Historically, the discrimination against women was brazenly patent and systemic throughout society. Many basic rights were denied women, including the right to vote, to execute contracts or to own property. In fact, women were considered property themselves owned by a patriarchal society. It was not until the mid to late 1970s that domestic violence was even considered a crime by any state because domestic violence was viewed as a private family matter based upon the underlying rationale of men "owning" women.
There were many accomplishments achieved in the 60's-80's, including eliminating discrimination emanating from the power/control/patriarchy structure. During those years, the pervasiveness of acceptable discrimination was unbelievable:
At the time, airline stewardesses, as they were then called, typically lost their jobs when they married, got pregnant, or reached the advanced age of 32. Some waitresses were forbidden to work at night. Women in Utah could not be hired if a job required them to lift more than 15 pounds. Employment ads were segregated by gender.
Today, women face overt discrimination and sexism, sometimes very misogynistic. We also face the more covert, and oftentimes more insidious, institutionalized sexism that is so entrenched in our society that many do not even perceive the policies, practices or conduct as discrimination. And, there is another prevalent practice of what I call backdoor sexism. Previously, the face of the law expressly discriminated based upon gender or race (e.g., women prohibited from voting). While not a wholly extinct practice, it is less common today. What is more widespread is the use of backdoor sexism/discrimination which is designed to target gender and/or race without using the words of gender or race in the law. So, the face of the law or policy does not say women can't do X. Rather, the laws or policies discriminate based upon cultural or status attributes, which just happen to be associated with gender or race.
For example, today, any law that on its face banned women from voting would hopefully not pass. However, backdoor methods are used to achieve the same result for women (and men). We have practices established by government, such as the use of felony purge lists, which use such a wide umbrella that they catch non-felon women (and men). The intent of the laws are to prevent women and minorities from voting in a ban that "dates back to Jim Crow laws passed in the late nineteenth century to strip blacks of the right to vote."
There are also laws passed which are intended to intimidate voters to not exercise their right to vote, which are partially aimed at the poor. However, women just happen to represent such a significant percentage of the poor that researchers have coined this statistical fact as the "feminization of poverty." For example, a 2001 Florida law mandated that a list of voter's responsibilities be posted in a prominent location at the polling places. This list included the following items:
Among other things, the posted signs will say that each registered voter is responsible to "study and know candidates and issues," "know his or her precinct and its hours of operation" and "know how to operate voting equipment properly." In addition, voters will be told they are responsible to "bring proper identification to the polling station," "keep his or her voter address current" and "check their completed ballots for accuracy."
While none of these "advisory goals" are lawful voter requirements, the intent of the law was to intimidate and deter voting rights, particularly among lower income voters. As the ACLU argued, lower income voters may have "lower levels of education" and thus may be frightened by voter educational requirements, and lower income voters may use public transit rather than owning cars and thus not have the typical ID of a driver's license.
My list of women's rights includes the following:
***Women have a human right to be free from violence, terror and abuse, whether it is manifested as rape, sexual assaults, molestation, domestic violence, sexual harassment, psychological abuse, stalking or hate crimes. Given that childhood sexual abuse is often repressed and recovered years later, adult survivors should not have to fight the courts in order to file civil actions against the abuser within a few years of recalling the abuse.
I've recently wondered about rape. There have been at least two Guantánamo prisoner accounts that our government has added the threat of rape as a form of torture. Does this mean that the right to not be raped is a human rights issue rather than a criminal law issue? If our government believes that rape is so bad that hardened terrorists trained to endure torture will cave, why does our society and criminal justice system still belittle the trauma and inhumanity of rape?
***Women have a right to enactment and implementation of laws that don't use backdoor sexism. For example, some criminal justice laws may not expressly discriminate against women, but the implementation of these laws is rendered discriminatory by the exercise of sexist discretionary decisions which are allowed to continue despite evidence of the discriminatory impact. Thus, women ostensibly have a right to equal application of arrest, sentencing and incarceration laws; yet, the reality is that police, prosecutors, lawyers and judges each exercise discretion in a discriminatory manner that results in women imprisoned for crimes that had they been men they would not be sitting in jail.
***Women have a right to a healthcare system that does not ignore or neglect diseases associated with women by failing to provide insurance coverage. For example, 5-10 million people (90% are young women) suffer from eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating) but most states do not mandate insurance coverage for mental health services that can cure the illness. Another example, insurance companies should not be allowed to deny coverage for life-saving treatments deemed experimental for breast and ovarian cancer.
