The Old Boys’ Club that has traditionally ruled Washington is grudgingly making adjustments. With a woman tapped to be the chief law-enforcement officer, a First Lady charged with making policy and four new women senators, there is a new power grid. Rules are being rewritten to take into account the sensibilities of a generation of women coming to power. Behavior once excused as “boys being boys” is under scrutiny on Capitol Hill as the Senate ethics committee prepares to hear testimony from women charging GOP Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon with sexual misconduct. Problems that have languished for years as women’s issues are now on the front page. “Day care is no longer a male spectator sport,” says Harriett Woods, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus. Clinton’s search for an attorney general raised questions about the conflicts women face that society still hasn’t answered. But it also helped settle some others:
Women are still not wielding the big clubs at Burning Tree, the silk-stocking golf course that limits its membership to men. But the Alfalfa Club, an all-male bastion, swallowed hard and invited Justice O’Connor and the women members of Clinton’s cabinet to its annual gathering last month. It was the same weekend that Clinton held a retreat at Camp David. The irony was not lost on the new administration. These women were so busy wielding real power, they didn’t have time to be head-table symbols at a men’s club. O’Connor bowed out, too. It seems she didn’t want to be the only woman.
