Heidi Li's Potpourri

International Women's Day: Women - the Forgotten 51 Percent Minority

This picture from the 1970s, reprinted in a March 8, 2009 story in the New York Times, is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking  because even though such a picture today would, I fervently hope, show women more diverse in age and rage, it would be easy enough to find women - millions of them - who came out of the 2008 Presidential election cycle realizing that women are the forgotten majority in this country.

Women are the people who can be called anything for supporting another women's bid for higher office; indeed a woman governor who runs for vice-president can publicly be called a c*nt and absolutely no member of the punditry nor any politician in high office of either party denounces this. Imagine if photos of young people wearing shirts that called our current President a n*gger had circulated widely during the last election. The media and politicians would have been absolutely up in arms. They would have been right to have been, too. But what many women are only realizing now, after surviving the dashed hopes of seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton given a fair shot at the nomination in Denver (instead the Democratic Party held a rigged process where pledged delegates were pressured to change their votes for the first ballot and superdelegates were pressured, starting in June, to act as if they had already voted for a candidate to lead the Democratic ticket) is that the entire political and cultural situation in this country not is stacked against them, but that almost no progress in the fight for political and economic equality has been made since the "Women's Liberation" movement of the early 1970s. The wretched and persistent wage gap persists; no Equal Rights Amendment has been added to our constitution; and despite the de jure legality of abortion, women's reproductive rights generally cannot be vindicated by actual individual women, at least not without hardship.

Our current President had his inauguration blessed by a pastor who believes in "wifely submission" and has retained as his chief speechwriter a man who blithely posed for a picture depicting himself metaphorically groping the most powerful person in the president's own Senate - a person who happens to be a woman, Secretary of State Clinton. This same President has ignored calls for a Presidential Commission on Women modeled on John F. Kennedy's 1961 - 1961! - Commission on Women; and has displayed zero interest in creating an even stronger institution, one that would be on par with the President's Advisory Boards on Intelligence (spying) and Economic Recovery.

The other day I was reading and listening to Mario Cuomo's address to the 1984 Democratic Convention. Well into a classic speech, Cuomo delivers this message:

We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not sin against equality," a rule so simple -- I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A.

In 1984, the Democratic hall went wild when Cuomo added this apparent ad lib. The crowd chanted over and over E - R - A.

Thou shalt not sin aginst equality, thou shall pass and ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Can you imagine a keynote speaker from either major political party today uttering these words at its presidential nominating convention?

The closest we came in 2008 was Hillary Rodham Clinton's convention speech, which included this declaration:

And I know what that can mean for every man, woman, and child in America. I’m a United States Senator because in 1848 a group of courageous women and a few brave men gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, many traveling for days and nights, to participate in the first convention on women’s rights in our history.

And so dawned a struggle for the right to vote that would last 72 years, handed down by mother to daughter to granddaughter – and a few sons and grandsons along the way.

These women and men looked in-to their daughters’ eyes, imagined a fairer and freer world, and found the strength to fight. To rally and picket. To endure ridicule and harassment. To brave violence and jail.

And after so many decades – 88 years ago on this very day – the 19th amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote would be forever enshrined in our Constitution.

My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for President.

This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up.

How do we give this country back to them?

By following the example of a brave New Yorker , a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad.

And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice.

If you hear the dogs, keep going.

If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.

If they're shouting after you, keep going.

Don't ever stop. Keep going. (emphasis added)

Although the convention applauded wildly it should be noted that in 20 years the Democratic Party went from demanding the Equal Rights Amendment to reminding women that when they hear the dogs, they must keep going.

Many women and women understand that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights. They demonstrate this knowledge in this country and around the world as they keep going. Some make small contributions, financial and otherwise, to new organizations like 51 percent (disclosure: the author of this post is the president of 51 percent), WomenCount, and The New Agenda - organizations formed in direct response to the unresponsiveness of the Democratic Party to American women's dreams and hopes for their emancipation and autonomy. In other countries, too, women take action on the local level. A friend from Europe decided that she would mark International Women's Day (a holiday not recognized in the U.S.) by protesting a local piece of artwork that, however unwittingly, depicts a woman in a subordinate and demeaned posture compared to her male coworkers (the art is meant to celebrate rice harvesting). Here is the artwork as it looks on an ordinary day:

 But on International Women's Day, the woman sweeping wore a placard that, translated, read:

"I feel enslaved in this humiliating posture next to the two strapping men standing up. I demand equality."

