EDUCATIONAL EQUITY

Attack on Equality: Department of Education Pushes Sex-Segregated Schools

In what may be a preliminary step toward weakening Title IX's requirements for equal educational opportunities, the Bush administration is proceeding with a solicitation for comments about single-sex schools and classes in public education. In the May 8 Federal Register (34 CFR Part 106, page 31098) Notice of Intent to Regulate, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) called for public comments about its intention to modify regulations implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 "to provide more flexibility for educators to establish single-sex classrooms and schools at the elementary and secondary levels."

This initiative is a follow-up to a provision, sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), inserted in the Better Education for Students and Teachers Act (later becoming H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Second Education Act of 1965) that permits educational institutions that receive federal aid to provide for single-sex schools and classrooms, "if comparable educational opportunities are offered for students of both sexes." Sen. Hutchison had tried for several years to get such an amendment adopted, but was vigorously opposed by feminists and several prominent education associations. A compromise wording that specifies "comparable educational opportunities" was agreed upon, although many felt that this would still be problematic. Comparable, the critics pointed out, is not equal.

The DOE move was immediately criticized by numerous women's rights leaders, including NOW President Kim Gandy who termed it a giant step backward in the struggle for girls' and women's equality. Gandy and others noted that sex segregation in schools has not been shown to produce better outcomes than coeducation and there are numerous examples of sex-segregated schools where resources for girls are inferior to those offered to boys. Additionally, women’s rights advocates assert that boys and girls must learn together so that boys and young men can come to accept women in leadership roles. Single-sex classrooms and schools are artificial environments that do not reflect real world conditions that students will ultimately encounter.

Additionally, opponents of sex-segregated education note that the Constitution and Title IX currently permit schools to offer single-sex programs or classes in certain limited circumstances (e.g. physical education involving contact sports and human sexuality classes) and when a compensatory educational gain cannot be made any other way.

The attack on Title IX's equal education mandate is linked to years of well-orchestrated efforts to undermine equal spending requirements for girls' and boys' athletic programs and both should be firmly opposed. Although DOE is seeking comment on the idea of sex-segregated schools and classrooms, it has not yet issued any concrete proposal for amending the Title IX regulations. NOW is submitting comments and will continue to closely monitor developments. We anticipate that an actual proposed regulation will be announced soon, which will give us another opportunity for comment. Supplementary information is available at http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/proprule/2002-2/050802a.html

For the 30th anniversary of Title IX, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ("HELP") Committee held a hearing on June 27 at which it reviewed a progress report, "Title IX at 30." Former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), the author of Title IX, led off the witness list which also included Education Secretary Rod Paige, former president of the Women's Sports Foundation Nancy Hogshead-Makar, and Art Coleman, former deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

Coinciding with publicity around the Bush administration's push for single-sex education, the National Women's Law Center released its report on Title IX at 30 years, with contributions made by several organizations including NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). The report evaluates gains made since Title IX's adoption by schools in improving instruction and other resources for girls and young women, noting that while great strides have been made, much remains to be done. More information and copies can be obtained through their web site at http://www.nwlc.org.

More information about Title IX, including its history, can be found at the University of Iowa's Gender Equity and Sports page. In addition, the AAUW web site contains references to various studies conducted over the last 15 years that document continuing needs for improvement in educational opportunities for girls and young women.

Finally, on June 6, the National Coalition of Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE), in which NOW is a member organization, announced findings of widespread sex discrimination in high school vocational and technical education programs in 12 states, as detailed in a report by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). Predictably, girls were found to be clustered in courses that trained for lower-paying jobs like child care and cosmetology, while boys far outnumbered girls in technology and trades courses. As a result of this information, the NWLC has filed petitions requesting formal Title IX investigations.

Post Script: the Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA), adopted in 1974 to support development of educational materials and practices to counter sex-stereotyping, was very nearly cut from H.R. 1, The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Pressure from feminists and education groups late last year saved WEEA from the Republican chopping block. WEEA has funded more than 750 programs at all levels to assist girls who face multiple forms of discrimination based on sex, race, limited English proficiency and other factors.

Take Action: Check our web site for updated information about Title IX issues—and sign up for our action alerts. We will alert activists when any new Title IX regulation is announced and aid activists in communicating with the Bush administration about the need to maintain strong Title IX requirements for equal education.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Good News! Contraceptive Equity Will Be Taken Up By Senate

Finally, after five years of activist pressure on Congress, the Equity in Prescription Insurance Contraceptive Coverage Act, EPICC (S. 104) will be marked up in the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee when the Senate returns from the July 4 recess. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) will offer EPICC as an amendment to a more comprehensive women’s health care bill that the committee has developed. As 13 of the 21 committee members (all Democratic members plus Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and John Warner of Virginia) are co-sponsors of EPICC, chances are good that the measure will go to the floor and be adopted.

