Henrietta Hay's Column

A woman president? Perish the thought. According to a company spokeswoman, that goes against Wal-Mart's family values.

I sold my Wal-Mart stock today. My miniscule holding will not bring down the New York Stock Exchange, nor force Wal-Mart into bankruptcy, but a woman's gotta have principles. After all, I've been boycotting Coor's beer for 30 years, not that they have ever noticed.

A Florida crone (female, 70 years old, activist) recently bought the rights to Margaret, the ambitious little girl in the comic strip Dennis the Menace, and put Margaret's smiling picture on a T-shirt with the words, "Someday a woman will be president." She sold a batch of them to her local Wal-Mart store back in July. A customer complained that they were too political, and the store manager jerked them. In the ensuing furor, a buyer for women's clothes in Wal-Mart's national office (a female, yet) poured gasoline on the fire of public protest when she said that the shirt would not be sold nationwide because, "it goes against Wal-Mart's family values."

Eventually the vice-president of corporate affairs stepped in to earn his salary as a spin-doctor. It was all a mistake, says he. "This is not a women's rights issue. It's not a family values issue. It's simply a mistake." It certainly was, but the mistake is denying that it is women's rights issue.

When this story hit the news I was angry, but not surprised. I've been through 80 years of it. When I was young the phrase was, "Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant." Now the phrase is "family values." Interpretation: "Women Need to Know their Place."

At the recent U. N. Conference in Women on Beijing, delegates from around the world agreed that, "the social significance of motherhood...should be acknowledged." At the same time, they adopted almost without controversy a strong Plan of Action Chapter encouraging women to be included at all levels of decision-making.

Delegates from 181 countries agreed that there is nothing contradictory in a woman being a vital family member and at the same time a top political leader.

Seems simple to me. But here in America, to quote Diane Carman, "According to the family values propaganda... Hillary Clinton, a life-long advocate for children, and Pat Schroeder, who worked tirelessly for passage of family leave legislation are enemies of family values. While Arnold Schwarzenegger is considered pro-family."

They still don't get it. Most of the women I know can turn their heads and move their fingers at the same time. And most of the women I know hold down jobs of varying levels of responsibility, and are good mothers at the same time. Another phrase from the Beijing conference states, "Maternity, motherhood, parenting and the role of women in procreation must not be the basis for discrimination nor restrict the full participation of women in society.

Motherhood and politics are not mutually exclusive. Granted, takes a lot of balancing, but Pat Schroeder, who tends to say it like it is, explains. She went to Washington with the constitution under one arm and a diaper bag under the other. When asked how she could combine children and politics she replied, "I have a brain and a uterus and I use them both."

Patty Murray was elected to the Senate from Washington as "the mother in tennis shoes." Utah Representative Enid Waldholtz produced her first child August 31 and was discussing Medicare on television three weeks later. I don't have the exact numbers, but I suspect that nearly all the women in Congress are mothers. After all, raising kids is pretty good training for politics. And it's not a new phenomenon. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the mother of feminism in America, had six children. For my conservative friends, Phyllis Schlafly, who is up to her armpits in politics, has, I believe, four children.

Dottie Lamm predicts that a woman will win the presidency within the next 20 years, and that she will be a mother, and probably a grandmother.

I hope the Wal-Mart buyer didn't get fired, but I hope she learned a lesson. It's not smart to wave the family values flag in front of a bunch of angry feminists. The company promises to have the T-shirts available in Colorado "soon." In any case, I'm with Margaret -- Someday a woman will be president.