Dones endavant! (Translation: "Put women forward!")

I believe that 2008 will be remembered not as a year of defeat for women, but as year of galvanization. Despite the wretched economic uncertainty that plagues men and women today, those who want to see the majority-minority - women of the world - put forward, are banding together and one placard or one donation or one blog post at a time these men and women realize that we must renew the fight against oppression and for emancipation of women everywhere.

To read Secretary of State Clinton's 2009 International Women's Day statement on the importance of advancing the interests of women throughout the world, go here.

Read it and weep: "the seemingly unbridgeable chasm" that is the gender wage gap

Crossposted from Heidi Li on Equality at 51 Percent.

All quotes from Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller? By HANNAH FAIRFIELD Published: February 28, 2009 - The New York Times (Click graphic to go to large interactive chart). Full story here.

Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job.

"There's no measurable way to explain the gaps within occupations," said Barry T. Hirsh, a labor economist at Georgia State University. "Other wage gaps, like racial gaps, can be almost fully explained by factoring in the differences in education, geography and age." (emphases added)

This is economic misogyny plain and simple; embedded in our economic habits deeply and seemingly insurmountably - although with enough political and legal action not actually insurmountable is a belittling of women's work compared to men's. This sort of systemic, measurable inequity is, to borrow a phrase from Mario Cuomo, a "sin against equality."

In 1984, a great Democrat used the opportunity to address the Party and the Country about the Equal Rights Amendment

Today we have a Democratic President who is not a progressive, who is not, in my opinion, a liberal. He has expressed his admiration for Ronald Reagan. Thinking about our current president made me nostalgic for a time when a major Democratic Party player refused to play at wasteful bipartisan brinksmanship or speak of a fuzzy post-partisan era. Mario Cuomo spoke of unity, spoke of bringing the party together - but not just for the sake of collapsing the country into one politically mediocre middlism. He believed that Democratic unity - liberal unity - was what would bring our country prosperity and justice.

When Mario Cuomo spoke we on the left who did not have his platform knew we could outright criticize military adventures and trickle-down economic theories; we could demand that we take care of the old and the less well-abled; we could care about all races and orientations; and and treat women equally under our constitution. The 1980s were a lousy time for those of us on the left as they were so much the Reagan years. But at least we had leaders like Mario Cuomo who would speak out, publicly and courageously in the name of all these things, but even - oh my - the E.R.A.

Listen to Cuomo's speech here. My paraphrasing or even a reading of the text does not do it justice. Listen to it if you can.

Pay special attention to this passage:

"We speak -- We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not sin against equality," a rule so simple [applause, chanting] --I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A." [chanting, chanting]

It is over 20 years since Mario Cuomo dared to spell it out in three letters: E.R.A  -- while a convention hall full of Democratic delegates roared those letters back at him.

Can you imagine now a Democratic Party shining on the hill introducing the Equal Rights Amendment or fighting for the three state strategy or fighting, state by state - including all those supposedly newly blue ones - for its passage?

I confess I cannot imagine today's Democratic Party doing this. But may I be wrong. May the Democratic party wake up from its mediocre middlism and go to the mat for the majority, for the 51 percent of Americans who are not guaranteed the highest protection of their equality under the law.

E...R...A.....E...R...A......E...R...A.....E...R...A.

A letter to President Obama (or should I say "Jock in Chief")?

Dear President Obama:

One of your Cabinet Secretaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is striking a chord with women abroad and at home as she mixes in, with her discussion of global warming and economic security, the issue of women's empowerment, as a matter of democracy and social justice. Might you consider taking a lesson from the Secretary of State? If you did, you would incorporate her message about the importance of women to democratic politics and economic security into every aspect of your own programs and many of your public statements.

Those of us interested in the emancipation of American women would be delighted to hear you echo Secretary Clinton when she states, "I think that it’s imperative that nations like ours stand up for the rights of women. It is not ancillary to our progress; it is central" or "We have to highlight the importance of inclusion for women. We have to make clear that no democracy can exist without women’s full participation; no economy can be truly a free market without women involved." (Secretary Clinton, February 20, 2009).