However, as soon as Senate reproductive rights opponents heard about the pending action, they filed a number of hostile amendments to EPICC and the women's health care bill. These moves reveal the extreme nature of opposition to women's reproductive health that dominates Republican membership in both the Senate and the House. That elected officials in 2002 would actually oppose improved access to contraception and attempt to restrict legislation addressing women's health care needs is absolutely unacceptable and these individuals must be made aware that a majority of the public does not agree with them.

Passage of EPICC is important because three-fourths of women who utilize contraception rely on private, employer-provided insurance which often denies coverage for prescription contraception. Nineteen states have enacted similar contraception equity laws in the last five years and both a federal court and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have ruled that denial of coverage is illegal sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Action Needed: Please contact your senators now and ask them to support passage of the Equity in Prescription Insurance Contraceptive Coverage bill when it comes to a floor vote. Stress that denial of coverage by insurance companies when they cover other prescription drugs and devices is illegal sex discrimination. Go to NOW's web site at http://www.now.org/congress where your message to both senators can be sent automatically, or call their offices by dialing the Capitol operator at (202) 225-3121 and asking for each senator. Here is what you can say:

I strongly urge you to promote bringing S. 104, the Equity in Prescription Insurance Contraceptive Coverage Act, to a floor vote as soon as the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee completes its work on the legislation. Denial of coverage for prescription contraception is illegal sex discrimination and we need a clear statement from Congress that insurance companies must cover contraceptives just as they cover other prescription drugs and devices. Millions of women are looking for leadership in the Senate to rectify this long-standing inequity.

More Good News: Senate May Force Release of UNFPA Funds

The Senate approved a FY 02 Supplemental Appropriations bill in early June that requires the administration to release U.S. funds for the U.N. family planning program. George W. Bush froze the $34 million in funding in January, even though Congress passed a bipartisan agreement to fund the program. He did so in response to pressure from anti-reproductive rights extremist Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) who claimed—groundlessly, as investigations have shown—that UNFPA funds are used for coercive abortions in China. UNFPA provides reproductive health services, not including abortion. A House-Senate conference committee met prior to the July 4 recess to negotiate differing versions of the supplemental bill, although no word has been received on whether a compromise was reached; the House bill has no provision on the frozen UNFPA funds.

And, Finally, Senate Repeals Abortion Ban for Military

By a vote of 52 to 40, the Senate approved on June 21 an amendment offered by Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) repealing the ban on abortions provided at U.S. military hospitals overseas. This was the first abortion rights measure in two years to be passed by the Senate; a similar amendment offered in May on the House floor by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) nearly succeeded (202-215).

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. military women and female dependents are prohibited from obtaining abortions at overseas military hospitals, even if they use their own funds. They must resort to using local hospitals and clinics where abortion may be unsafe or even illegal. Details of this hardship were outlined in a briefing with former military health care providers testifying about the difficulties women have encountered in developing countries.

An analysis of the increasing trend of penalizing U.S. service women appears on the web site of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy at http://www.crlp.org/pub_fac_military.html.

NOW, the Bad News: Vaginal Abortion Procedures Ban Re-Introduced

By the time you receive this Legislative Update, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution will likely have taken up a renewed effort to ban a range of vaginal abortion procedures—deceptively called "partial-birth" abortions (H.R. 4965, The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2002, sponsored by Republican Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio). The proposed law imposes criminal penalties of up to two years in prison, plus fines, for physicians who perform the banned procedures. It also gives a civil damages remedy against the abortion provider to the woman's husband and parents. House abortion rights opponents candidly admit they hope the legislation will be an effective "wedge" issue that will help them in the fall 2002 elections. Slim anti-abortion rights majorities in the House passed similar abortion ban bills in 1996, 1997 and 2000, while the Senate has voted on the issue three times. President Clinton vetoed such bills twice—both in election years.

Underscoring the political motivations of the bill's promoters, the language of H.R. 4965 contains obvious constitutional flaws. In Carhart v. Stenberg the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law because it failed to provide an exception to preserve a woman’s health and because by banning a range of safe, common procedures it unconstitutionally burdened a woman's right to have an abortion. The current bill similarly bans a range of procedures—early, mid-term and late-term abortions—and lacks an adequate exception to preserve the woman's health.

