Tag: politics

American Politics: Why the Continuing Democrat Contest is a Good Thing

People say it’s bad. Pick up a newspaper, that says it’s bad. turn on a TV, that says it’s bad. But seriously folks, when is the last time the mass media said anything even remotely accurate about progressives in America? (I hear crickets chirping).
First of all, why not ask the voters in states with late primaries? I bet they’re not unhappy to be making important votes. I bet they’re pleased as heck. For years, everybody only cares about New Hampshire. Now, suddenly, somebody is paying attention to them! More democracy is good! Let the late voters have their say.
Secondly, Clinton and Obama are vying for the Democratic vote. If the Democratic nominee were already selected, ze would be vying for the mythical swing voter. Or worse, Republican voters. Instead, the Democratic candidates are forced to talk about issues that actually matter to their party. They have to define themselves in opposition to each other, not just as slightly less-bad Republicans.
There are more Democrats than Republicans in America. If you look at party registration, you can see that. If you go out as a pollster and start asking people, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” the gap gets really wide, more than 10%. Most people don’t vote. A huge number of eligible voters aren’t registered. But, even unregistered, they consider them selves to be Democrats. It’s sad. Why don’t they vote? Well, in a normal election cycle, their issues are completely ignored in the mad rush for swing voters. Why should they vote if they get offered nothing?
So, suddenly, the left exists. The left’s issues exist. The majority of people in America suddenly exist. Clinton and Obama are forced to talk about issues important to the left. And as this drags on, they become associated with their pledges to the left. They can’t just suddenly forget about us. We made them address the Pentagon’s illegal domestic disinformation campaign to sell the war. Every issues that they address, which McCain ignores, that’s an issue that they well might have stayed silent on. And maybe they force him to address it. The political discourse in America is being pulled in a direction which appeals to Democrats.
I hope this goes all the way up to the convention. I hope they have to keep paying attention to the party they represent all the way through it, through November, through two terms in office. Progressive issues matter! Progressive issues are vital to the health of the country and the planet.
Of course, I write all this from a distant land, where I don’t get inundated with it. But every time I see the candidates jockeying for progressive votes I smile. And then I change the channel.

Edit

Nevermind. Arg. This is why I don’t pay attention. And moved across an ocean.

Let’s Ditch Having Legal Sexes

Why does the government legally assign me a sex? What’s it used for? As far as I can tell, it’s only used to discriminate against me. It says I can’t go into certain toilets. (Yes, right now, I break the law every time I use a public restroom and I could theoretically be arrested.) It says I can’t marry my girlfriend. (Unfortunately, she says the same thing, but that’s beside the point.) I can’t see any advantages to assigning people a legal sex. It adds a false veneer of legality to anti-queer discrimination, and that’s it.
Of course, certain forms of discrimination actually are illegal, and rightly so, but this designator is not required to advance complaints against discrimination. In fact, it hinders them by narrowing the focus of laws. Religious discrimination is illegal in the United States. The government does not ask every citizen to officially file their religion. One does not need to file paperwork with the government (nor pass a psychiatric evaluation) in order to change churches or forego them altogether. And, correspondingly, the laws regarding religious discrimination spread in all directions. A Christian can be penalized for creating a hostile work environment for a Jew and vice versa.
Some European governments do require their citizens to file their religion. These countries are not secular. Many of them have current major problems with official, legal discrimination against religious minorities. Historically, France used to collect such information, even as they changed to becoming officially secular. This data turned out to be very useful to to the Vichy government and therefore was a great help to the Nazis. France no longer collects such information, even anonymized.
So legally assigning people religions has never been used to advance greater rights than they would otherwise have. But, oh boy, has it been used to advance oppression.
In the US, citizens no longer have a legal race. Of course, there are situations where race is used for legal determinations, such as for affirmative action programs. Most racial minorities are not so-called “invisible minorities.” So, for the most part, the lack of a specific legal definition doesn’t really matter. Somebody looks black, they say they are on their college applications and they face racial profiling while driving their car in certain neighborhoods. The lack of a legal race registration does not change their experience. Nor does it hinder nor advance their ability to sue for redress when they face discrimination.
There are situations where somebody might not look like their listed race. Somebody has black parents but is extremely light skinned. They still qualify for affirmative action because their family faced discrimination and this trickles down to the current generation. Their family has less money now because of redlining 50 years ago. They land they lost to a lynching party 70 years ago is still lost.
When US states collected information on race, this light skinned black person would be breaking the law if they used certain bathrooms. Of it they married a person of a different legal race. Now they’re an invisible minority. They can ID how they’d like and their children can ID how they’d like. They can seek redress for past wrongs through affirmative action programs or they can not. Having a legal race would not advance their freedom, but historically, it’s been used to hinder it.
And now we have legal sexes. It makes it illegal to use certain bathrooms. It prevents us from marrying certain people. It helps me how?? It creates stupid situations where courts attempt to determine if it’s still sexual harassment if both parties are legally male. It creates situations where sex discrimination is ok and legal if the victim is presenting as a different sex then their legally assigned one. It impedes full participation and equal rights for all because it legally privileges cisgender people. Yet, it gives them no additional protections, by which I mean they would lose no rights if we got rid of it. Heck, most people’s lives wouldn’t change at all. Except for transgender people, male victims of sexual harassment and abuse and everybody else who gets told that their problems don’t matter and that they shouldn’t exist. And loving same sex couples. The gay marriage fight would evaporate. So let’s get rid of those letters on our drivers licences and ID cards. If somebody needs to report us missing, they can still describe us as white males, black females, etc, and we still have the right to lay claims to those terms. But we can marry whomever we want. Wouldn’t that be better?

