GEM: (4) You've always worked to empower the powerless. Is your interest in the environment a new direction or another part of the original?

Ms. Abzug: The environment is key. I was very involved in the environment when I was a member of the United States Congress. I was interested in alternate forms of energy. I was opposed to nuclear radiation and nuclear energy which was dangerous and the toxicity which came from many different things. When I read about the Earth Summit of 1992, I was shocked to see that there were only a couple of references to women because women are the managers of environment and development. Women grow most of the food in the world. Women are the people who alert their families and their communities to any invasion of the clean atmosphere. Women have been fighting for clean water and soil for many, many years, and they've developed an enormous activism. They're probably the most significant activists for democratic change all over the world. The environment includes many things. It includes not only air, soil, and water, it includes human rights and economic rights, and peace, and habitat or housing, and justice--all of those things are part of an environment. Environment encompasses it all. It is woman's place. And we believe that the continuance of the earth and the maintenance of its health is fundamental to life itself. So environment becomes a very key question.

You see, women are no longer interested just in what we call "women's issues." We've been mainstreamed. We know all about that. We believe every issue affects women--not just child care, which is a very important issue for women and men, by the way--not just the right to reproductive and sexual health and their own choice--but every issue. As I've been saying throughout this interview, we feel we have a different vision about all of the issues that are on the agenda of human activity. That's something that people have not understood, and because we were not allowed to really develop policy with respect to most issues, we're not wedded to the false policies of the past, the policies that have failed. We can look at issues and say, "Well, this doesn't suit us or our families." We don't have to accept it. We can change it. So every issue, which essentially has been man-built, is subject to review by men and women and especially women who feel that it doesn't adequately reflect what's happening in the world.

Women's Environment and Development Organization is very engaged in women's health--breast cancer, for instance. Breast cancer is every woman's nightmare and one 1 of 8 women's reality. One out of 8 women is this country gets breast cancer. It used to be 1 out 20. When we went to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and began to deal with women all over the world, we discovered that, in the countries where there had been increased industrialization and the introduction of pesticides and other pollutants, the rate of breast cancer increased. We also discovered that if Japanese women, who have a fairly low rate of breast cancer, come to the U. S., their rate increases. If U.S. women go to Japan to live, their rate decreases because obviously there's much environmental impact that's making the difference.

We're engaged in a big program on the environmental links to the causes of cancer and the prevention of cancer, not only in women but in men and children. There's more and more scientific evidence which shows that being exposed to certain chemical that mimic estrogen, you have the creation of all kinds of distortions so that there are lower sperm counts, shrinking penises in alligators-- A recent, important book written by Theo Colburn and others shows that around the Great Lakes, where there's tremendous pollution, frogs are totally mutated. More importantly, the distortion is conveyed through the mother's womb to the child. So the children are born with developmental disabilities. So it's a major problem, one that the Women's Environment and Development Organization is engaged in. We're having one of the first world conferences on environment in Canada with the Canadian Kingston Breast Cancer Group. It's July 13-17 in Kingston. We're looking for money and support. There will be lay people, governments, scientists--everybody.

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