National NOW Times >> Fall 2008  >> Article

What the Next President Can Do for Women and Girls

By Kim Gandy, NOW President

I was asked recently to write a chapter on "Women" for an upcoming Institute for Policy Studies book about what the next U.S. president needs to do for the country. Each chapter was to focus on five or six priorities.

Chapters were already assigned on Healthcare, Housing, Education, the Elderly, Poverty, Workers Rights, Family -- more than a dozen areas where women often are differently and disproportionately affected. A whole book, of course, could be written on policies for women, but we were limited to one chapter. Never one to turn down a challenge, I attempted to squeeze in as many issues as I could without covering topics that would be addressed elsewhere in the book.

So in that spirit, here's what the next president needs to do for women and girls:

1) The next president needs to Make Economic Equality a Priority. This includes promoting educational opportunity and workplace equality to increase the economic advancement of women. That means ensuring equal pay for work of equal value, expanding family and medical leave access, ending job segregation and educational segregation, enforcing Title IX and promoting the participation of women and girls in STEM fields, and of course making sure every parent has access to quality child care so that we can pursue those opportunities.

2) The next president needs to Make the Alleviation of Poverty a Priority. The administration must recognize that poor women and other vulnerable and underserved women are often left out of so-called "stimulus plans" and are trying to support themselves and their families at great odds. We need to repair the safety net and make sure every woman has a clear path to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

3) The next president needs to Make Universal Single-Payer Healthcare a Priority. We call on the administration to acknowledge that reproductive health care is primary care for women. Full coverage of those services must be guaranteed, including pre-natal and maternal care, birth control, emergency contraception and abortion, for women at every age and every income level. We must provide for mental health parity in healthcare, and recognize that our mental health is every bit as important as our physical health. Of particular importance to women who live longer and are our nation's caregivers are provisions for long term care, elder care and home care.

4) The next president needs to Make Ending Violence Against Women a Priority. The U.S. must take a leadership position in the effort to end violence against women and girls; we must increase anti-violence funding, and hold public and private leaders accountable for enforcing zero tolerance for violence -- and we must do our part on a global scale to protect women from the violence of child marriage, bride burning, honor killing, genital mutilation, rape as an instrument of war, and so much more.

5) The next president needs to Make Validating Women's Civil and Human Rights a Priority. These rights include the right to be free from discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion, disability, immigration status, parenthood, sexual orientation or identity. One key step is to make certain that we have a judiciary that will ensure and protect all of these rights. We must include women in the United States Constitution, so that our rights are not subject to the whims of any Congress or presidential administration, and we must join the rest of the world in ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

6) The next president needs to Make it a Priority to Change Societal Attitudes that stereotype and constrain women and girls, including denouncing the sexism and "soft hate speech" on the airwaves, in classrooms and workplaces, and on city streets, that targets and demeans women.

We expect this and so much more from the next president. And you can count on NOW to be loud, clear and unrelenting in our call.