WOMEN OF THE YEAR: Great Changes, New Chances, Tough Choices

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elected chief justice of a state supreme court.

> In education, Jill Ker Conway was named the first woman president of Smith, the nation's largest women's liberal arts college (2,468 students).

> In sports, Billie Jean King, who almost singlehanded has put women into the mainstream and helped greatly to raise the pay of women athletes, became a kind of business and sports conglomerate.

> In literature, Susan Brownmiller made a scholarly, disturbing contribution to the discussion of the sexes with her much-bruited book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.

> In labor, Addie Wyatt, women's affairs director of the 550,000 member Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, fought successfully to eliminate wage differentials between men and women workers.

> In the military, Kathleen Byerly, a Navy lieutenant commander who is one of the many fast-rising women executives in the armed forces, became a top aide to the fleet's Pacific training commands.

> In journalism, Carol Sutton, the first woman to be managing editor of a major U.S. newspaper, brightened the editorial content while she successfully ran the Louisville Courier-Journal, one of the nation's best dailies.

> In religion, Alison Cheek, first woman to celebrate Communion at a U.S. Episcopal church, was hired as a priest at Washington's Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation.

The backgrounds, achievements and views of these women are amply detailed. Scores of others might be added to the list—distinguished lawyers, economists, business executives, actresses, writers. For example, Economist Alice Rivlin, chief of the new Congressional Budget Office, has taken on the tough job of analyzing for Senators and Congressmen just how their legislation will probably affect national spending, budget deficits, prices and employment. Sarah Caldwell, the formidable director of the Opera Company of Boston, week after next will become the first woman to conduct at the New York Metropolitan Opera (TIME, Nov. 10). Journalist Charlotte Curtis wields powerful political influence as editor of the New York Times Op-Ed page. NBC-TV's Barbara Walters, co-host of the Today show, is one of the best interviewers in journalism. Joan Ganz Cooney, who launched Sesame Street in 1969, now presides over the Children's Television Workshop, is a member of the media-monitoring National News Council and a director of Xerox and the First Pennsylvania Corp.

What was exceptional in the year of American women was the status of the everyday, usually anonymous woman, who moved into the mainstream of jobs, ideas and policy making. The mood was summed up by Lawyer Jill Ruckelshaus, the Administration's leading feminist, who is head of the U.S. International Women's Year Commission. Said she: "The women's movement is burning."

Despite the scope and maturity of the movement—and in some ways, because of it—women suffered a number of setbacks in 1975. The organized women's movement fell into factional disputes. The National Organization for Women designated Oct. 29 as "Alice Doesn't" Day and called on women to stage a no-work strike; it was a spectacular failure. Betty Friedan, a godmother of feminism, joined twelve other current and former NOW members in a splinter group called Womensurge, arguing