A VOICE OF OUR OWN: Leading American Women Celebrate the Right to Vote.<i> Edited by Nancy M. Neuman (Jossey-Bass: $24; 265 pp.)</i>

“I sit in the House of Bishops, where inclusiveness is not a reality. After 20 years, we still argue and discuss the validity of the ordination of women; we debate the issues inherent in human sexuality, tacitly avoiding full inclusion of our homosexual sisters and brothers. It is sometimes painful, sometimes overwhelming, and it takes an incredible amount of energy to sit in that house with so many men. I believe the task of the members of the House of Bishops, as the elected leaders of the Episcopal Church, is to affirm the fact that we are all different and that our incredibly diverse gene pool is a blessing. . . . The crucial questions before the church are: Can we differ without disliking? Can we be independent without excluding? Can we contradict without condemning?”

--Bishop Mary Adelia Rosamond McLeod

****

“I am a good citizen. I am proud to be an American. We live in the best country there is or will ever be. My candor about my sexuality has cost me millions of dollars in sponsorships and endorsements, but that’s only money. I played my heart out on the tennis court. . . . Could I have played as well if I were living a lie? What would have happened if I had to live in fear of someone “finding out” that I am a lesbian? . . . I am also a woman. To me, that does not mean I have two strikes against me, rather that I have two reasons for social activism.”

--Martina Navratilova

****

Here is a midterm report on America’s gender wars: Twenty-nine notable women take calm accounting of their own successes, the barriers crossed and those still standing. This collection was conceived by the League of Women Voters and is a gift for the future. The gender friction so much a part of today’s America may, for tomorrow’s young girls, seem as wonderfully quaint as suffrage, now 75 years old. These women have broken trail to make it so.