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Tag: gender equality
Republicans Bare Their Sexism As Senate Votes To Draft Women

Republicans Bare Their Sexism As Senate Votes To Draft Women

The Senate on Tuesday passed an amendment to the defense budget requiring women to register for the draft, but that didn’t stop some Republicans from exposing perhaps a bit too much of their own biases about women’s “place” in society. 

It all started with Ted Cruz, the same guy who has been at the forefront of opposition to common sense social progress seemingly since childhood.

“The idea that we should forcibly conscript young girls into combat to my mind makes little or no sense… I could not in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat,” he said.

Want evidence of the male hegemony in which our military and political institutions are seeped? Just read the arguments against drafting women: “Our daughters,” “young girls”?  Many Republicans still — in 2016 — cannot view women as adults. It’s more pervasive as bias than there was against gays under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

And how not-so-ironic that the language used by Republicans in this case is eerily similar to the language they used to justify their nonsensical campaign to ban transgender people from simply being able to use the bathroom. These are the same politicians attempting to add far more barriers to a woman’s right to choose than there are barriers to buying guns.

The opposition to women entering the draft is also shared by right-wing groups such as Concerned Women for America, whose spokesperson said “Leadership should know better than to disregard basic biology in order to embrace political correctness.” Yet, the reality of “basic biology” indicates that not only are many women able to meet the physical standards maintained by men, but studies have also proven that women fare better in other ways such as endurance. Studies have also shown that there is no difference between men and women in exercise-related injuries.

The idea of drafting both men and women isn’t a new phenomenon, either. Norway, Israel, and Mozambique are among nations that already require women to be drafted. Many other countries have allowed women to serve in combat roles, a development that has only recently gained steam in the United States. Women were banned from combat roles in the U.S. military in 1994, the same year Bill Clinton instituted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but Ash Carter has announced that women will be incorporated into combat roles starting in January of 2017.

It goes without saying that Republican opposition to women in the draft has everything to do with maintaining age-old stereotypes about them. The longstanding pattern in male hegemonic structure that has kept women in physically reserved, supportive roles has been challenged and proven wrong time and time again — even in the face of dangerous, vehement, and hostile resistance.

Katherine Switzer, the first woman who dared to run in the Boston Marathon despite its rules banning female participation, was determined to run the race in 1967 because a coach told her that it would be too long of a race for a “fragile person.” She ran the race anyway — and was physically attacked by a race official — and proved that with opportunity, women can do compete alongside men. Just six years later, Billie Jean-King defeated Bobby Riggs in the hyped-up “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match.

The physical barriers for women slowly continue to fall — more than 12,000 women ran in the 2016 Boston Marathon — but until some Republicans decide to enter the 21st century and embrace gender equality, we will have to wait until history exposes a backwards argument for what it is. 

 

Photo: U.S. army soldiers take part in a U.S.-South Korea joint river-crossing exercise near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Yeoncheon, South Korea, April 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

Women Are Already Proving Their Worth In Combat

Women Are Already Proving Their Worth In Combat

Is Donald Trump the Republican Party’s leading misogynist? Not this week.

That honor goes to California Rep. Duncan Hunter, who pressed forward a bill that would require women to register for a draft.

Don’t be confused. A former Marine, Hunter doesn’t think women can hack it in military combat. He’s hoping that Americans will agree and start a fight that will play out in Congress.

A slim majority of his colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee saw things differently. They passed Hunter’s interestingly titled Draft America’s Daughters Act by a vote of 32 to 30. Six of his fellow Republicans broke ranks to support it. Duncan voted against it.

Hunter wants a backlash. Sorry, bro, but you’re too late with this little ploy.

Women have already begun proving that they can make it through the elite training programs such as that of the Army Rangers. And, no, the physical standards weren’t lowered.

Two days before the House committee voted, Capt. Kristen Griest was given the OK to transfer into the infantry ranks. She’s one of three women who already completed the grueling training. Brig. Gen. Diana M. Holland commands West Point.

Women began flying combat missions in the mid-1990s. And the definition of a front-line soldier was blurred if not decimated by the realities of terrorism, IEDs and how ground forces operated in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women are already in harm’s way and they are serving willingly, bravely.

In fact, 160 women died serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, according to the Washington Post’s count.

In light of those female soldiers’ deaths, it was sort of an anticlimactic in January when Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the opening all combat roles to women, to begin this spring. He was following the plan first set in motion in 2013 under his predecessor Leon Panetta.

This directive hasn’t been undertaken lightly. Each branch of the military has studied it, surveyed troops and come up with strategies to meet the sort of “hell, no, not while I’m peeing standing up” attitudes of people like Hunter.

