NOW’s New Gal
Will Patricia Ireland’s departure mean a new look for the National Organization for Women?

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor
July 2, 2001 9:05 a.m.

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from "NOW — So Very Then" in the Winter 2001 issue of The Women's Quarterly, published by the Independent Women's Forum.

atricia Ireland will step down as president of the National Organization for women in August having held the position since 1992, when NOW celebrated its 25th anniversary. This weekend in Philadelphia, at NOW's annual convention, Kim Gandy, a NOW veteran, was elected to succeed Ireland.

Gandy's worldview doesn't promise too much of a change from the NOW recent past. In outlining her goals to the Associated Press on Sunday, Gandy said she plans to prevent ''right-wing political extremists'' from receiving federal court appointments and "sending George Bush to Texas.''

NOW remains adamantly against welfare reform in any form. Patricia Ireland remarked four years ago, "Passage of any of the welfare dismantling proposals currently before Congress could mean a death sentence for tens of thousands of women and children who have survived domestic violence."

As NOW's executive vice president — a position she held for ten years — Gandy lobbied in particular against work requirements for women victims of domestic violence: "Work would be like making her stand on a trap door." NOW has long argued that cuts in federal public assistance lead to more violence against women. That's right, never let them free from the government.

One of Gandy's shining moments was the impeachment of Bill Clinton. On December 16, 1998, Gandy was among the band of 20 women who marched unannounced into the office of then-incoming Speaker of the House Bob Livingston. (Others included Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority, Betty Friedan, and Rep. Maxine Waters.) Their purpose: to demand that the witch hunt end.

"Every woman in this country needs to call her representative to stop this three-ring circus going in the House," Gandy implored. In a statement, Gandy changed the subject from a president who lied to a nation, obstructed justice, and very publicly humiliated his wife: "In fact, the conservative majority in Congress, with their relentless attacks on women's rights, is a far greater threat to women and our families."

NOW and Gandy, following their cheerleading during impeachment, were firmly in the Democratic camp last fall. Kim Gandy was among leaders who enthusiastically coached the Alpha Male Gore. After a two-hour session with the former vice president at the Old Executive Office Building last spring, Gandy met the press and said, "There is no question in the minds of all these huge women's organizations that a Bush presidency would be a disaster for women." The session, she said, was an opportunity for them to say to Gore, "Let us help you reach the women of this country."

And that they did.

"When it comes to the issues that affect women's lives," she said on CNN during the campaign, "Vice President Gore has it all over Governor Bush."

And like her candidate Al Gore, Kim Gandy was fond of scare tactics during her on-air time flacking for her man. On CNN she asked, "Why are elderly people eating dog food? Because our Social Security system doesn't take into account all the years of unpaid caregiving that they contributed to society."

On Geraldo Rivera's CNBC show, Gandy called Bush "a dangerous person to the women of this country." And, of course, one of those dangers is his admiration for…two Supreme Court justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Abortion remains NOW's primary litmus test of whether you can call yourself a feminist. Said Gandy, "To say you're a feminist and to say you're anti-choice is definitely a contradiction. They focus all their attention on this little bit of tissue in the womb, and ignore all the tissue surrounding it."

Gandy has been the legal voice for NOW, leading pr and legal battles to restrict the protests outside abortion clinics, encouraging sexual-harassment laws in schools, and arguing that single-sex education (for boys or girls) is illegal in public schools. Gandy has said, "We tried separate-but-equal a long time ago and it didn't work."

Kim Gandy is just about everything a feminist wants in a woman — right down to her children. Her kids, two beautiful girls — Elizabeth Cady Lornell and Katherine Eleanor Gandy — are living monuments to her ideology. Elizabeth was named after Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragette, and Katherine was named after Katherine Austin, a former NOW board member, Eleanor Smeal, former NOW president, and Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady. She also has a husband in a politically correct line of work — Christopher "Kip" Lornell, a part-time professor of Africana Studies at George Washington University, and an ethnomusicologist.

And, she's still excited about the ERA. Yes, in 1999 — not the seventies or even early eighties — Gandy told a reporter from the American Bar Association's Journal, "We need a guarantee of equality now more than ever."

A minor difference NOW would face in a Gandy administration is one of style: Gandy's openness about her family life. Ireland is famously vague on the details of her personal life. The Advocate, the gay and lesbian magazine, outed her in a cover story at the beginning of her term as NOW president, with the cover line, "America's Most Powerful Woman Comes Out." Her response? "What I have described is who is in my family, not my sexuality. There is great diversity in our families today; it's not Mom and Dad and Spot and Fluff anymore." (Ireland obviously had not been introduced to President Bush, who does have a dog named Spot.)

As for Gandy, despite her own marriage, she isn't a big fan of the institution of marriage. One of her most quoted remarks by conservative-types is from her debates on the "Fathers Count Act," aimed at funneling money to non-profits to encourage low-income men to marry their pregnant partners and learn parenting skills. Gandy said, "I think promoting marriage as a goal in and of itself is misguided." This wasn't the first and last time she dismissed the institution. Gandy is a leading foe of covenant marriages, which she says are "wrong" for giving "people the idea that somehow they don't really care about each other unless they're willing to give up a whole set of legal protections down the line."

In fact, in addressing the marriage movement and specifically a statement this summer affirming the general advantages of marriage signed by, among others, Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia — no right-wing conspirator, Gandy warned, "The marriage movement is giving women the message that a bad husband and father is better than none at all. Single moms are being demonized. NOW is committed to exposing and organizing against this deliberate return to the days of unchallenged male control."

So, will NOW broaden its appeal to more of the nation's women under President Gandy? If her record is any indication, the answer is a certain No.