You, Mr. President, are in a flurry of summits, initiatives, and speeches, leading up to the announcement of your budget this Thursday, February 26, 2009. Those who wonder whether you understand the significance of women in the U.S. economy need to hear you speak at home in terms your Secretary of State speaks abroad. We need to hear this partly because many of us doubt whether you are as forward thinking about women's issues as we would expect a Democratic president who will be seeking our votes again ought to be but also because we doubt you are as forward thinking about economic matters as we expect a Democratic president to be. Women do not dominate the boardrooms and executive suites of Fortune 500 companies; they do depend heavily on Social Security; they are a major source of small business initiatives in this country. When you discuss "entitlements" or "business" this means something different to the majority of women than it does to the majority of men.

Even in symbolic ways, we need you to do better if you want us to trust your commitment to women's empowerment. Just recently you cooperated with Men's Journal, a men's lifestyle magazine, that along with so many other publications, decided to devote a cover story to you. This is the cover:

For those who cannot read the headline, running alongside a photo of you holding a football in your hands, it says: "Barack Obama, Jock in Chief: His Moves, His Trash Talk & His Weekly Power Basketball Game."

Mr. President, I am not sure whether you are proud of being depicted as a trash-talking jock-in-chief - that seems to me to fulfill both sexist and racist stereotypes you yourself might find personally offensive. But the magazine editors certainly mean this headline to be laudatory, although they would never write the same sort of headline about a woman president or cabinet secretary and mean it to have the connotations of hipness and coolness they meant this one to carry. ("Trash-talking" is not a phrase used to praise powerfully positioned women.)

You, Mr. President, could by word and deed use your bully pulpit to discourage this sort of sexist pigeonholing not only of yourself but therefore of what power is supposed to look like or be like. I have written before about the need for you to convene a Presidential Empowerment of Women Advisory Board, to be as significant and influential with you as you suggest your PERAB and PIAB (Economic Recovery and Intelligence boards, respectively). This is becoming more urgent, not less. If you want the American economy and American democracy to remain strong, you must empower the 51 percent of the population who are women to participate as fully and on fair terms in our society.

Yours truly,

Heidi Li Feldman, founder and president, 51 Percent

Secretary of State Clinton reaches out to women in Seoul, Korea

Main information crossposted from 51 Percent.

"I think that it’s imperative that nations like ours stand up for the rights of women. It is not ancillary to our progress; it is central." - Hillary Rodham Clinton speakng in Seoul, 2/20/2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is doing as many of us expected, using her position to reach out to and therefore empower women around the world. One way women here at home can begin to overcome their differences to work together toward women's emancipation is to understand what we share in common with women around the world, so that we can all work toward women's emancipation. Below is the text of Secretary Clinton's primary remarks, my emphases added.

Women's Empowerment Is Key To Progress

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Secretary of State

Town Hall Meeting at Ewha Women's University

Seoul, South Korea

February 20, 2009

SECRETARY CLINTON: Good afternoon. (cheers and applause) Thank you so much, President Lee. I am honored to be here at this great university. I wish to thank also Chairperson (inaudible) and the more than 107,000 alumni at this great school. Standing up with me was our Ambassador Kathy Stephens, who has told me that more than 50 graduates of Ewha Womans University work at U.S. Embassy Seoul. We are extremely proud of the education they have received here.

It is a great privilege to stand here before you on the stage of the largest women’s university in the world. And I came to – (applause) – this university as a matter of destiny, because you see, Ewha and I share a connection. (Cheers and applause.) I am a Methodist, my family on my father’s side comes from Scranton, Pennsylvania – (applause) – and I must say that Wellesley College is a sister college for Ewha University. (Applause.) So being an honorary fellow seems right at home today.

I also note that in this audience are some Korean-American friends from New York and California. There are several Wellesley graduates whom I met backstage as well – (applause) – and an extraordinary number of talented young women, faculty members, and administrators.

