Women and Politics

Cross-posted from the Women’s Media Center Blog

To commemorate the launch of the Name It. Change It. campaign, WMC Cofounder and Board Member Gloria Steinem issued the following statement on equality:

The most workable definition of equality for journalists is reversibility. Don’t mention her young children unless you would also mention his, or describe her clothes unless you would describe his, or say she’s shrill or attractive unless the same adjectives would be applied to a man. Don’t say she’s had facial surgery unless you say he dyes his hair or has hair plugs….and so on. Don’t say she’s just out of graduate school, but he’s a young Turk or that she’s someone’s protégée but he’s a rising star…

By extension, don’t say someone is a Muslim unless you also identify Christians and Jews, or identify only some people by race, ethnicity or sexuality and not others. However, this does NOT mean being even-handedly positive or negative when only one person or side has done something positive or negative. Equality allows accuracy.

By: Jen Nedeau
Crossposted from Women’s Media Center

Fully understanding the importance of health care for all Americans, the author, who manages the WMC Not Under the Bus campaign, describes a sense of betrayal shared by many—and how to move forward.

“So this isn’t radical reform.  But it is major reform.  This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system.  But it moves us decisively in the right direction.  This is what change looks like.”—President Obama

So this is what change looks like? Throwing women’s rights under the bus in exchange for health care?

Something about this doesn’t feel like change. Something about this feels all too familiar. Once again, women’s rights are being used as a bargaining chip for political gain. Once again, the right to choose is not left in the hands of women, but left in the hands of male politicians who will never be faced with an unwanted pregnancy.

Yes, it is true that Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked incredibly hard to get the votes to pass the bill that now makes it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against women with higher premiums than men or deny coverage to women who have had Caesarean sections or survived domestic violence.

Yes, it is true that bill will make health care more accessible for women and families across America by controlling costs and offering a public marketplace where those without insurance can buy their own affordable coverage.

However, these very important advancements cannot disguise two major attacks on women’s choice.

The first attack was passing a bill that contained Ben Nelson’s Manager’s Amendment.

The second attack is the Executive Order from the White House reaffirming the Hyde Amendment ban on federal funding of abortion and effectively extending it beyond its current application. In the Daily Beast, Dana Goldstein discusses how the “executive order enshrined the Hyde Amendment and expanded its reach into the new private insurance exchanges created by the health-care bill.”

At the end of the day, more than 30 million uninsured Americans can now have access to health reform, but it is abundantly clear women’s health is not considered a priority.

If you are a pro-choice advocate, this is not the change we hoped to see, particularly from a Democratic President and Democratic Majority Congress.

The bill that was passed contains language that has the potential to create a nation completely divided by access to abortion.  With the Nelson language intact, it is possible for abortion rights to be completely stripped from the hands of low-income women, who are disproportionately non-white, by the predominantly male-led state legislatures.

According to the Guttmacher Institute , “nearly half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended and four in 10 of these end in abortion.” Guttmacher also reports that unintended pregnancies have increased by 29 percent among poor women while decreasing 20 percent among higher-income women.

As the bill stands at this point, if a state opts out of abortion coverage in the exchange, women who cannot afford a private insurance plan would have few viable options for seeking access to abortion. That means reproductive choice is no longer left with women individually, but given to the state. After last night’s historic vote, it may feel like the health care reform battle is over. But for millions of women across America, it has really just begun.

Today CREDO launched an action taking a firm stand against anti-choice Democrats who betrayed women across America saying, “It’s time for pro-choice donors and members of Congress to stop funneling money to the anti-choice candidates via the DCCC.”

You can sign CREDO’s petition and take the momentum of ”Yes We Can” pass health care to “Yes We Can” repeal the Hyde Amendment.

It is time to finally give women across America—not just those who can afford private health care, but every woman—a real choice when it comes to their body, their destiny and their future.

This post was submitted by Jean Qiao, WCF Communications Fellow

We all expect outrageous commercials during the Super Bowl. But CBS has taken sexist advertising to a whole new level by choosing to air an anti-choice ad sponsored by Focus on the Family.

Jehmu Greene, President of the Women’s Media Center (WMC), recently wrote a piece on Huffingon Post, which challenges CBS’ use of Super Bowl Sunday to promote their socially conservative agenda:

“Super Bowl advertising has always been a showcase of overt sexism. This year the biased barrage also includes CBS’s and the NFL’s decision to air a seemingly subtle ad highlighting college football star Tim Tebow’s story, sponsored by Focus on the Family, which aggressively works to strip women of medical choices. This decision should be seen as a referendum on the status of women in the media and marks the first time the Super Bowl will be used to push a polarizing, political agenda”.

