Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

September 17, 2004

Let's also be sure to thank Congresswomen Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), who offered the successful amendment reinstating $3 million to WEEA, which promotes educational equity for girls and women and provides funds to help schools meet Title IX requirements. Okay, granted, $3 million is a far cry short of the money truly needed to eliminate sexism in the schools—but hey, it's better'n nothing! In particular, WEEA funding has helped to combat sexual harassment, incorporate girls' and women's experiences into textbooks and learning materials, advance girls and women in math and science, and aid in keeping pregnant teenagers in school. (We will certainly need more help with this last item in the future, thanks to the brilliance and foresight of that oxymoronic concept "abstinence-only sex education.")

On the darker side of this week's news, the increasingly-daring "citizenship for fetuses" movement took a bold step in Oklahoma. Theresa Hernandez, arrested and charged with first-degree murder for using drugs while pregnant, which prosecutors allege caused her stillbirth, now faces possible life imprisonment. Ignore for now the glaring double standard of putting a woman who used drugs while pregnant in jail for life while domestic abusers who rape, beat, or even kill those they claim to love get an average of 2-6 years. Focus, instead, on the dangerous precedent this case could set: The Oklahoma county D.A., Wes Case, as much as admitted that this is a test case, saying: "We've been wanting to do this with a number of people. This has been needing to happen for a long time" (emphasis mine). What else NEEDS TO HAPPEN, Wes? What if a pregnant woman takes prescription medication and her baby is stillborn—is that also first-degree murder? How much is too much? What if she has one glass of wine? Who gets to decide what she can and cannot do while pregnant? George W. Bush? Heaven help us all.

In other news this week, the "Successfully Stating the Obvious" Award goes to the Department of Labor, which recently found that women still spend about twice as much time as men on household chores and taking care of children. A new study finds that almost as many women as men hold jobs (78 percent of women compared with 85 percent of men), but 67 percent of women prepare meals and do housework on an average day, compared with only 19 percent of men who say they do housework and 34 percent who help with meals or cleanup. And the average working woman spends nearly twice as much time taking care of children as the average working man. Surprised? (I wasn't.) What the study failed to note is that in addition to working the "second shift" of extra caretaking and household chores, working women still face unequal pay, making only 76 cents for each dollar men make. More work, less pay … something sure doesn't add up!

Lest we forget that our lives, health, safety, equality, and reproductive choices hang in the balance of a swiftly-approaching election, let me close this column by offering a brief note to John Kerry: WAKE UP!

The New York Times recently reported that George W. Bush boosted his poll numbers by "articulating the issues in a way that appeals to women." Overall, women have been favoring Kerry by about 5 percentage points, but Bush's recent jump in the polls came mostly from cutting into that lead among female voters. A Times op-ed by Lance Tarrance and Leslie Sanchez states that Bush's speech was "the culmination of a studied, nuanced effort"—which, unfortunately, seems to be working. At the root of this approach lie fear-mongering and a cynical attempt to appear compassionate; at one point toward the end of his speech at the Republican National Convention, Bush said of the soldiers who have died in Iraq, with as much depth of emotion as he could muster: "I've held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom." Such a statement may pull at the heartstrings—until one remembers to ask the obvious question: "Who sent them to Iraq, Mr. President? And what did they die for?" Let's see him "compassionize" that one.

Women voters—and especially this election's big swing group, unmarried women—are smart, but they are being targeted by Bush and ignored by Kerry. It's time for the Kerry campaign to court women's votes—at least as much as the Bush campaign does.

Overall, the recent news feels eerily familiar: studies finding that women do more work for less pay, political parties ignoring women's issues and manipulating our votes, attempts to treat women as baby machines instead of autonomous individuals, and even the victories are repeats. We've managed (again) to strike down an unconstitutional ban on our reproductive freedoms. We've fought (again!) to get our paltry funding to uphold a law from 1972 mandating gender equality in the schools. Some days I feel like we're the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, having to run faster and faster just to stay in one place!