Learning about this great university and the role that you have played in advancing the status of women made me think about so many of the women throughout history who are inspirations to me: Madame Scranton, someone who started teaching one young woman, and from her dedication and hard work came this university; Eleanor Roosevelt, a pioneering First Lady of the United States and a voice for democracy around the world, and one of the driving forces behind the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. Now, that was more than 50 years ago, but just a few weeks ago, one of Korea’s most accomplished leaders, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, called on all nations worldwide to push for more progress on women’s equality. And I want to thank the Secretary General – (applause) – because he said that women’s empowerment is the key to progress in developing nations.

People who think hard about our future come to the same conclusion, that women and others on society’s margins must be afforded the right to fully participate in society, not only because it is morally right, but because it is necessary to strengthen our security and prosperity.

Before I came out on stage, I met a number of young women who are in political office here in the Republic of  Korea, and I hope I was looking at a future president of this great nation. (Applause.)

As you think about your own futures, keeping in mind security and prosperity and the role that each of us must play, is essential because of the urgent global challenges we face in the 21st century. We need all of our people’s talents to be on the very forefront of setting a course of peace, progress, and prosperity; be it defending our nations from the threat of nuclear proliferation and terror, or resolving the global climate crisis or the current economic crisis, and promoting civil society, especially women’s rights and education, healthcare, clean energy, good governance, the rule of law, and free and fair elections. All of these matters speak to our common desire to make a nation that is safe and strong and secure.

More than half a century ago, this university became the first to prepare women for professions that were formerly reserved for men, including medicine, law, science, and journalism. At about the same time, your government wrote women’s equality into your constitution and guaranteed protections for women in employment. And there have been other rights and protections for women encoded in Korean law in subsequent decades.

These advances coincided with Korea’s transformation from an undeveloped nation to a dynamic democracy, a global economic power, and a hub of technology and innovation. The inclusion of women in the political and economic equation, calling on those talents and contributions from the entire population, not just the male half, was essential to the progress that this country has made.

As I have been on this first trip as Secretary of State, I have visited Japan and Indonesia, and tomorrow I will be in China. I was very impressed by my visit to Indonesia, a young democracy that is demonstrating to the world that democracy, Islam, modernity, and women’s rights can coexist. I met elected women officials. I met high appointed members in the foreign ministry and other cabinet positions in the government. It would be hard to imagine the progress that Indonesia has made in the last ten years, moving from a stagnant autocracy to a burgeoning democracy, without women being part of the reason.

And on Sunday, I’ll meet with women in China to hear about their efforts to improve opportunities for themselves in their own country, another reason why women have to lead the way if there’s going to be higher standards of living, a healthier population, and an actively engaged citizenry.

But no country has yet achieved full equality for women. We still have work to do, don’t we? And just a few weeks ago, President Obama signed into law a new provision protecting women from salary discrimination, a step that was overdue. So there is a lot ahead of us to ensure that gender equality, as President Lee mentioned, becomes a reality. And we also need to remain vigilant against a backlash that tries to turn the clock back on women and human rights, countries where leaders are threatened by the idea of freedom and democracy and women are made the scapegoats. The abuses of women under the Taliban are horrific reminders that just as women had been central to progress in countries like ours, the reverse can happen as well.

Some of you may have seen the news reports some weeks ago of young girls in Afghanistan who were so eager to go to school, and every day they went off with a real light in their eyes because they were finally able to learn.
And one day, a group of these young girls were assaulted by a group of Taliban men who threw acid on them because they had the desire to learn. We have to remain vigilant on behalf of women’s rights.

We see this kind of suppression in different forms in different places. In Burma, the valor of Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous struggle for freedom of expression and conscience. To the North, 70 percent of those leaving North Korea in search of a better life are women, a sad commentary on the conditions in their own country.

So part of my message during this trip and part of my mission as Secretary of State is that the United States is committed to advancing the rights of women to lead more equitable, prosperous lives in safe societies. I view this not only as a moral issue, but as a security issue. I think that it’s imperative that nations like ours stand up for the rights of women. It is not ancillary to our progress; it is central.

In 1995, when I went to the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing and said that women’s rights were human rights, and human rights were women’s rights, people were so excited. But that to me was almost a sad commentary that we had to say something so obvious toward the end of the [twentieth] century.

