A New Wave

23% less and what it means for women

The U.S. Senate prepares to introduce Paycheck Fairness Act...again. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody when it doesn't go anywhere.

We're in an election year - and a pretty nasty one, by all early indications - so GOP will continue to obstruct and drive wedges. They're engaged in an all-out assault against women and women's rights, of which Paycheck Fairness Act is a major piece. When women have economic parity, we're able to control our lives without being dependent on powerful (men) to determine what we can and can't do.  

I'm overjoyed to see young women standing up for Equal Pay, as well as reproductive choice and abortion rights. Now, if we will all just commit to getting 10 women who didn't vote to the polls in November, the Paycheck Fairness Act can finally become law. 

 

Doing Right By Women and Girls

The president's signing of an Executive Order creating a White House Council on Women and Girls is a small victory with great possibility for ensuring women's equality in myriad ways, from employment to health care, from education to work and family balance.

President Obama understands that this council doesn't exist in a vacuum separate and apart from the policies and programs developed and implemented throughout the federal government and that if women are ever to be on the same footing with their male peers a coordinated and interconnected effort is required at all levels of government.

The White House Council on Women and Girls will ensure that agencies across the federal government, not just a few offices, take into account the particular needs and concerns of women and girls. The Council will begin its work by asking each agency to analyze their current status and ensure that they are focused internally and externally on women.

Were the Department of Labor, for example, to develop guidelines on, say, new "green economy" jobs, there is a real possibility that women won't be forced to put up with discriminatory patterns of hiring, training, promotion and wages -- especially as they existed and became embedded into blue-collar occupations.

Or health care: imagine if HHS, Labor and Commerce were to be fully cognizant of the gender bias that exists in rates for health and other forms of insurance and finally generated changes that made such bias illegal.

Oh, the possibilities.

It's too soon to know how successful the Council will be, but Obama has the right vision: the concerns of women and girls must be integrated into every level of public policy and not treated as something separate and apart from the welfare of the country and the world.

1920-2008: Women's Rights Then and Now

Imagine the thrill and the deep sense of satisfaction among women on August 26, 1920 when Congress ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the legal right to vote and thus extending voting rights guaranteed to all "men" in the 15th Amendment.

By way of perspective, my maternal grandmother was 15 years old; my paternal grandmother was 30 years old; and my mother was 1-year old. My maternal grandmother, no doubt, danced in the streets or something equally exhilarating, since she was a feminist in every way that counted. She was my introduction to feminism and created a powerful image for me of what was possible: an independent woman who did what made her happy rather than what made her husband happy; a woman who frequently spoke truth to power, in spite of her 5-foot, 4-inch frame, and for whom nothing seemed impossible.

 

 

Bush Administration continues to undermine abortion rights

The ways in which Bush & Co are shredding or completely reformulating federal laws --- as they leave office --- boggles the mind.

That they pay no heed to U.S. Senators and that they use their last months in office to weaken long-established laws and to embolden ideologues leaves little doubt that they won't leave office with a whimper.

The latest effort (which met with stiff Senate opposition several weeks ago) is a revised HHS regulation that will limit women's access to reproductive health care services, including information and access to contraceptives and abortions:

Tim Kaine on Obama's Short List! Really?

Let me preface my comments with this note: I'm not one to really follow the "veepstakes". I consider it a waste of time and energy, especially when, where I live, summer is really short.

However, after several days of online murmers that Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is at the top of Obama's short list for VP, I have to weigh in.

Bernie Mac's lowball, emotionally-stunted humor

On a scale of 1 to 10 - 1 being "really, really outrageous and twisted" misogyny, Bernie Mac's attempts at humor on Friday (at an Obama fundraiser) rank about 3 on my misogyny meter. But Joan Walsh is less incensed than I am:

Anyway, soldiers are dying in Iraq, the mortgage industry is imploding, banks are closing, our civil liberties were seriously eroded this week (with Obama's support) and we're expected to be outraged by Bernie Mac? I'll pass.

Walsh happens to like Bernie Mac's humor. I don't. He's one of a long line of (especially) Black male comedians who use women as comedic punching bags. Friday's fundraiser for Obama was no exception:

Hillary: Is She Or Isn't She?

If Howard Wolfson has it right, Hillary Clinton isn't being vetted by the Obama VP team:

On Fox, former Clinton chief strategist Howard Wolfson indicated that Hillary Clinton is not being formally considered as Obama's running mate, in that she has not been asked to undergo the formal vetting process.

"Not as far as I know," Wolfson, who remains close to Clinton, said in response to a question from Sean Hannity. - more -

Equal Pay Should Actually Mean Something

On April 28 the U.S. Senate failed to pass a significant piece of legislation: H.R. 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007. 

This bill was a remedy to the 2007 Supreme Court decision that ruled against Lilly Ledbetter in her pay discrimination lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber The bill would have "reset the clock" for filing pay discrimination lawsuits with each and every discriminatory wage practice by employers (issuing a paycheck for example). SCOTUS ruled that workers who face wage discrimination have only 180 days to legally challenge the initial discrimination. 

Both Democratic senators and presidential candidates (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) voted in favor of the bill. John McCain, the Republican, missed the vote.

Typical, right?

I thought so but then I found this interesting tidbit:

Enough With The Roe v. Wade Arguments

Since Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination on June 7, I have read at least two articles a day by progressive bloggers telling Democratic women why it is in women's best interests to vote for Barack Obama. Of the numerous articles, these six are the most representative arguments.

In every case these purveyors of wisdom alternately chide us, berate us for being angry at the media, the Democratic Party system, and its leaders, and lecture us about throwing away our Freedom of Choice if we do not do the right thing and vote for Barack Obama.

First, let me get something out of the way: I'm a proponent and advocate of ensuring women's reproductive rights.

Hillary Clinton: Our New Populist-Feminist Heroine

Blogs and news sites are buzzing about John Heilemann's excellent profile of Hillary Clinton in this week's issue of New York Magazine.

Above all, Heilemann's article is real journalism and not the slash-and-burn, take-down, smackdown variety of "news" practiced by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, FOX, and so many others.