Action Needed: As this legislation may be brought to the floor before the House recesses for the month of August, activists should communicate with their House member now. It is especially important to communicate with your representative if she/he is a freshman who may know very little about this clearly unconstitutional bill. There are even some abortion rights supporters in the House who are under the impression that the legislation would affect only late-term pregnancies—which is simply not true. Please tell your representative:

I urge you to oppose H.R. 4965, the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2002. The bill's language covers a range of early, mid-term and late-term abortion procedures and lacks an adequate exception that would protect the health of the woman. Such a ban is an outrageous intrusion on women's constitutional right to abortion, threatens women's health and undermines doctor-patient privacy and sound medical practice.

Schumer Clinic Violence Amendment Holds Up Bankruptcy Bill

The only issue dividing House-Senate conferees on bankruptcy "reform" legislation (S. 833) is an amendment offered by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to close the loophole that currently allows the ringleaders of anti-abortion clinic violence to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying fines and civil damages. Long-time abortion rights opponent Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) continues to fight adoption of the amendment while Sen. Schumer remains steadfast in support of the provision (which was adopted in the Senate by a vote of 80-17). Hyde insists that only those fines and civil damages related to "willful and malicious acts" should be dischargeable—a baffling caveat since clinic violence is in itself willful and malicious. More likely, Hyde’s strategy is to wear down conferees on both sides so they will ultimately agree to jettison the Schumer amendment and pass the final conference report.

NOW and other reproductive rights organizations endorsed an advertisement in the June 6 issue of the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, urging retention of the Schumer amendment. At the same time, we believe that overall the bankruptcy bill is a regressive measure that weakens protections for individuals and strengthens banking and credit card interests. More than 200,000 women owed past due child support would be negatively affected as financial institutions take their place in line for payment right alongside the debtors' kids. The bill would also make it much harder for those devastated by a crisis such as catastrophic illness, divorce or domestic violence to reorganize their debts, according to Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren writing in the New York Times. Professor Warren sounded an early warning three years ago that proposed changes in bankruptcy law would be harmful to women and low income families.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Senate Holds Long-Awaited CEDAW Hearing

On June 13, the Senate Democrats kept a promise and held a hearing on the U.N. Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Chair of a Foreign Relations subcommittee on international organizations, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), spearheaded the effort by all the women senators (except Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison., R-Texas) to organize the hearing and serve as chair for the event.

Full committee chair Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del) said that action on the treaty is long overdue, having been first signed and submitted to the Senate by President Carter in 1980. (We should take this opportunity to note that the Democrats basically ignored it for a dozen years or so.) Biden continued that in 1994, the committee approved the treaty by a vote of 13-5, but the measure did not go to a floor vote. Biden then outlined how the current Bush administration—despite saying the treaty was "generally desirable and should be approved"—foot-dragged on providing witnesses for the hearing. Reportedly, the Department of Justice is still reviewing the treaty and considering whether more conditions (Reservations, Declarations and Understandings, or RDUs) should be attached.

Currently, a series of these RDUs, as they are called, are appended to CEDAW, in effect saying that the U.S. does not have to pass or amend any of its laws to align itself with components of the treaty (See the analysis by NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund/Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights.)

Sen. Biden noted that CEDAW will impose a minimal burden by emphasizing that "the U.S. Constitution and existing federal laws will satisfy the obligations of the treaty." In other words, the effect of the RDUs would be to render CEDAW primarily a symbolic measure that will enhance the U.S.'s ability to promote women's rights around the world and may even move Congress and the states to pass laws and change policies that will ensure women's equality under the law in the U.S. NOW has repeatedly called on the Senate to pass CEDAW without any unnecessary RDUs.

For more information, go to The Baha'i Faith web page. Senators' positions on CEDAW can be found at Amnesty International. Hundreds of organizations support U.S. ratification of the treaty, including Amnesty International, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL, American Bar Association, Family Violence Prevention Fund, National Education Association, Baha'i of the United States and the National Council of Women's Organizations, of which NOW is a member organization. The Concerned Women for American, a right-wing lobbying group, opposes CEDAW, saying it promotes prostitution and denounces Mothers' Day (!).