Read the rest of Jehmu’s post here.

The Women’s Media Center has also simplified the reasoning behind why CBS should remove this ad in their Top 10 Reasons the NFL Should Tell CBS to Scrap the Ad .

Jehmu and WMC echo the voice of WCF and many other organizations in demanding that CBS to pull the ad and refrain from injecting Americans with anti-choice rhetoric during the Super Bowl.

Take action: join the Women’s Media Center and add your voice now!

In deciding to air a Focus on the Family ad during the Super Bowl, CBS executives have effectively outed themselves as anti-choice and anti-woman.

If CBS is trying to avoid controversial issues in Super Bowl commercials, I think it’s safe to say that they’ve failed miserably. Even putting aside the negative frenzy the ad has already caused, let’s remember that Focus on the Family is one of the most contentious, intolerant, and extreme organizations in existence.

Not to mention that reproductive rights is one of the most controversial and dividing issues of our time.

To approve an anti-choice spot and reject an ad for a male dating site (among their past rejections of progressive organizations) shows blatant hypocrisy and bias.

We can’t show two guys making out, but we can talk about abortion?

Defenders of CBS’ decision say yes—that despite its divisive and political message, the ad itself is positive and uncontroversial. Bill O’Reilly asks, how can anyone be offended about Tim Tebow being alive?

But now I have to ask: What if a pro-choice ad had been submitted for the Super Bowl? What if it featured an uplifting story like Tim Tebow’s?

Picture this: Fade in. Moving music plays. Video of children playing. A woman talks about how happy she is that the birth control pill was available to her. She wanted to make sure she became a mother when she was ready. Because of her ability to make that choice, she now has two children who she’s fully able to support. End on picture of happy family. Fade out.

And what if this ad was for Planned Parenthood or National Abortion Federation? Something tells me CBS wouldn’t approve their message to over 100 million Super Bowl viewers. And I don’t think Bill O’Reilly would deem this a “positive message.”

It seems both are making this decision solely based on the ad—not its message, political connotation, or extremely divisive views of the creating organization.

Many organizations, including WCF, are demanding that CBS pull the ad.

TAKE ACTION: Join the Women’s Media Center and add your voice now!

The issue of women’s reproductive health belongs in doctors’ offices, family discussions, and women’s hands.

It doesn’t belong in our government or with politicians. And it most certainly doesn’t belong in the Super Bowl.

(Please welcome our friend PunditMom to the WCFF blog! She will be cross-posting from her blog during the conventions and we are so happy to have her. Look forward to more of her posts!)

While there are no statistics to prove this, it feels like there are a record number of events for political women at the Democratic National Convention. That’s a really exciting thing in terms of where political women go from here when the 2008 election is done in November.

NOW’s EqualiTEA, the Unconventional Women forum being put on by a variety of organizations, including The White House Project and the Women’s Campaign Forum, and the EMILY’s List reception, just to name a few, are places for progressive, activist women to gather and start planning the next phase of their political lives and agendas.

The Women’s Media Center is also presenting their report called, “From Soundbites to Solutions: Bias, Punditry and the Press in the 2008 Election,” and apparently we need it, and not just for the guys who insisted on giving Hillary Clinton short shrift during the presidential campaign.

In an article called Hillary Clinton Fans Tough to Woo, Christy Hoppe of the Dallas-Morning News wrote about the increased number of women’s gatherings in Denver, referring to them as an “estrogen-fest.”

An estrogen-fest.

Is that supposed to make us think about hundreds of hormonal women creating a ruckus like a bunch of sorority girls? Because I hardly think it’s the right turn of a phrase to describe gatherings with the likes of Senator Hillary Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the scores of other high-profile Democratic women, especially when one Clinton almost became the party’s presidential nominee.

Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you read anything written about a political event populated by men called a “testosterone-fest?”

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The fact that the media, women members included, continue to write about gatherings presented and attended by women — especially political women — in derogatory and dismissive terms like this one never ceases to amaze me. I guess that’s my problem. I should be used to it by now.

But if we can’t even get other women to stop describing serious women and serious events with a vocabulary that can only diminish and mock us, how will we ever get the likes of Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, or the whole team at Fox News to stop referring to us as “bitchy” and “castrating?”

If any of you run into Christy Hoppe at the DNC, let her know I’d like to have a word with her. I just hope that she doesn’t run into Gloria Steinem or Nancy Pelosi first. That just won’t be pretty.

(Cross-posted from PunditMom.)