Poll Shows Support for Feminism

Americans strongly support passage of an equal rights amendment (ERA) for women and share most feminist ideals, but look on many feminist leaders with disfavor, a national poll conducted by two Harvard professors shows.

The poll, set up by Sidney Verba '53, professor of Government, and Garry R. Orren, assistant professor of Government, in conjunction with The Washington Post, was designed to test the attitudes of the general American public and specifically those of leaders of eight distinct areas.

The areas were business, politics, agriculture, women, blacks, youth, media and art and science.

Verba said yesterday the joint project was the result of the interest he and Orren have in leadership and general attitudes in America, and the Post's desire to run a series of articles on national attitudes for the Bicentennial.

One of the poll's more suprising findings is the extent to which feminist ideas have spread, Orren said yesterday. The poll shows that America's youth and feminist leaders most strongly support feminist goals but that in general slightly more men than women support careers for women.

In general, Americans support the ERA by a ratio of almost four to one.

The poll results also show a fair amount of agreement among America's leadership--tested at both the national and regional level--on general principles, such as equality of opportunity and the basic fairness of the present income distribution in the United States.

But the poll also indicates that American leaders, particularly in politics, look to a wide variety of solutions to problems they see in their society.

Democratic activists are far to the left of most Democratic voters, while Republican party leaders are far to the right of their electorate, the poll shows. Orren yesterday attributed Carter's primary victories to his centrist stance, and his increasingly liberal position to an effort on Carter's part to firm up his Democratic support.

Similarly, Orren said, Ford has moved farther right since the primaries to strengthen his support in his party.

But Democrats and Republicans who responded to the survey agreed that the two-party system suited this country, unlike the leaders of women, blacks and youths, who said they would like to see new political parties emerge.

The surveyors chose seniors at ten widely-respected colleges as representative of youth in general.

The poll suggests that the issue of civil rights, prominent during the '60s, has slipped out of public view: the leaders of most groups ranked achieving equality for blacks low on a national priority list.

Of the leadership groups surveyed, only representatives of the news media said they felt their group held too much power in society. Most groups said they would like to see their views have more influence on decision-making.

The Washington Post collected much of the data for the pool, compiling answers from about 2470 respondants. The Post is publishing its conclusions in a series of five articles this week.

Orren said he and Verba plan to analyze the results in greater detail in a book, paying particular attention to views of equality and to the degree to which leaders represent the groups they are supposed to exemplify.

Orren said they would expand the groups of leaders surveyed to include labor leaders, a group they had tried without success to include in the Post poll.