Racism vs Sexism: This is not a Contest!!

I’ve talked before about why I like Obama. It was mostly emotional. He talks about the future. He links it with the civil rights struggles of the past. He invokes destiny and progress in nifty ways. A big component of this is that he stays positive. His charisma is a whole big ball of being positive.
When he gave a speech on MLK day talking about the need for queer equality, that was a strong statement and it was specifically against the queerphobia found in some black churches. But it was positive all the way. He’s a uniter. Emotionally, he tells folks they’re wrong without ever telling them that they’re wrong. It’s like he’s got a great big tent set up and keeps inviting people in. And he’s not telling folks that they’re wrong as much as he’s asking them to scoot over a bit to make some room for the new folks coming into the tent.
I wish everybody on the Democratic side would stay positive. Not just the candidates, but everybody. When pundits or whoever try to frame this as white women against black men, that especially gets my hackles up. Sexism and racism are related. It’s not meaningful to argue about which is worse. Historically, advances for People of Color have been linked with advances for women. The same folks who worked to end slavery worked on suffrage. Many of the same folks who worked in the civil rights movement worked in the women’s rights movement.
Ok, not everybody who is anti-racist is anti-sexist. And not every feminist anti-racist. That second case is getting a lot of attention right now. White, second wave feminists tended to ignore black women’s issues and write about white women as if all women were white. Some of these folks are writing op-eds now that have this same problem and it’s incredibly annoying. Gloria Steinem wrote a piece that, yikes, I wish she hadn’t written it. Unfortunately, though, when folks react to this kind of op-ed, well, their reactions can be problematic too. Instead of arguing with the specific author or even the school of thought of the author or even second wave feminism in general, they paint with a broader brush. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to blame all of second wave feminism. There were influential and important black women in the movement. And, with a broader brush, I really don’t think it’s fair to blame all feminism. Third wave feminists are specifically anti-racist and feature more contributions of POC writers and also tend not to see things solely in terms of white vs black. (Shockingly, there are additional races in America.) I know third wave feminism has it’s own problems which will probably seem glaring in a generation, but right now, there’s a conscious effort to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, especially in regards to racism and homophobia, etc. Going yet another step further, it’s really, really unfair to blame white women in general as a group.
There are pundits on TV that start talking about white women as if they’re a homegenius group of suburban, middle class soccer moms, all implicitly or explicitly racist. Many of these pundits are white men! Yo! Get off the high ground, Mr. Chauvinist Pig! Right, contrary to what many seem to think, white women vary in age from 18 to over 100. They vary in income from grinding poverty to extreme wealth. They live in rural areas, in the city, in the suburbs. Not all of them are, will be, or want to be moms, soccer or not. Not all are straight. Not all are cisgender. So white, male pundits, complaining about racism, treat white women as a big group of identical, interchangeable, (not quite) people. Ironic!
The brilliant part about this is that it lets white men off the hook. Who profits when the disadvantaged fight each other instead of the advantaged?
So, can we all stop arguing about whether racism is “worse” than sexism or vice versa? They’re different beasts! But they serve the same purpose of maintaining inequality and keeping the rulers up top. Instead, let’s talk about who is going to help the most.
Position-wise, Obama and Clinton are pretty much identical on feminist issues. I don’t want to cal them “women’s issues,” because it’s kind of foolish to assume that these issues only effect women. If abortion is illegal, that increases unwanted fatherhood, not just unwanted motherhood. Every man that’s tied economically to a women gets hurt by income inequality. Heterosexual men don’t bear many of the direct costs of sexism, but they bear costs. Feminist issues are good for everybody, not just for women. And Obama and Clinton are both great on feminist issues. A single-issue voter can go for either of them and end up doing well policy-wise. Of course, somebody who actually IS a woman, well, if I were a single-issue voter, that would push it over the edge for me.
But, position-wise, Obama and Clinton are not equal on race issues. An anti-racist, single-issue voter would pick Obama.
There are a lot of reasons to back Clinton. There are a lot of reasons to back Obama. There are other policy differences,although not overly many. How about we keep it positive, eh? And can we lay off white women? (If we start in on sexist black men . . . .oy, let’s not do that.)

