TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110890/1108993.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11.7 KB | 235 lines

                                                                                PROFILES, Page 46

To Each Her Own


Combining talent and drive, 10 tough-minded women create
individual rules for success

BY WENDY COLE


    Elizabeth Watson: Police Chief

    Earlier this year the mayor of Houston admitted to having
some "trepidation" about appointing Elizabeth Watson as the
chief of police. "I was concerned about the support she would
get. I had a little experience along those lines myself," said
Kathryn Whitmire, who also happens to be the city's first female
mayor. But eight months after becoming the first U.S. woman to
head a big-city force, Watson, 41, has shown she can hack it.
She took over a department reeling from low morale caused by
widespread staff reductions and paltry salaries and quickly won
the force a 6% raise. Lauded as a hard worker who came up
through the ranks, Watson will never forget being handed a dress
pattern and told to sew her own uniform as a rookie cop 18 years
ago. She went on to serve with distinction in practically every
division from auto theft to the SWAT team, and insists that
macho behavior in the department never bothered her. "Look where
I am now. Heck, obviously I haven't been too put-upon," says
Watson, who's expecting her third child in December. Her planned
maternity leave: just six weeks.


    Lynn Hill: Rock Climber

    She has been called the First Lady of Rock, but Lynn Hill
wows the crowd with graceful moves instead of music. In fact,
her best licks are performed dangling from a 70-ft. sheer
limestone cliff. Hill, 29, is the world's best woman rock
climber. Her vertical inclination dates back to her California
childhood, when she displayed an early enthusiasm for climbing
walls, telephone poles and trees. Before long she graduated to
scaling cliffs in the Sierra Nevadas. "I think I'm a really
fortunate person, because what I'm doing for a career is also
my passion," says the 5-ft. 2-in., 100-lb. Hill. Her long-term
plans include finishing her book, The Art of Free Climbing,
making a climbing video and designing a line of fitness togs
that "bridge the gap between functional clothing for sports and
leisure wear." Meanwhile, she will continue seeking new ways to
defy gravity -- and sexual stereotypes.


    Mathilde Krim: AIDS Activist

    Ever since her stint as a gun smuggler for the Zionist
underground movement in Europe during World War II, Mathilde
Krim has not flinched at taking bold action. Over the past
decade the New York City-based virologist has concentrated on
fighting AIDS. Although her involvement began in the lab, where
she studied the effectiveness of the protein interferon in
treating an AIDS-related cancer, these days Krim, 64, works
mostly in the public arena as a fund raiser and lobbyist. Her
mission: to replace ignorance with knowledge and compassion. As
the wife of movie mogul Arthur Krim, she has also enlisted the
likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand. "I use my
contacts because it's my duty," says Krim, who so far has raised
$40 million for research. After all, she adds, the way wealthy
societies deal with AIDS "will measure to what extent they have
the right to call themselves civilized."


    Marge Schott: Baseball Owner

    Most successful people who want to give something back to
their community settle for contributing money to a museum or
joining the board of the town library. When Marge Schott decided
to fulfill her civic duty, she invested in the local baseball
team: the Cincinnati Reds. Schott, who had taken over her late
husband's GM dealership, bought the club in 1984 for an
estimated $11 million, and has become one of the game's highest
profile owners. "It's really more than a 24-hour-a-day job,"
says Schott, 62. Nonetheless, she has managed to turn around the
fortunes of the red-hot team, which lost $4 million the year
before she came aboard. Attendance has jumped 85% during her
tenure, to 2.4 million this season. An intrepid cost cutter, she
canceled Riverfront Stadium fireworks displays, and signs all
checks for the team herself. "Daddy always taught us it wasn't
right to waste money," says the chain-smoking Schott. "When I
see someone cheat for two bucks it makes me want to throw up."
She was devastated by the conviction of former Reds manager Pete
Rose for tax evasion, but it has not slowed her pace one whit.


    Queen Latifah: Rap Artist

    Rap music hasn't exactly been kind to women, portraying them
mostly as malleable sex objects or manipulative money grubbers.
But that hasn't stopped Queen Latifah, 20, from finding her
voice amid a crowded field of sexist, street-smart men. The
Newark-born singer-songwriter has been called the Aretha
Franklin of rap for her creative fusing of reggae, soul and
jazz. A professional rapper for five years, she sees herself as
a role model for young people, and she's as committed to raising
consciousness as she is to having fun. "I try to slip in a few
lines about something serious. But I'm not a preacher," says
Latifah, a.k.a. Dana Owens. As she chants in her hit song
Latifah's Law, "BMWs and gold rope chains don't impress me,
won't get you closer to the point you could undress me." The
name Latifah, she notes, is Arabic for delicate and sensitive.
As for calling herself Queen, "it has nothing to do with rank.
I believe all black people came from a long line of kings and
queens that they've never really known about." The title was
simply Latifah's way of paying tribute to them.


