
parlementary system to significantly increase the number of women
holding elected office.  There was no immediate effect of this --
but the current Norwegien prime-minister is a woman.

Martin.

    re .5
    Does your argument mean that no one should ever rally around
    special interests for the purposes of voting or organizing
    a political party?

    I hesitate to vote for anyone who considers advocation of a particular
    special interest his or her main qualification for office.
    
    When I was in high school, we (men and women together; sexism has
    nothing to do with this story) elected a strong environmentalist to the
    state legislature because he was opposed to a large ski area then being
    proposed.  The ski area's runs would be directly adjacent to one of
    Montana's nicer wilderness areas and there was a great deal of concern
    that this wilderness be adequately protected. 
    
    This man did everything he campaigned for and everything we had a right
    to expect based on his qualifications.  Unfortunately the state economy
    fell apart that term (remember the '73 oil shortage?) and he didn't
    have the faintest comprehension of what could or should be done to help
    ordinary farmers, miners, and lumberjacks through this tough time. 

    This man's opponent was not an unreasonable person. He, too, would
    probably have protected the environment adequately. But he presented
    himself as a more tolerant candidate with a wider range of experience,
    lost the election, and would have been the wiser choice.
    
    So -- no, I wouldn't say it's never right to vote for special
    interests. Certainly such interests should be taken into account. But
    to make that interest, whether it's sexual advancement or gun control
    or the preservation of the butterflies in Malaysia, your only criterion
    for determining who you vote for is to tread on dangerous ground.
    
    --bonnie

	RE: .7  Well put.  

        You should vote for who you think will do the best job.  However,
        don't not vote for someone because the press has labeled them a
        feminist, and you're tired of people who try to get the vote
        because of special interest groups.  Listen to what they say the
        issues are.  The press does a lot of unfair labeling.  The biased
        reporting of the supreme court decision to uphold the hiring of a
        qualified woman instead of a qualified man is a case in point. 

	Why are some human rights issues declared "feminist"?

	...Karen

    Prepare for another opinion. Special interests seem to be all polictics
    is about in this decade. Look at the right-to-lifers, they vote
    for anyone who says no to abortion no matter what else they say.
    PACs supply most of the compaign money and secret deals with those
    who support the prez on Nicaragua seem everywhere. Seems to me that
    we are losing the well rounded canidates to those who have a hot
    issue. I remember seeing an article that stated Lincoln could not
    be elected today because he was too ugly. liesl

    I agree with Liesel - given the day of the electronic candidate
    - we cannot vote for a t.v. immage.  I think that it is perfectly
    valid to organize around a special interest - men have certainly
    been doing it since elections were invented. I see nothing wrong
    with feminism as a special interest group - just like ecology,
    or abortion, or racial issues, or slavery, or prohibition, or civil
    rights. An issue is often a good rallying point, and a way to get
    people with a different point of view into office. and if they
    prove a one issue candidate (as mentioned earlier) that is a risk
    we have to take - but again they would not be the first or even
    the 100th so elected.
    
    Bonnie J