It may surprise many Americans that we still have draft registration, as no American has been drafted since 1973. All men aged 18-26 are required to register for selective service.

Because women were long excluded from applying for combat roles, they were also deemed not required to register. The U.S. Supreme Court decided this, arguing that it’s not fair to expect women to register and then tell them they aren’t eligible for most of the jobs.

However, that has been changing incrementally as more women are proving they can handle what men have always said we could not. There are definitely physical differences between men and women. But we’re talking elites here, from both genders. Most men couldn’t pass through the rigorous training necessary for some of these combat roles.

It should also be noted that the day after the House committee voted, two U.S. senators, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced the bipartisan Military Retaliation Prevention Act.

It’s part of ongoing efforts to reform the military justice system to wipe out the retaliatory efforts of some men against female soldiers reporting sexual assaults. The bill is one of many necessary efforts to ensure that women can serve their country and also remain safe from those who are supposed to be on their side.

Rep. Hunter is banking on a strategy that’s been thrown into the path of women for generations. It’s the one that coos to women that they don’t really want to be treated equally, that they don’t really want to be afforded the same opportunities as men. He expects that women will shrink and run when actually confronted with the demands of combat.

“A draft is there to put bodies on the front lines to take the hill,” he said. “The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemies’ throats out and kill them.”

Women are supposed to cower and cover their eyes at the thought of it all.

But the route to forming the strongest, best-functioning military we can build is not to exclude half of the population. The answer is to allow qualified men and women to serve in all roles.

This is how women make progress in society: in increments. Change by change, bravely standing up to opposition like the tiny grenade Hunter tried to toss out this week.

Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.

(c) 2016, THE KANSAS CITY STAR. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC

Photo: Maj. Lisa Jaster becomes first U.S. Army Reserve female Ranger. Paul Abell / AP Images for U.S. Army Reserve. 

This Time, Hillary Clinton Plays Up Her Gender And Key Issues For Women

This Time, Hillary Clinton Plays Up Her Gender And Key Issues For Women

By Evan Halper, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

KEENE, N.H. — Hillary Rodham Clinton waited until the day of her concession speech the last time she ran for president to put the glass ceiling at the center of her campaign.

Seven years later, the country and Clinton both have changed. From the start, her campaign is making a selling point of breaking the gender barrier.

Her advisers once worried that playing up her sex would leave the impression among voters — particularly men — that Clinton was weak and inexperienced. Those worries no longer apply. She has a new team of aides and, more important, “secretary of State” on her resume.

Longtime Clinton supporters and watchers expect her to repeatedly return to the issue of gender on the campaign trail, as she did Monday in her first campaign visit to the early primary state of New Hampshire. She has already staked out positions on such issues as family leave and universal kindergarten, but has also nodded to her womanhood in more subtle ways, including when she brags about being a grandmother.

“She has been talking about how she looks at the world through the prism of being a mom and now a grandmom,” said Chris Lehane, who advised the Clintons in the White House during the Bill Clinton administration. “That intergenerational argument is incredibly powerful and compelling. It conveys authenticity.”

New Hampshire, where Clinton needs to make a strong showing to keep challengers relegated to sideshow status, is prime territory to focus the spotlight on gender. Its electorate has a proud history of putting women in charge. Two years ago, it became the first and only state to fill its congressional delegation and governor’s mansion exclusively with women.

Clinton’s first campaign stop in the state Monday was at a family-owned business that builds play kitchens and other furniture for small children, a venue that provided a perfect backdrop for the candidate to discuss child care and universal kindergarten, key issues for women.

Child care was one of the first subjects raised by the workers handpicked to participate in a roundtable with the candidate. Asked what could be done to make child care more widely available, Clinton riffed on the early days of her career, when she advocated for the Children’s Defense Fund; the latest science on childhood brain development; and the importance of singing and reading to babies.

“My whole adult life and volunteer work has been around children and families,” she said. “It can cost as much as $12,000 per year in New Hampshire for quality child care. That is more than community college costs. What are we going to do about that?”

Democratic strategist Karen Skelton, who also worked in the White House under Bill Clinton, said Hillary Clinton is “coming to the presidential campaign at exactly the time when women are driving the economy as workers, caretakers and consumers, but our nation’s policies have not caught up to the reality of women’s role and impact. … Women’s issues are the 21st century economic issues.”

There is also a softer side to the appeal Clinton is making.

“The word ‘grandmother’ is going to get used a lot,” said Samuel Popkin, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.

Clinton made a surprise campaign stop Monday in a bakery, where she picked up a customer’s baby. Unlike many politicians, she did not just give a kiss and immediately return the child. She held on.

“I’m going to take her with me,” said Clinton, who was more reticent about such displays during her last run for president.

