Bread and circuses.

Six hundred Republican women convened at the Capital Hilton last month to meet with the new congressional leadership. They told Newt and his lieutenants what they wanted: tax cuts and a balanced budget, the Education Department eliminated, English as the official language, and welfare programs turned over to the states. In their upscale Ellen Tracy duds, these professional women complained that affirmative action in the workplace means that "hard work is no longer rewarded"; they demanded tort reform to prevent sexual-harassment lawsuits from putting them out of business. A picture of a closed sawmill -- one more victim of federal regulation -- met with sympathetic groans. Gloria Steinem urged these women out of the home, and now Congressman Bill Paxon, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, is urging them into the House. Congress will be more conservative if they accept.

The Women Leaders Summit brought participants from across the country under the sponsorship not of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum or of any other con- servative group but of a mainstream GOP organization: the Republican Network to Elect Women. Indeed, a member of the Eagle Forum sheepishly admitted that she was in attendance "to keep an eye on them." With the abortion issue off the agenda, however, this meeting was the latest confirmation of what internal GOP polls indicate about Republican women: they're conservative. In September, Phil Gramm decisively won a straw poll of a thousand women attending the National Federation of Republican Women's convention in New Mexico with -- at 35 per cent -- double the votes of Lamar Alexander. (Bob Dole finished third.)

They're atypical, but not excessively so, 39 per cent of all American women consider themselves conservative, but 60 per cent of Republican women adopt the label. More concerned than women in general with moral issues and the budget deficit, they are less concerned with what GOP analysts call the "Hil- lary cluster" of issues -- health care and the environment.

Why? Party identification is significantly associated with births, marriages, and divorces. Republican women are more likely to be married than Democratic women (who are twice as likely to be divorced). Democrats enjoy a slight advantage in party identification among women below the age of 54. But with meno-pause come more conservative views. Older women are significantly more Republican -- and even when they are not Republican, they are still more con- servative. While only 6 per cent of Republican women identify themselves as "liberal," a full 24 per cent of Democratic women call themselves "conserva- tive." And though pro-life GOP women outnumber pro-choicers by just 3 points, 35 per cent of Democratic women identify themselves as pro-life.

These facts significantly undermine the simplistic notion of a gender gap that is somehow causing damage to the GOP. Indeed, exit polls indicate that last November Democrats faced a male gender gap of 26 points (with 63 per cent of white men voting Republican). The female gap is much smaller, with the Republican women's vote consistent, at roughly 46 per cent over the last fif- teen years. But this overall figure masks growing support for Republicans on the part of white women. In 1994, 53 per cent of white women voted Republican, but 95 per cent of black women voted Democratic.

All this is enough to send Gloria and Betty back to the drawing board. The feminists they suckled are largely employed in the public sector as social workers, rape counselors, and university professors. But other women, no longer confined to being nurses or teachers, have entered business. The only feminist who can intelligently address what concerns them is the business man- ager of Ms. magazine. So the women at the Leaders Summit rejected the idea of adopting a "women's agenda" and were utterly dismissive when asked if they wanted to discuss the "glass ceiling." Half of the women were self-employed. Republican pollster Christine Mathews points out that women start their own small businesses at twice the rate of men.

Business people are notoriously reluctant to run for public office. But there was a 67 per cent increase in Republican women elected at the federal level last year, and the Republican women's caucus in the House has moved sig- nificantly to the right as six of the newcomers reflect the growing con- servatism of their sisters outside. Their activism is also on the rise. Between 1992 and 1994, there was a 37 per cent increase in the number of Republican women who filed for office, and a 26 per cent increase in the num- ber of women who won primaries. In the same period, fewer Democratic women filed and 23 per cent fewer of them ultimately won. According to Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, president of The Polling Co., "As more women become involved, a growing number identify themselves as conservative -- often the first step toward joining the Republicans."

So conservatives should suspend their skepticism about the benefit of women candidates. A female candidate is more likely to share the views of Washington state freshman Linda Smith, a businesswoman, than of Christine Todd Whitman, a throwback to the noblesse oblige tradition of Republican womanhood. And GOP women have a chromosomal advantage at the ballot box, especially among independent voters, who prefer them to male candidates by a factor of 15 points as fiscal conservatives in touch with middle-class concerns. This can pay dividends. Last summer, Washington state's Jennifer Dunn argued for con- servative welfare reform far more effectively than any man could have done.

Ironically, feminists in bipartisan drag have launched the Women's Vote '96 coalition to encourage more women to enter politics, on the tired assumption that Democrats would benefit from a mobilized distaff vote. Think again.