    Barbara Harris: Bishop

    There seem to be fresh winds blowing across the church.
Things thought to be impossible a short time ago are coming to
be," preached Barbara Harris in the fall of 1988. She was
referring to her own imminent consecration as the first woman
bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church. But
traditionalists weren't upset just about Harris' sex. She also
happened to be a black, non-college-educated divorcee with some
fairly radical beliefs. While still a laywoman, Harris led the
procession at the 1974 protest ritual in which her church's
first women priests were illicitly ordained. Continuing to rail
against the church for its racism, sexism and homophobia,
Harris, who used to work as the top public relations executive
at Sun Oil, had become a champion of the downtrodden and
disparaged. "I would bring a sensitivity to the needs of
different kinds of people, including minorities, women, the
incarcerated, the poor and other marginalized groups," said the
Philadelphia native shortly before her narrow victory in an
acrimonious election as assistant bishop. Since her
precedent-shattering achievement, however, the 60-year-old
Harris has managed to quiet even her harshest detractors.
Refusing to become an "international Anglican gadfly," she says
her priority is to carry out her Boston-area pastoral and
sacramental duties. Amen.


    Josie Natori: Fashion Tycoon

    Before Josie Natori married, her father told husband-to-be
Ken that there were "two things that you have to know in this
family. One, that my wife is the commander in chief and, two,
that my mother-in-law is the supreme commander in chief."
Natori, 43, must rank as at least a five-star general. Merrill
Lynch's first female investment banker, Natori rose to vice
president of the company before leaving in 1977 to create her
own firm. She started small, working in her New York City
apartment, designing and selling fine lingerie. In a pinch, she
even packed the orders herself. Today Natori Co. has splashy
headquarters in midtown Manhattan, a boutique in Paris and
sales of over $25 million annually. Surrounded by models showing
off her pricey fashions, Natori has lost none of her enthusiasm.
She is on many boards, including the Committee of 200, a group
of women entrepreneurs who head multimillion-dollar companies.
She keeps close ties to her native Philippines, and helped raise
relief funds after this summer's earthquake. "I play many
roles," she says. "I'm head of this business, a wife, a daughter
with family obligations, and mother of a 14 1/2-year-old son.
I have a lot of jobs, but each has been by my own choice." Four
years ago, as business was rapidly expanding, the president
talked a top Wall Street executive into leaving his post to
become her company's chairman. His name: Ken Natori.


    Jane Ira Bloom: Saxophonist

    What does America's space program have in common with a
soprano saxophone? Quite a lot, when the instrument is played
by Jane Ira Bloom, 35, a jazz virtuoso who was the first
musician commissioned to create a work for NASA's art program.
Witnessing a Discovery shuttle launch close up inspired her to
compose a four-part suite entitled Rediscovery, which premiered
at Cape Canaveral last fall. Long fascinated by the links
between music and motion, Bloom has also composed scores for the
famed Pilobolus Dance Theater and the repertory theater at
Yale, where she earned a master's in sax in 1977. She uses a
synthesizer, controlled by foot pedals, to amplify her ethereal
solos into swirls of sound that evoke the Doppler effect, the
drop in pitch that occurs when a train rushes by with its horn
blaring. Bloom has six times been cited in Down Beat's annual
critics' poll as a talent deserving wider recognition. As to why
she first took up the notoriously cranky instrument, she has a
winning answer: "It looked so shiny."


    Martha Clarke: Choreographer

    With three major highly touted theatrical productions to her
credit, Martha Clarke, 46, is indisputably at the top of her
profession. The problem is that no one, including the
Manhattan-based choreographer-director herself, can easily
describe what that profession is. "If I knew what I was doing,
I wouldn't do it," says the avant-garde artist, paraphrasing her
idol Samuel Beckett. Her productions are always an evocative
blend of dance, music, words and light, but to her latest piece,
Endangered Species, she brings something entirely new: live
animals, including Flora, a baby elephant, and Clarke's own
horse, Mr. Grey. She maintains that they're being used as
"sentient creatures" rather than beasts of burden or embarrassed
icons. Finishing the work, which focuses on mankind's domination
of nature, has given the former modern dancer little chance to
use the $285,000 MacArthur fellowship that she won in July. Says
Clarke: "When the call came, I was so busy I had my assistant
take a message." While getting the money was nice, in her
business the real reward doesn't come until opening night.


    Wilma Mankiller: Indian Chief

    Perhaps it was the name that gave them the willies, but male
voters seem to have got over their squeamishness about Wilma
Mankiller. She is the first female chief of the 108,000-member
Cherokee nation, the second largest U.S. tribe after the
Navajos. But it took the men a while to come around after her
1987 election. "I've run into more discrimination as a woman
than as an Indian," says Mankiller, 44, whose unusual last name
was inherited from an 18th century warrior ancestor. She has
likened her job to "running a small country, a medium-size
corporation, and being a social worker." With an annual budget
of $52 million, the Oklahoma-based tribe operates industries,
health clinics and cultural programs employing about 1,700
people. In July, while recovering from a kidney transplant,
Mankiller signed an unprecedented agreement with the U.S.
government that gives the tribe direct control of $6.1 million
in federal funding. Mankiller, who attended college in
California before returning to Oklahoma 14 years ago, is more
optimistic than ever about her fundamental goal: seeing Indians
solve their own economic problems.