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Joan Walsh: GOP’s economic war on women about to explode
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/25/gop%E2%80%99s_economic_war_on_women_about_to_explode/Wednesday, Sep 25, 2013 12:03 PM EST
GOP’s economic war on women about to explode
But can feminists put the power of the women’s vote behind a populist economic agenda? They’re about to try
By Joan Walsh
GOP’s economic war on women about to explodeEric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz (Credit: AP/Steven Senne/Reuters/Yuri Gripas/AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
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Also 30 years later, though, feminists are still trying to marshal the power of the women’s vote behind a populist economic agenda. Lately that movement has taken on new momentum. Last week four powerful progressive groups, not coincidentally led by women – the Center for American Progress, Planned Parenthood, the Service Employees International Union and American Women, an affiliate of Emily’s List — came together behind the Fair Shot campaign, to build support for an agenda that advances women’s economic equality. House Democrats have named their economic agenda project “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds,” labeling that shows a sensitivity to the conservative framing of social progress as a zero-sum game, so that when women succeed, somehow men lose.
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Let’s face it: One big issue that impedes feminism’s progress is its image as the province of relatively privileged white women, concerned about “choice” – whether to have a child, and if they do, whether to stay home with that child – when so many women who aren’t white and/or privileged have no such choices. They might be unable to “choose” to afford contraception (until Obamacare) or find or afford an abortion. Or they might very much want a child but be unable to afford that “choice” too. And as far as staying home, the “opt out, “lean in” and “mommy wars” debates are so irrelevant as to seem an insult. Mikki Kendall put it best in Salon: “The real ‘mommy wars’ are against women who have no choices.”
That’s why the core focus of the latest women’s economic agenda organizing appealed to me. Fair Shot makes lots of policy prescriptions – they’re here – but at an event last week to launch the campaign (full disclosure: I moderated one panel) there was particular energy around the House Democrats’ women’s economic agenda, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s “Paycheck Fairness Act,” which closes some of the loopholes enabling pay inequities and bills raising the minimum wage, mandating paid sick and family leave and expanding affordable childcare.
Someone else might have expected a grander agenda, but this agenda is both practical, helping many millions of women – and it’s actually sadly ambitious. Let’s take paid family leave: The U.S. joined the 20thcentury, sort of, by passing the Family and Medical Leave Act 20 years ago, but it was an unpaid leave. Many of us believed it was a short trip to making it paid – that’s the way social change happens, we pass important, imperfect legislation, like Social Security and Medicare and, more recently, Obamacare, and then fix its flaws and make it more inclusive and helpful to more people. But we were wrong about family and medical leave (and, so far, about Obamacare.)
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Organizing around women’s economic concerns may not lure Republicans or appeal to their conscience, since they’ve mostly had Tea Party-provided conscience-ectomies. But it puts feminism on the side of women without enough choices, as well as women who struggle with too many. It holds the promise of narrowing the racial and class gaps within feminism, which are real. I would also argue: It likewise holds the potential to win not just college-educated white women, but working-class white women, to the Democrats’ agenda. In my family experience working-class white women have felt almost as marginalized by at least the stereotype of white feminism as women of color. (Those who come by feminism via their unions, by the way, have a different perspective.) Still: It’s the growing affiliation of African-American and Latino women with the Democratic Party that provides the basis for a real progressive shift on economic issues in the years to come.
I’ve never accepted the framing that issues like contraception and abortion are somehow “lifestyle” issues that only matter to privileged women – they may be the most important economic issues, since choosing whether or when to have children is the first requirement of women’s autonomy. But I think the effort to integrate issues of health and autonomy with economic issues is worth making. It seems fitting: Fear about the changing role of women helped derail the country’s economic progress 40 years ago. Maybe our recognition of that permanently changed role can get us back on track.
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looks like Eddie Munster?