Public Service Announcement

For all of you who switched your registration to vote on Super Tuesday, don’t forget to switch back to the Green Party. We need you to stay on the ballot, not just in national races, where maybe voting Green isn’t s useful, but in local races. We’ve got folks in state legislatures. We almost got mayor of San Francisco. Stay Green!

A Stopped Clock . . . ?

Embedded Video
I just want to re-iterate that I think Obama is the best candidate.
Um, and also that I kind of secretly like Anne Coulter. Most of the things she says and does are kind of dumbed down, like all of her recent books. But her first book was solid, even if evil. And I think her analysis here is actually right. Goodness.Blogged with Flock

Obama

I just watched the Obama victory speech. Commentary below the embedded content.

transcript here

Damn, that man can talk! When he started with, “You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high.” my gods, he brought tears to my eyes. I’m not registered Democrat, but if I were, I’d vote for him.
A few days before Christmas, I went to Cody’s Books in Berkeley and there were some older white women selling hats and scarves that they’d knit. They were raising money for Obama. Even in Berkeley, this is unusual. I stopped to talk to them and asked them why they were voting for him. They couldn’t really say. One of them talked about how she felt after his speech at the Democratic Convention 4 years ago. She said she thought, “why aren’t we running him?!” Which is exactly what I thought at the time.
It’s hard to immediately pin down what’s so completely compelling about Obama. My girlfriend says he has Jedi mind powers. He has an emotional appeal more than a logical one. But I think the logical one is there. Even though he’s not the most left candidate. That title belongs to the (now Nader-esque) Kucinich or maybe Edwards, who lost last time and who looked silly debating Cheney.
Obama is compelling because he is the 21st century. We’re supposed to have flying cars and wear silver clothes and all be fabulously wealthy. This is what we were promised in the Jettsons. But instead we got terrorist attacks and fear and war and poverty and politicians apparently nostalgic for the 19th century. We got leaders who seemed to think the centuries tick backwards instead of forwards.
Obama instead invokes the struggles of the past, especially the civil rights struggles and paints himself as the next logical step in that progression. He is forwards where Bush was backwards. There were those who -trapped in the past – said this day would never come. But it has come. The future is now.
And as he talks about hope and universal healthcare and employing scientists to solve problems, he’s talking about the shiny future that we wanted. The one where we can watch videos on our laptops and not have to worry about facing foreclosure because our kid got sick.