While funding for studies on illnesses affecting women has increased over the years, a 2007 report found that "there are critical gaps in research on women’s health, and even when such research has been done, often only limited results are publicly available."
***Women have a right to not be subjected to sexist stereotypes by all institutions. The very fact that major institutions, like the traditional media, may continually use sexist stereotypes with impunity from their employers and a large segment of the audience shows its use as a tool to further embed sexism. One very good example is tweety!
***Women have a right to not be subjected to sexist assumptions that are the "default" perspective in our society, such as assuming a poster or a member of certain professions is a man. I found this riddle the other day on the net:
A man and his son were in a car accident. The man died on the way to the hospital, but the boy was rushed into surgery. The surgeon said "I can't operate, for that's my son!" How is this possible?
Yup, an old riddle, but do test it out in the grocery store check-out line.
***Women have a right to equal pay, benefits, pensions, job promotions, and career opportunities, such as beneficial contacts and networking forums. For example, in the Wal-Mart class action suit affecting as many as 2 million current and former female workers, women were paid an average $5,200 less than men for comparable or identical positions.
The wage differential is one of the key reasons that women are poor. It is reported that equal pay could decrease poverty rates by ½:
If women received the same wages as men who work the same number of hours, have the same education and union status, are the same age, and live in the same region of the country, then these women's annual income would rise by $4,000 and poverty rates would be cut in half. Working families would gain an astounding $200 billion in family income annually.
Think of the cumulative impact. "More than four decades after Congress outlawed wage discrimination based on sex," women are still paid less. In just 10 years, women sustain a loss of $40,000 that could have contributed to savings or retirement funds, or ensured less stress in putting food on the table or paying bills. If a woman is now retiring, those 40 years of lesser pay mean a loss of $160,000.
On a practical level, the wage disparity means that women need a calendar year with 114 more days to match their male counterparts in the job market:
Why do women have to work an extra 114 days to keep pace with men? Because full-time women workers are paid an average of 77 cents for every dollar men are paid. Women of color are short-changed even more, with African-American women paid only 71 cents and Latinas just 58 cents on men's dollar.
Women have a right to be employed if otherwise qualified and should not have to spend money and time filing a lawsuit to stop employers from refusing to hire pregnant women.
***Women have a right to equal facilities and equipment when working in a "nontraditional" job, such as firefighters. (The US Dept. of Labor "defines a non-traditional occupation as one in which women comprise 25% or less of the workforce, in other words, male-dominated jobs.") Women have a right to uniforms that fit, a restroom, showers and privacy without hazing rituals that constitute sexual harassment.
***Women have a right to not be charged higher prices by businesses based solely on their gender. For example, some friends were involved in an ACLU testing of local businesses: A man and a woman separately entered the same stores with the identical clothes, yet the dry cleaners charged the woman a higher price than the man for the identical services.
***Women have a right to not have politicians address them on "women's issues" which are limited to abortion, health care and education. DC needs to wake up to the reality that ALL issues are women's issues. Yes, the war, environment, torture, economy, corruption, etc.
***Women have a right to employment opportunities without being enslaved domestic workers whose plight is ignored by our government.
***This country is returning to a doctrine of separate but equal. Women have a right to not be segregated in education with the new trend of single-gender schools. Single-gender schools are based on the rationale that boys or girls --- depending upon the particular school's justification --- may have lower academic achievement due to "distractions," which, if eliminated, should improve grades and any disciplinary issues. In 2002, there were less than 6 single-gender public schools but this number will now increase to over 100 this fall. This rapid move for single-gender school systems occurs when there is no study that it will even accomplish the stated objectives:
Single-gender education in the public schools is so uncommon that there has been little broad research into their success, said Cornelius Riordan, a professor of sociology at Providence College who has studied single-gender schools for the federal Department of Education.
But in 40 leading studies in recent decades of other types of single-gender schools, including private and parochial schools, Professor Riordan said the findings were fairly evenly split between those that said single-gender schools did a better job at educating children and those that concluded that it made no difference.
Young women and girls have a right to equal opportunity in athletic or sports programs.
***Women have a right to have their voices heard and opinions weighted by the value of the substantive content rather than dismissed or discounted due solely to the fact that society attaches less significance to our voices. For example, I have seen in private online forums how a discussion about issues by men and women can include some men totally ignoring the views of the women as if they were invisible. And, when some professional women write a letter of recommendation, they will often sign their first name with an initial only if their name is a gender giveaway for fear that the recipient would discount the value of the recommendation.
Are they are other rights you would add to this list? Any rights you would take off the list?
