WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 — The feminist leader Patricia Ireland has been dismissed as chief executive of the Y.W.C.A. less than six months after she was hired to head it.

Ms. Ireland was notified of the decision on Thursday in New York, where she was attending a conference. She said in an interview on Monday that members of the national coordinating board of the Y.W.C.A. had asked for her resignation, but she declined because she did not want to give the impression that she had "jumped ship."

"I was uncharacteristically speechless," Ms. Ireland said. "There had been no notice."

Her dismissal was first reported in this week's issue of Newsweek.

The Y.W.C.A.'s appointment of Ms. Ireland last May was strongly criticized by some conservative groups, which said her background made her unfit to run an organization historically associated with traditional Christian values.

Among the concerns raised by the groups were Ms. Ireland's tenure as president of the National Organization for Women, which supports gay and lesbian rights as well as a woman's right to seek an abortion, and Ms. Ireland's living with a woman in the early 1990's while remaining married.

Ms. Ireland praised the 144-year-old Y.W.C.A. as a "wonderful organization with a lot of potential," and she declined to comment on specific issues on which she and the organization's leaders disagreed.

She said, however, that in recent years the Y.W.C.A. had focused more on restructuring than on advocacy work and that her enthusiasm for advocacy might have "raised some disquiet in some quarters."

She also mentioned an article in The New York Times last May about conservative groups that opposed her appointment as chief executive. At that time, the chairwoman of the Y.W.C.A.'s national coordinating board, Audrey Peeples, said she had not anticipated the intensity of the criticism surrounding Ms. Ireland's selection.

Ms. Ireland said that those comments "set this relationship off on a somewhat difficult course." Still, she said that she harbored no animosity toward the organization.

Ms. Peeples declined to comment on Monday on the reasons for Ms. Ireland's termination.

"We had a meeting with her. We told her at the meeting," Ms. Peeples said. "Patricia knows why she was terminated."

Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group based in Washington that posted an online petition to have Ms. Ireland fired, said she believed that her organization's campaign led to the decision.

The Y.W.C.A. has named Dorris Daniel-Parkes, the organization's former human resources director, as its interim director.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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