[Y]ears from now, when we’ve made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children — when Malia and Sasha and your children inherit a planet that’s a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, you’ll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.

I want a flying (carbon neutral) car. I want scientists making the world a better place. I want the mythology of America, the one where anybody of nay race can be president, to be true. I want the mythology of America, the one where we do good things in the world, to be true. I want the mythology of America, the one where we work hard and it pays off and things get better, to be true. Not only is Obama promising all that, he is all that. The first black man to win a primary caucus. He embodies all of our positive mythology and our hopes for the future. He is reaching out and grabbing a mantle that we all want somebody to seize, like Arthur drawing Excalibur from a rock.
That’s his emotional appeal. That’s more than a Jedi mind trick, that’s a combination of everything that can be good that politicians say.
I don’t know how he is from a policy wonk perspective. In some sense, it doesn’t matter as much. Nobody implements that platform that they campaign on this early. If all he has now are broad, general ideas, that’s all he needs now. What he can actually implement and what he will do come from a few factors including how willing congress is to work with him and how willing he is to respond to constituents. His record is good on both counts.
He’ll be Clinton-esque, like Bill was. He’ll say that he feels our pain and we’ll believe him. He’ll triangulate and take credit for popular but bad conservative ideas. He’ll bomb Kosovo, but we’ll think he meant well. I never thought I’d miss Bill Clinton, but I do. And this guy is the closest thing to that that we’ve got. And when he says that if he wins, it will be profoundly huge and wonderful for America, he’s right. It will be profoundly huge. It will make some of our most noble mythology become prophesy. We’ll be as good as we said we were.
This is a guy who can win and should win. Somebody trying to bring us forwards. I want my flying cars. I want Obama in 2008.

Writing my congress people

Dear Honorable –,

I’m writing because I want American immigration to be the best, most navigable process that it can be.

I’ve been studying in Europe the last couple of years and as I try to get student visa number three for country number three, I sometimes feel very frustrated. Some countries explain things very clearly, and some do not. Some seem to operate more or less at the whim of the official with whom I am speaking and others have clearly defined processes. Some are flexible and reasonable and others are legalistic to the point of absurdity.

The immigration process creates my first impression of what life in these countries will be like. It reflects the culture and the national character and showcases the strengths and weaknesses of their systems. The consulates and immigration offices are reflections of their nations – a miniaturization of what I can expect to encounter during my period of study.

Therefore, I would expect the American immigration process to be similarly a reflection of American culture. We see ourselves as friendly, fair and efficient and our process should be the same. However, when I speak to other students who have studied in the US, this is not what they report. The system they describe is so frustrating that some of them quit their studies there rather than struggle with it further. I feel guilty complaining about how I’ve been stymied in my attempts to get my paperwork in order, when the stories I hear coming from my own country are so much worse.

We have some of the best universities in the world. They retain their reputation by being able to attract students from all over the world. What’s more, cultural exchange is extremely valuable for everyone involved. Those who travel abroad are made richer by the experience and those who study at home gain wider perspective from their foreign classmates.

By rights, America should have the best immigration process in the world. We have the best schools. We’re a nation of immigrants. We’ve got a lot of pat practice to draw on. I’m saddened that it’s not the case.

Please, let’s make our consulates and immigration offices reflect the very best of our culture. At the very least, let’s make it so I can whine without my fellow students rolling their eyes.

Threats and Bombs and Whatnot

Three exploding cars in two days? what’s going on in the UK? Maybe knighting Rushdie was a bit more politically charged than they guessed it would be. (English speakers worldwide are always totally aware of the sensibilities of other cultures and how things might rankle them. As is France Soir)