Action Needed: The Bush administration needs pressure from CEDAW supporters to take a pro-active stance in ratifying the treaty. Activists have pointed out that a U.S. embrace of CEDAW is one way of supporting women in Afghanistan. Because the president and Laura Bush have both advocated recognition of women's rights in Afghanistan, this would send a strong message that the U.S. will back women's rights around the world, including in the U.S. Please call the White House and leave a message on the comment line at (202) 456-1111.

ECONOMIC EQUITY

Much Improved Welfare Bill To Be Introduced in Senate

On June 26, the Senate Finance Committee adopted a conceptual welfare reauthorization bill, the Work Opportunity and Responsibility for Kids (WORK) Act of 2002 (there is no bill number as yet) and instructed committee staff to finalize legislative language. An outline of the bill indicates that a number of important improvements over the punitive House bill (H.R. 4737) are being made. Chief among these is a reduction in the number of required work hours—30 per week as opposed to the 40 work hours the House wants to require of 70% of the welfare caseload by 2007. Also, the Senate legislation would extend TANF benefits and Medicaid coverage to the children of legal immigrants—benefits denied them under the 1996 act. Additionally, the Finance Committee bill will contain more funding for child care at $5.5 billion (compared to the House's $2 billion) for the five-year period. A number of senators argued that even $5.5 billion is not enough for child care and, in fact, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) voted against the committee bill for that reason. The bill also gives more latitude to TANF recipients to attend school and obtain vocational training. Unfortunately, the Senate bill, like the House version, contains wasteful and insulting marriage promotion provisions loved by right-wing fathers' rights organizations. A detailed summary of the WORK bill's components will be provided in an upcoming NOW Special Report on Welfare Reauthorization.

As staff is working on the exact language of the bill, not all aspects of the legislation are clear. But a number of very positive provisions that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, has advocated may be included. Sen. Kennedy forwarded legislative language to the Finance Committee on more than a dozen aspects of TANF reauthorization that would, among other things, require states to screen and provide special services for persons with barriers (disabilities, illiteracy, etc.), provide for improved data collection, allow for at-home infant care, oppose a super-waiver provision that would allow states to ignore wage and hour laws and other important federal protections. Several aspects of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund's BOB working group bill (the TANF Reauthorization Act, H.R. 3113), sponsored by Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) may be included in Sen. Kennedy’s package. About two dozen senators have indicated their support for Sen. Kennedy's more moderate approach by signing onto a letter sent to the Senate Finance Committee earlier in June.

Republican senators are taking their cues from Republican governors who have gotten into line to push a punitive welfare bill as a gesture of support for George W. Bush. The Republican leadership bill, S. 2648, the Working Towards Independence Act of 2002, offered by Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.), with 13 co-sponsors, essentially mirrors the punitive House version. Bush reportedly is ready to push hard on Senators to pass his bill. This comes despite the fact that states will be hard-pressed to see that more TANF recipients are placed in work activities while they are receiving fewer federal funds and dealing with their own state budget crises.

POST SCRIPT: NOW and other anti-poverty activists held a ZAP Action in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on June 17 to emphasize the need for education, training and child care for TANF recipients. Other organizations plan to hold lobby days, press conferences and demonstrations throughout the summer. Originally, Congressional leaders said that they wanted to have a TANF reauthorization bill passed by the August recess. But many other issues are crowding the agenda, not least of which are numerous budget bills that must be considered. Observers expect that the TANF bill will not go to a floor vote until after Labor Day.

Other divisive issues are on the table as Republicans and Democrats are looking for election year themes to catch voters' attention; among these—prescription drugs for seniors, Social Security privatization, anti-terrorism initiatives, more tax cuts for the wealthy, etc. Furthermore, George W. Bush is reported to have said in late June that welfare reauthorization may "spill over" until next year because of the multitude of competing issues.

Action Needed: As noted, NOW will be providing a detailed summary of the Senate Finance Committee bill and offering weekly updates, with recommendations to activists. Your earlier assistance in contacting Democratic senators urging them to support the Kennedy package helped increase the base of support for a moderate bill and, in turn, influenced the Finance Committee's work. Thanks and stay tuned!

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Republicans Prevent Senate Floor Vote on Hate Crimes Bill

NOW and other supporters of the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEEA, S. 625) were disappointed when a procedural move to force action on the legislation failed on June 12, as Republicans blocked Democratic leaders' efforts to bring the bill to the Senate floor. The measure, which would expand federal legislation to include prohibitions against sex-based, sexual orientation-based and disability-based hate crimes and provide for other improvements, has passed the Senate twice in the last three years. Last year, the LLEA came close to adoption by the conference committee, but Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) ordered it stripped from the final bill.