Women S Issues

In Iran, Azar Nafisi, a professor of English, writes about the strong and clever women in Persian classical literature and the pallid female characters in contemporary Iranian fiction.In Bangladesh, Yasmeen Murshed, chairwoman of an Asia-Pacific network for women in politics, teaches women how to run for office and write legislation enhancing their rights.In Malaysia, Norani Othman, an anthropologist, leads a movement to reinterpret Islamic law and strip it of centuries of accretions that discriminate against women.

During her confirmation hearings to be secretary of state, Hillary Clinton signaled a new direction for U.S. foreign policy, saying: "If half of the world's population remains vulnerable to economic, political, legal and social marginalization, our hope of advancing democracy and prosperity will remain in serious jeopardy." This month, the administration backed up those words with the nomination of Melanne Verveer, co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnership, as global women's issues chief, an ambassador-level position.

Feminist leaders wrapped up their three-day conference in Baltimore yesterday vowing to push for action on a range of political issues and to draw America's poorest, most disenfranchised women into the movement. Invoking the school shooting near Flint, Mich., in February, Gloria Steinem said that women leaders must reach out to, rather than demonize, women like the mother of the 6-year-old boy who took a gun to school and is accused of shooting to death a girl in his first-grade classroom.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Divisions in the Roman Catholic Church over its centuries-old ban on women priests grew deeper yesterday during a nationwide meeting of bishops at the University of Notre Dame.Two-thirds of U.S. Catholics want women ordained, says a new Gallup Poll released yesterday by a coalition of seven Catholic protest groups. The coalition held its own conference at Notre Dame, called "Outside the Walls."Meanwhile, the 200 bishops hotly debated a controversial 81-page draft of a pastoral letter on women's issues.

They may still hold the purse strings -- but millions of women still don't know what's inside the family purse."You'd be surprised how many of my clients, no matter how sophisticated they are, discover the family's real financial picture only when they're going through a divorce," says Sharon Rich, a certified financial planner who heads Womany, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company specializing in women's issues.Ms. Rich and other financial advisers believe it is crucial for married women to be aware of every aspect of their family finances -- and to have some money of their own even if they are not working outside the home.

Iranian writer Azar Nafisi believes in using the power of imagination to change women's lives. Her best-selling book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, tells the story of a clandestine book group Nafisi held at her own home in defiance of government book bans. The literature she shared with her seven female students - works by Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald - offered temporary escape and perspective on the totalitarian regime in which they were living. Inside their teacher's home, the young women shed their veils and gained a new way of perceiving themselves as well as the fundamentalism oppressing them.

Carolyn Dreyer is somewhat skeptical of promises to improve the treatment of women and the discipline of troublemakers at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.Her family spent months this year waiting for the academy to do something about the sexual harassment of her stepdaughter, Gwen Dreyer. The wait turned out to be in vain.Midshipman Gwen Dreyer, 19, resigned in May, saying the academy had failed to adequately punish the male midshipmen who handcuffed her to a urinal, taunted her and photographed her in December 1989.

Carroll County's delegation to the General Assembly got an earful last Saturday when it held a hearing on the nine county bills to be submitted this legislative session. Most of the discussion focused on a proposal to create a county commission for women's issues. After sitting through two hours of debate, however, the delegation may have been left with a mistaken impression of this bill because a number of speakers digressed from the real issues involved with creating such a panel and focused instead on irrelevancies.

The women's caucus of the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly last night to endorse the candidacy of a veteran female lawmaker for state treasurer.Del. Pauline H. Menes, who has represented Prince George's County for 29 years, received 20 votes while Del. Richard N. Dixon of Carroll County won seven.Mr. Dixon, a conservative Democrat, is regarded as the front-runner because he enjoys the backing of House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. of Cumberland.Mrs. Menes is a liberal-to-moderate Democrat with a strong history of supporting women's rights.

Boston.--A Week before the election, one of the funnier and mouthier young women in my family sent me a copy of a Toys R Us ad. There, in living color, was the candidate of toymakers' dreams: ''Barbie for President.''This doll of a candidate was dressed for her Inaugural Prom in star-spangled tulle. Though she was born in the 1950s, Barbie still didn't look old enough to pass the constitutional age test. Furthermore, she wasn't running for president, she was posing for president.The letter that came with this ad asked wryly if this was the change that my generation of women had labored so long and mightily to produce for the next.