
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 24, 1995                   TAG: 9508240025
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAKING THEIR VOTES COUNT

IT LOOKS like an eight-ton marble sculpture honoring three heroines of women's suffrage won't be moved from its basement crypt to the Capitol Rotunda by Saturday (if ever) to mark the 75th anniversary of American women's enfranchisement as voters.

This is a disappointment to those who've tried to rescue the statue from its long exile in the rummage room of congressional discards. Says Caroline Sparks, who led the Move the Statue Campaign, ``It's not nice to put your forefathers in the living room and your foremothers in the basement.''

Having not seen the icon, we can't deny with certainty that Congress rejected it in 1921 because of its aesthetic inferiority, its girth or its inscription's ``pagan language'' glorifying the feminist movement. (All three excuses were offered at the time.)

Suffice to say, though, its would-be rescuers are right about this: There's little evidence in the Capitol that women have had much to do with the nation's history. Basically, the statues and busts that the public sees all honor the contributions of men.

We don't mean to belittle the contributions of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. et al. - or to belittle the contributions of women who have contributed to American history in spheres other than politics. Still, it is notable that the few women who are depicted in paintings in the nation's Capitol are simply looking on as men do important things.

What's more troubling is that women are still mostly looking on in the Capitol. Though they hold seats in both the House and Senate, women's numbers are still in the basement - proportionately lower than in the legislative bodies of almost every other industrialized nation.

After 75 years of voting rights (and the 72 years before that it took them to win the right to vote) few women are counted among the movers and shakers in Washington. Or, for that matter, in most state capitals.

The upcoming anniversary is a good time to ponder not only how short a time it's been since women gained the vote, and how far they've come since - but also how far we as a society have yet to go. Things are changing, fast or slow depending on your perspective, but our system continues to suffer appreciably because there aren't more public officeholders of the female persuasion.

According to conventional wisdom, the current two-party political system has become so loathsome and decrepit that it may be abandoned. Many males - including such publicly prominent ones as Ross Perot and Sen. Bill Bradley - are abandoning it.

Well, what if more women were to run for office and get elected with a view toward transforming the system into something more workable and accountable to the public interest?

Such women might even resurrect some of the suffragettes' old ideas, once considered dotty and now still inadequately appreciated, about the importance of civic participation and the role of elections in a democracy.

With more women going to work in the Capitol, there would be less worry about the absence of women's icons and move-the-statue resolutions that get bogged down in a male-dominated Congress. Women could help do the heavy lifting themselves.

by CNB