Last week, a bill was introduced into the House that would expanded the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to included protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. If passed, it will be the second piece of federal legislation to include gender identity protections (the first was the Hate Crimes Prevention Act).  Housing discrimination is a serious issue for LGBT communities.  According to testimony submitted by Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 11% of trans folks have been evicted because of their trans identity and 19% have been homeless.

Jane Roberts, the woman behind 34 million friends of UNFPA, gave a special interview on Chicago Public Radio for International Women’s Day.  “Gender inequality is the moral scourge of the age,” said Roberts. Due to gendercide, sex-selective abortion, and other human rights atrocities, there are 100 million missing girls in the world.  To listen to the interview, click here. As Roberts said, “when the world takes care of women, women take care of the world.” I think that’s something we can all get behind!

Join us in welcoming Ms. Magazine to the blogosphere with their newly launched Ms.blog.  The “No Comment” page to which I always immediately turn to when I pick up a fresh issue has also found a home on the blog. You can also read about marriage equality in D.C. and get the latest “Dispatches from Guyland” from Michael Kimmel (one of my sociology heroes).  My favorite post currently up: Is Lady Gaga a Feminist or Isn’t She?. Reminds me of a conversation I had with one my good friends a few months back on whether Lady Gaga was queer or not.

Just in time for International Women’s Day, Roxanne Taylor of Accenture offers us a “silver lining in the dark cloud of joblessness”: women’s resiliance.  When times get tough, companies look to employees who are flexible, resiliant, and will ensure the company’s future success.  Says Roxanne,

Learn resiliance, because people and businesses that can adapt swiftly are most likely to not only survive, but thrive. And women, so resiliant in the face of change, are the “mothers of invention.”

It’s a win-win situation: women keep their jobs and companies benefit from the diverse perspectives women bring to the table. To read Roxanne’s excellent piece, click here.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

After decades of marches, boycotts, lobbying and rallies, did the protests of the past 40 years really make a difference? Do protests still work? Can women still advocate change through social activism?

Timing is Key in Successful Social Movements

The answer may lie in the timing, according to Sarah Soule, PhD, the Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business and a Clayman Institute faculty research fellow, who studies the tactics and consequences of social movements and how activism influences public policy and perception.

Soule tracked thousands of U.S. newspaper articles from the 1960s through the ’90s, a period when Americans took on a wide range of social concerns. She and her team analyzed these records to pinpoint when social movements prompted the strongest response and had the greatest impact.

In studying the Equal Rights Amendment, Soule found that timing was crucial to the success of this social movement. She noted that organized lobbying appeared to have had a more direct effect on public opinion early on, when the issue was first being considered by legislators and state ratification bills were being introduced. When activists became more demanding or radical, she said, legislators appeared to become less receptive to associating with activist agendas, most likely because they did not want to alienate voters.

Soule also found that groups with insider allies, such as legislators sympathetic to the cause, make more progress. Today, she added, though there are more women in positions of political power, women’s issues may not necessarily be on the agenda.

Another component of her research points to the fact that women have historically mobilized around many issues, not all of which are considered feminist. For example, women took on many aspects of social reform, such as boycotting grocery chains to lower food prices and toy companies to recall violent items. Educational issues were also high on the agenda of women activists.

After the Equal Rights Amendment protests, which peaked from 1972-82, women took on other, non-feminist aspects of social reform.

“Women became political about other issues and moved their efforts into the private sphere,” said Soule. “They were still socially active but learned to use different tactics that focused more on community building, improving social services for women and building solidarity.”

Professor Sarah Soule presenting at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research

As for the current women’s movement, Soule said that “women may be factionalized because there are so many issues today, and there’s a question of whether loss of focus leads to detrimental movement outcomes. That may be what is happening to the women’s movement today.”

Another facet of Soule’s research focuses on police response to public protests. She found that while violent protests and efforts that appeared to be targeting the government were most likely to invoke an aggressive police response, reactions were stronger when African-Americans were involved and less intense when women were involved. Police presence was also lower at women’s protests—perhaps because of gender-based stereotypes of women being less threatening, she said.