London is like 2 hours by train from Birmingham. By contrast, Amsterdam is 40 minutes from where I live now and I still couldn’t manage to drag myself there this evening.
However, more worrisome are the threats and bombs placed by the US Supreme Court. Ok, so they’re metaphorical. But they have a much longer reach. Anti-trust laws? Who needs them? Yeah, I don’t see the court acting on corporate abuses any time soon. curses. That with campaign finance, which is closely linked, are probably the two most pressing issues in the US. Which will remain unaddressed or, indeed, worsen for the foreseeable future.
The court ran out of toilet paper in their official WC, but fortunately, the constitution was close by. Earl Warren is turning in his grave. I would rather him as the Chief Justice again, even if it was only feasable as a brain-eating zombie. “mmmmmurrrrrr ….. braaaaaiiiiins! riiights of accused! uuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrg!” Then he eats one of the court clerks. It’s sub-optimal, but at least he’ll have the right to appeal when he gets brought up on brain-eating charges.
We have maybe the worst president ever and the worst court in at least 80 years and that is a terrible combination. As congress makes feeble, timid attempts to rein in the Bush administration, the courts will undoubtedly end up involved. As we’re in the midst of a constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court will undoubtedly get involved. And side with monarchy. The congress can become decorational. sometimes required to rubber stamp things to add a seeming legitimacy. (Oh, wait, that’s their role now (gosh, I miss ‘gridlock’))
I want to know What In Hell is going on in the US? A town in the south is trying black kids for attempted murder after they shoved a racist white kid shortly after nooses were hung from a tree in warning? Have they fallen through a 50 year wormhole? There’s a best selling book called The South Was Right and it’s about the civil war?! The south explicitly said in their statements of sucession that they were splitting to preserve slavery. Slavery was right?? One of the republican front runners has a white supremacist high up in his campaign staff?
Let’s be clear here. All of the horrible stories of racism coming out of the US are also, often, blatantly sexist. People notice and comment on the racism. The sexism largely goes unnoticed. I bring this up to note that racism and sexism are very strongly linked, although racism is often more blunt and more violent, the two walk hand in hand as twins. White twin brothers.
Sometimes people ask me when I’m coming home again. I want to know where my home went. Dude, where’s my country? Even the Onion has gone right, “joking” this week that Moore’s new film lacks objective, balanced journalism. Muckracking may not be “balanced,” but that usually reflects a certain lack of ‘balance’ in the facts.
I’m not coming home until the majority of people are not even momentarily willing to consider that a system of chattel slavery was “right.” And acknowledge that people have a right to health care. One of the questions that used to bother me was, “how do you tell when it’s time to leave?” We all know the myth of the frog in slowly heating water, not knowing when to jump out. Well, the frog will jump out. The risk isn’t passively being cooked. The risk is waiting to jump out until after somebody puts the lid on the pan. Things that should invoke panic are: overturning of Miranda (protecting the rights of accused), overturning of Brown (ended school segregation) or overturning Lawrence and Garner v. Texas (the recent decision that struck down sodomy laws). If any of those go, make a run for the border.

Back from France

I’m back and I want to share all. I wasn’t sure where to start, especially since the trip ended much as it began: biking across Paris, towing a dog, trying to make a train connection. The second trip was a bit more hectic than the first because it involved a much farther away train station, a shorter time and a case of wine. Some Parisian yelled «Bravo!» as I struggled uphill across and intersection, trying to pick up speed to make the train on time. We had an hour and 5 minutes, two foldy bikes, a foldy trailer, dirty clothes, camping gear and the aforementioned dog and case of wine. And a medieval-style bugle that I bought in Orléans. 20 minutes to unfold everything. 20 minutes to bike from Montparnasse to Gare du Nord, 20 minutes to refold. I highly recommend sprinting across Paris with so many things, especially down the hill from the Sorbonne to the Seine.

