A woman's place

the long version

In what has come to be called the Year of The Woman, the largest class of freshmen women in history was elected to Congress, an event spurred in part by the reaction to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. A Woman's Place... is the story of their first eight months in Congress. Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky - with the cooperation of the other freshmen women - chronicles her journey and that of her colleagues, from their swearing-in to her own dramatic budget vote. The Congresswomen reveal a great deal of common ground: a commitment to "women's issues," which they see as important to everyone; a different style of managing, legislating, communicating, and consensus-building, which they hope to impress on the status quo; the desire to put a new spin on the broad range of issues held to be "male issues," simply by being there and presenting the female perspective; and a shared feeling that although women representatives constitute only 11 percent of the House, in many respects they speak for 52 percent of the population.