This afternoon, NCRW co-sponsored a CSW side event with the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, The Opportunity Agenda, and the Human Rights Project of the Urban Justice Center. The discussion sought to give a “face” to the current debates on the economic crisis. 

Shyama Venkateswar, Director of Research and Programs at NCRW, started off the discussion by revealing the disparities that exist in the U.S. Women in general have born the brunt of the crisis — current estimates show that women are 35% more likely to be poor. The impact on women and persons of color is just as outstanding: for every dollar earned by a white family, the black family earns only one dime.

Speaking of the origins of the economic crisis, Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of the Center of Women’s Global Leadership, cited the government’s failure to enforce the Master Guidelines. Under the Master Guidelines, the State is obligated to protect and ensure the economic and social rights of its people. With widening income and wealth gaps, it is apparent that the state has failed to live up to its obligations.

Juhu Thukral, Director of Law and Advocacy at The Opportunity Agenda, echoed similar sentiments, expressing frustration with the lack of progress made even when the economy was secure.  Take, for instance, the gender wage gap.  As of the end of 2000, women still earned 77 cents on the man’s dollar,  with Black women earning 67 cents, Latinas 57 cents, and Asian women earning 93 cents. These numbers have not changed much in the past decade.

Ejim Dike, Director of the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, recommended a “putting people first” philosophy to counteract these disturbing trends.  She pointed out that for women and persons of color an economic crisis has been raging for at least four decades, due in part to a lack of jobs. As of December 2009, 15.3 million unemployed people were competing for 2.3 million jobs. Given these figures, it is quite clear that job creation is critical towards addressing the crisis. 

Not to be defeated by these frustrating trends and data points, the panelists offered feasible solutions to working our economy—and society—out of this economic mess. 

Radhika Balakrishnan stated that it is up to the activists to hold the government accountable. Any solution should have a trickledown effect if it is to bring about the desired outcome. As such, she emphasized the need for targeted policies. Juhu Thukral emphasized the need to combine stronger (targeted) policies with better discussions on race and gender (transparency). Ejim Dike reaffirmed the need for more robust social safety nets. She also added that targeted responses make it easier to monitor who are benefiting from these solution-specific policies.

The discussion emphasized the need for us to return to a participatory approach. Giving a “face” to the economic crisis could very well be the beginning of the recovery.      

*Jacqueline Mumbey is a Communications intern with the National Council for Research on Women

To read a liveblog of the event, click here.

Today as we celebrate International Women’s Day all over the world, let us take a moment to reflect on how much more needs to be done for us to claim true gender equity even within the United States. The economic crisis or our Great Recession is unprecedented in terms of its global reach and its impact on governments, corporations and individuals alike. What this crisis has also done is profoundly demonstrate the existing disparities and inequalities within the United States.

Consider the following pieces of data:

• There are now 6.4 million women living in extreme poverty (below 50% of the federal poverty level)
• Single women with children have an unemployment rate of 12.3% compared to 5.8% for married women
• The racial wealth gap has widened in the last few years: for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family in 2007, the black family had one dime down from 12 cents just three years earlier.

As members of Congress debate legislation to create jobs and other policies to address our economic problems, we must also make sure that our recovery efforts move us to an economy that addresses our nation’s long-standing imbalances and disparities.

Jobs alone won’t move vulnerable communities towards greater economic security. Income generating activities have to be paired with asset creation – homeownership, stocks, investments and savings. Vulnerable communities also need opportunities for asset building which provide long-term stability, ease economic mobility and provide a cushion in case of job loss or unexpected health crisis. Research shows that children from asset-rich and income-poor families tend to perform better than children from income-rich and asset-poor families.

Lisa Mensah from the Aspen Institute proposes several policy reforms to build assets – universal children’s savings accounts, matched subsidies for retirement savings, refundable tax credit for low-income savers.

Creating jobs and opportunities for asset building have to be accompanied by strengthening basic safety nets: making available unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, generous maternity/paternity benefits, affordable quality child care, tax reform, and greater investments in health and education.

