BETWEEN PREPARATIONS FOR traffic snarls, heat waves, and terrorist attacks, city officials in Atlanta had a lot to contend with during the week preceding the opening ceremonies at this summer’s Olympic Games. Yet Mayor Bill Campbell and his wife Sharon still found time to organize and host what they hoped would be one of the largest city-sponsored events in the history of Atlanta, the “In Celebration of Women” festival, held the weekend of July 13.

Over the course of two days, the city offered more than 100 different activities aimed at women, ranging from a female-led road race to free mammograms and poetry readings. Energy secretary Hazel O’Leary signed up as a headline speaker for the festival, as did Harriett Woods, the director of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and Muriel Siebert, “the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.” Lecturers, appearing in six ” Empowerment Tents” downtown, prepared seminars on topics such as “economic justice,” domestic violence, civil rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and ” political empowerment and networking.” For entertainment, the city booked performances by a singer from a band called the Sounds of Blackness, as well as a stage show by Bosom Buddies, a “song-and-dance troupe of breast cancer survivors.”