Clinton “had to overcome the perception that a woman could not qualify to be commander in chief,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “Her advisers told her that is a threshold test females have to pass. Men do not.”

Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State changed that for her, Jamieson said. As did aging.

“Our sense of what female leaders look like as heads of state is older, not younger,” Jamieson said. “We think of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir. We’ve had grandmothers who have been heads of state.”

Clinton talks constantly about being a grandmother. She turned to the topic of granddaughter Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky once again Monday afternoon, at a New Hampshire house party. “It carries with it a big responsibility, doesn’t it?” Clinton asked a group, the older women in it nodding along with her.

“Luckily, my daughter and her husband are obviously well educated, they work hard, they’ll provide everything Charlotte needs. But what about all the other kids who were born on Sept. 26 in 2014 in this country who deserve the same opportunities?” she asked, referring to her granddaughter’s birth date.

Nor did she shy away from such talk in Iowa, a state that lags behind others in elevating female candidates.

It wasn’t until November, when Republican Joni Ernst won a Senate seat, that Iowa elected a woman to Congress. Clinton finished third in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucus, a blow to her campaign’s effort at the time to cast her as the inevitable choice for the party’s presidential nomination.

Last week, in addition to talking about Charlotte, Clinton hammered away on another theme popular with women, family leave, as she debuted her 2016 presidential run in the Hawkeye State. During a small-business roundtable at a fruit-packing company outside Des Moines, Clinton seized on the generous maternity leave policy offered by one of the participants, who owns a Web design and marketing business.

“Making your employees feel that you care about these milestones in their lives and you give them the chance to, you know, have a child, adopt a child, recover from a serious illness, take care of a really sick parent and get a period of time that’s paid just cements that relationship,” she said. “It’s an issue I feel strongly about on just personal terms.”

(Times staff writer Seema Mehta in Norwalk, Iowa, contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addresses the press after attending the annual Women’s Empowerment Principles event at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. The potential 2016 U.S. presidential contender defended her use of a personal email account for official communications, saying it was “for convenience.” (Niu Xiaolei/Xinhua/Sipa USA/TNS)

Gender Equality At Work More Than 80 Years Off

Gender Equality At Work More Than 80 Years Off

Geneva — If you’re waiting for gender equality in the workplace, be prepared to wait a long time.

While women are rapidly closing the gender gap with men in areas like health and education, inequality at work is not expected to be erased until 2095, according to a report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Tuesday.

The organisation, which each year gathers the global elite in the plush Swiss ski resort of Davos, said that the worldwide gender gap in the workplace had barely narrowed in the past nine years.

Since 2006, when the WEF first began issuing its annual Global Gender Gap Reports, women have seen their access to economic participation and opportunity inch up to 60 percent of that of men’s, from 56 percent.

“Based on this trajectory, with all else remaining equal, it will take 81 years for the world to close this gap completely,” the WEF said in a statement.

The world would be better served to speed up the process, according to WEF founder and chief Klaus Schwab.

“Achieving gender equality is obviously necessary for economic reasons. Only those economies who have full access to all their talent will remain competitive and will prosper,” he said.

– Some ‘far-reaching’ progress –

The report, which covered 142 countries, looked at how nations distribute access to healthcare, education, political participation and resources and opportunities between women and men.

Almost all the countries had made progress towards closing the gap in access to healthcare, with 35 nations filling it completely, while 25 countries had shut the education access gap, the report showed.

Even more than in the workplace, political participation lagged stubbornly behind, with women still accounting for just 21 percent of the world’s decision makers, according to the report.

Yet this was the area where most progress had been made in recent years.

“In the case of politics, globally, there are now 26 percent more female parliamentarians and 50 percent more female ministers than nine years ago,” said the report’s lead author, Saadia Zahidi.

“These are far-reaching changes,” she said, stressing though that much remained to be done and that the “pace of change must in some areas be accelerated.”

– More equality in Nordic countries –

The five Nordic countries, led by Iceland, clearly remained the most gender-equal.

They were joined by Nicaragua, Rwanda Ireland, the Philippines and Belgium in the top 10, while Yemen remained at the bottom of the chart for the ninth year in a row.

The United States meanwhile climbed three spots from last year to 20th, after narrowing its wage gap and hiking the number of women in parliamentary and ministerial level positions.

France catapulted from 45th to 16th place, also due to a narrowing wage gap but mainly thanks to increasing numbers of women in politics, including near-parity in the number of government ministers.

With 49 percent women ministers, France now has one of the highest ratios in the world.

Britain meanwhile dropped eight spots to 26th place, amid changes in income estimates.

Among other large economies, Brazil stood at 71st place, Russia at 75th, China at 87th and India at 114, the report showed.

AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele

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