We arrived in Paris the day of the election. The streets were crawling with Gendarmes, prepared for possible unrest following the results.
First stop, was the bakery near where my apartment used to be. God, they make the best bread in the world. First thing off my bike and I step in dog shit. Yay Paris. Some older French ladies approached me and spoke to me about my dog trailer. Maybe it was the nice weather. Maybe it was the expectant air around the election, but probably it was the dog. I almost never had conversations like that when I lived there.
The streets were full of flics and first-time roller bladers. At every corner, there were grim-looking cops in riot gear and young people on wheels desperately clinging to phone poles. Xena was trying desperately to escape her trailer as we slowly crossed the city. Nicole rode behind me, repeating “good dog!” over and over again. She said the scowling gendarmes broke into amused smiles as they spotted the dog.
We arrived in Orléans later that evening and went to the tourist office, which was closed. They also had cops everywhere. I tried to call the campground listed in the guidebook, but they didn’t answer their phone. Rather than ride the 5km to the campground with the risk of having to ride another 5 km back, we went to the Ibiss, a 2 star hotel chain in Europe, roughly equivalent to the Motel 6 in the US.
And everywhere I went that day, I head over and over «C’est un chien!» It’s a dog! but I felt very proud of myself when a kid added, «C’est genial!» That’s brilliant! indeed. My goal was to take my dog with me and avoid the hassle of trying to find a sitter, but I don’t mind amusing the French also.
Over dinner, I learned that Sarko had won. I hate that guy. He said several months ago that the (poor, immigrant) suburbs should be cleaned out with a pressure hose, a comment that contributed greatly to the riots that followed shortly thereafter, leaving many cars burned. His parents were immigrants! He’s like the Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas of France. In the time leading to the run off, he actively courted supporters of Le Pen, the ultra-right nationalist who adores Joan of Arc. Not because she was an awesome cross dresser who could place a cannon, but because she drove France’s foreign enemies out of France – you know, like um, immigrants. Because immigrants are totally against the country they want to live in (yeah, I hate France and want to destroy it). And Joan of Arc was not accompanied by a huge bunch of Scots who were also foreign and there to help her.
As I was walking back to the hotel, I heard whistling and shouts. A huge crowd of youths came up behind me on the Rue de Jeanne d’Arc. They had a bedsheet banner that had an anti-sarko slogan on it. Other folks were joining them as they marched. The joiners had their cell phones in hand and busily SMSed and called their friends to let them know to join in. (I heard one guy saying something about “le podcast.”)
as they marched down the largest street in town, towards the cathedral, under the huge patriotic banners and flags the town hung for it’s yearly festival, the older, whiter, richer Orléanaise leaned out their apartment windows and looked worriedly on the crowd below. In the expensive apartment, old white folks worried. In the street, a young, diverse crowd marched, whistled and gave speeches.
WhenI heard Sarko won, I was disappointed, but not surprised. The poll numbers were in favor of him. He was running against a woman. Her “yay I won” speech after the first round was wooden and boring in a manner unsurpassed by even John Kerry or Al Gore (although maybe Bob Dole could give her a run). But still, I hoped somehow she would win and I was angry that she hadn’t. But then, I saw these other angry kids and marched with them for a while. They were unhappy, but engaged. Their actions demonstrated hope. They weren’t in the street just because they were angry. They were in the street in their smallish town because they knew it mattered. Their participation in this semi-spontaneous march meant something, not just to them and the worried old folks, but to their whole nation.
I felt tears in my eyes. How can such a great country be so stupid? I went back to the hotel to sleep.

Blog against sexism Day

Today is blog against sexism day 2007. (Un)coincidentally, it’s also International Women’s day.