So here we are in the [twenty-first] century, and every day we make progress, but we can’t be complacent. We have to highlight the importance of inclusion for women. We have to make clear that no democracy can exist without women’s full participation; no economy can be truly a free market without women involved.

I want to use robust diplomacy and development to strengthen our partnerships with other governments and create collaborative networks of people and nongovernmental organizations to find innovative solutions to global problems – what we call smart power.

Today, I’ve come to this great women’s university to hear your thoughts about the future. The other night in Tokyo, I had the privilege to listen to students at Tokyo University, and I came away not only impressed by their intelligence and the quality of their questions, but encouraged by their concern about the future that lay ahead and what each of them wanted to do to make it better.

Today, I’ve held bilateral meetings with your president, your prime minister, and your foreign minister. We have discussed issues like the need to continue the Six-Party Talks to bring about the complete and verifiable denuclearization in North Korea, and how we can better coordinate not only between ourselves, but regionally and globally, on the range of issues that confront us. But in each meeting, we took time to reflect about how far this country has come.

Back in the early 1960s, there were a series of studies done where different groups were looking at nations around the world, trying to calculate which ones would be successful at the end of the 20th century. And many commentators and analysts thought that the chances for the Republic of Korea were limited. But that wasn’t the opinion of the people of Korea. And so for 50 years, you have built a nation that is now assuming a place of leadership in the world, respected for the vibrant democracy, for the advances across the board in every walk of life. And it is a tribute to your understanding of what it takes to make progress at a time of peril and uncertainty.

The relationship between the United States and Korea is deep and enduring, and it is indispensible to our shared security. Without security, children can’t even imagine their futures and may not have the potential to actually live up to their talents. Our two countries have joined together as a force for peace, prosperity, and progress. Korean and American soldiers have served shoulder-to-shoulder in so many places around the world.
We know that the most acute challenge to stability and security in Northeast Asia is the regime in North Korea, and particularly its nuclear program. It bears repeating that President Obama and I are committed to working through the Six-Party Talks. We believe we have an opportunity to move those forward and that it is incumbent upon North Korea to avoid provocative actions and unhelpful rhetoric toward the people and the leaders of the Republic of Korea. Remember that the North Korean Government committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and returning at an early date to the Treaty of Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

And I make the offer again right here in Seoul: If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program, the Obama Administration will be willing to normalize bilateral relations, replace the peninsula’s longstanding armistice agreement with a permanent peace treaty, and assist in meeting the energy and other economic and humanitarian needs of the Korean people.

Also essential to our shared security and prosperity is a resolution to the global economic crisis. Korea and the United States have both benefited from a strong economic relationship, and your leaders and I today discussed ways we can develop that relationship further. We are going to work on a vision of a much more comprehensive strategic relationship. We want more partnerships to bring not just government leaders together, but business and professional and academic and political and people-to-people. We want to work with Korea so that both of us will be leaders in getting at the root causes of global climate change and vigorously pursuing a clean energy agenda. And I applaud your country for being a global leader in this area, and for calling on the ingenuity and skills of the Korean people to promote green technologies that will create jobs and protect our planet and enhance our security.

Students here at Ewha have a long and proud tradition of engagement with the world. And you have the talent and the training to help shape that world. It may not be always obvious what you can do to make a difference, so do what you love. Do what gives you meaning. Do what makes life purposeful for you. And make a contribution.

I don’t know that Mary Scranton, who founded this university teaching one student in her home, could have ever dreamed of where we would be today. But that’s often the way life is. I never could have dreamed that I could be here as the Secretary of State of the United States either. (Applause.) You have to be willing to prepare yourselves and as you are doing to take advantage of the opportunities that arise, to find cooperative ways to work with others to promote the common good, and then follow your dreams. You may not end up exactly where you started out heading toward, but with your education and with the opportunities now available in your country, there is so much that you can do. And I know that you will be well-equipped to make your contribution that will contribute to the peace and prosperity and progress and security, not only of Korea, but of the region and the world that needs and is waiting for your talents.
Thank you all and God bless you. (Applause.)
And now we’re going to have some questions, I think, right? (Laughter.)

[Secretary Clinton's meeting continued]