Blogging against sexism is as obvious as blogging in favor of breathing. Sexism sucks. I think all civilized humans can agree on that. But if we all agree, why does it still exist pretty much everywhere? And what exactly do we mean by sexism anyway?
I think a lot of people view sexism in much the same way as they misunderstand racism. (White) people have the mistaken idea that racism is an emotion. In this view, racists hate black people. But let’s look at Strom Thurmond. This guy had an affair with a black woman and had a daughter by her and made sure to look out for his daughter during his entire life. It’s possible that he loved his mistress and his daughter. Similarly, many sexist men love their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters too. Heck, I love my dog. For real. She’s great. The best dog ever. No where near my equal in anyway, and possibly an emergency food source in the case of horrible disaster, but I love her.
My mother loved me. She thought she was doing me a favor by giving me a bunch of chores (and she was, but she wasn’t doing my brother the same favor . . . nor my dad). I had to wash dishes and clean bathrooms and vacuum and do normal kid-level household chores. But I complained, because my chores were ongoing whereas my brother got to do fun things like mow the lawn – which only needed doing once a week. My mother explained that when I got married, I would be responsible for all the cleaning and cooking and she was trying to prepare me. Because men and women have different roles in life, or did when she came up, pre second wave feminism.
Obviously, emotions like love and hate are related to sexism only in extreme cases. So sexism isn’t an emotion. What is it then? It’s both personal and systematic. Both reinforce and propagate each other. Personally, it’s gender essentialism. The belief that women have some sort of distinct role. The lowering of their horizons. Binary oppositions invite ranking and comparisons. When you create an essentialist gender binary, you put one group over the other and then compare them. Women lose every time. That’s systematic sexism casting it’s ugly shadow. When you set women on one course and men on another, men win and women lose.
Systematically, it’s the organization of society in such a manner as to favor men at the expense of women. Now some of you might be thinking to themselves that not all differences between men and women are socially constructed. Cisgender men don’t get pregnant, but cisgender women do. Well, that’s true. But the huge life-time earnings hit that American women take from getting pregnant is a social decision and thus is constructed. As is health insurance not covering birth control. As is women doing most of the labor in the world but men owning most of the resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN states, “Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production . . ..” But “[n]ot even 2 percent of land is owned by women . . ..” and “[f]or the countries where information is available, only 10 percent of credit allowances are extended to women . . .” while at the same time “[t]wo-thirds of the one billion illiterate in the world are women and girls.” The list goes on, but it’s depressing. ( http://www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/Women/Sustin-e.htm )
In the US, women do most of the household chores and tend to earn less than men. Household chores are labor, although unpaid. But why do women earn less? Because they tend to be in fields that pay less than men. Why do these fields pay less? Because there are women in them.
More and more men are becoming nurses. The pay is rising. The prestige of the job is growing. When computers were first invented, software was an afterthought. The hardware was cool. The first programmers were all mathematicians who had to program extremely head-warping algorithms to compute stuff. It was much harder than it is today. But it was low status. Almost all of the first programmers were women. Gradually, engineers started to realize that the software was more important than the hardware. As programming became more socially important, the number of women declined in relation to the number of men. Now some folks wonder if maybe there’s a math-based biological bias that makes women unsuited to programming. Try again. It was Grace Hopper who invented the idea of high-level computer programming languages (and Cobol and Fortran).
Ok, so there’s a wide social bias that sees women as inferior, forces them to do more labor and yet keeps them in low economic rungs. And maybe the US isn’t “ready” for a woman president. And this is a worldwide problem. So what to do about it?
1. Make healthcare free. Cover contraception, abortion and prenatal care. Cover everything.
2. Paid maternity and paternity leave. Free childcare. Allow flexible work schedules. Shorter work schedules too. 40 hours a week is unreasonable. 2 weeks of vacation a year is absurd.
3. Free education. As high as you want to go and can go.
4. Mentorship. Match women, POC and other minorities with more experienced people in their field, who can help them navigate their way up. Also, start this mentoring early, maybe in college or even before.
5. Recordkeeping and outreach. You should know whether or not your place of business or university is reflecting the diversity of your region. If it’s not, then it’s time to do some outreach. Send out representatives from your company into the community, to job fairs to schools. Pick representatives who reflect the diversity that you are trying to mirror.
6. Consciousness Raising. How are things divided up in your own, personal life? Is it fair? Does it reflect exterior income inequalities? See your household income as joint rather than seeing incomes as separate. Separate incomes mean that the lower paid person might be pressured to quit or go part time in order to economize on paid services. This has lifelong repercussions on earning ability. (see http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/11/my-radical-married-feminist-manifesto.html) Do you see women as having different roles than men? What? Why?
These suggestions would benefit the majority of people in the US. Free healthcare helps everybody. Changing work-related penalties for having kids helps everybody. Free education benefits everybody. It’s an error to see this as a zero sum game. As our fearless leader says, we can grow the pie higher.
These changes create opportunity for women (and other folks) while removing penalties unfairly placed upon women. It moves childcare from the realm of chore to the realm of paid labor, thus increasing the economic participation of caregivers. This isn’t a complete list, but it’s a start.