Repairing our safety nets is not simply an act of goodwill or charity — it is good business. Inequities and disparities hold back women’s economic security globally. Every government must increase allocations for social investment in policies that address disparities in gender as well as between racial groups and classes.

Funding for safety net programs is an investment in our future. To move forward in creating a more just and equitable global economy that works for everyone, reinforcing vital programs and engaging women in asset-building must be central to all of our recovery efforts around the world.

Check out the other blogs participating in Blog for International Women’s Day here at Gender Across Borders.

Yesterday, more than 300 audience members flocked to lower Manhattan to join dynamic experts exploring public/private partnerships, capitalizing the women’s movement, and nothing less than changing the world. Jacki Zehner, founder of the Circle Financial Group and former Goldman Sachs partner, led the charge, asking how to take hold of this transformative moment and push for gender equality. Jacki Zehner truly believes that with “greater gender equality, this world would be a better place.”

NCRW President Linda Basch brought the stark reality of these turbulent times into the room, reminding us that 100 million people have been trapped in poverty in 2010 and many may be out of work permanently. And not everyone has been impacted by this Great Recession equally. Immigrant women, single women, women with disabilities, veteran women have born more than their fair share of the economic downturn while simultaneously being left out of policymaking conversations. The good news is “women are increasingly being viewed as the solution to many of today’s woes,” said Linda Basch.

Chris Grumm, President and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, seconded Linda’s call saying that “there couldn’t be a more appropriate time for women’s leadership to take hold and for us to capitalize the movement.” Research has consistently proven that narrowing the gender gap is a tremendous source of economic growth. But as Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large of Global Women’s Issues, pointed out, women need training, mentoring, capacity building, and access to credit. Letty Chiwara’s work at UNIFEM is an example of building partnerships and working at multiple levels to make effective progressive change for women around the globe. In the past five years, UNIFEM has partnered with the World Bank to empower women by using community level work to inform policy and ensure that the community level work is relevant to the policy framework established by UNIFEM and the World Bank. Through this effort, they used income generation projects in conjunction with business skills training for women to develop sustainable livelihoods (such as beadwork) that are portable during times of crisis.

It takes this kind of purposeful planning to bring about meaningful change. As Chris Grumm discussed, the Women’s Funding Network emerged out of the recognition that philanthropy funding was not going to women and girls. Even though women and girls are the “investment of choice” and time and again demonstrate high payoff, it has taken thirty years of constant pressure from women’s funds to get the rest of the philanthropy community on board and start funneling money into things like domestic violence, trafficking, and economic security for women. The first step to transformation, said Edith Copper, Managing Director and Global Head of Human Capital Management at Goldman Sachs, is representation at all levels of society of the true diversity of our society.

What the conversation set out was no small agenda. As Edith Cooper said at the end “my head hurts.” We must start recognizing the common issues women face whether they are in the Global North or the Global South and move past the false dichotomy of domestic vs. international work. We must sideline the bifurcation between women and girls and recognize that our work is most sustainable in the nexus of issues such as economic security, health, education, and violence. For too long, the woman’s movement has been fragmented and women have been used as a cheap source of labor for social change movements. We must learn to capitalize the movement and build strategic partnerships. Everyone agreed that working in silos simply does not work. “Business can’t do it alone. Government can’t do it alone. The NGO community can’t do it alone. [But if we] work together in a collaborative way, we can bring about change,” said Melanne Verveer.

As part of its ongoing work on economic justice, the Ms. Foundation has recently posted two interesting pieces on our nation’s economic recovery.  They share our concern here at NCRW that the efforts currently underway will not lead to an economic recovery for all:

None of the economic recovery policies we’ve seen thus far sufficiently addresses the urgent needs of low-income people and their communities. This again begs the question advocates have been asking for some time: How will our country recover if we don’t respond — and listen — to those most affected?

If we are to move our nation towards recovery, we must remember our history—that not everyone was hunky-dory before the recession hit:

in the lives of low-income women and women of color nationwide, insecurity about wages, housing, health care and food have combined to create a cycle of poverty that has long been a reality — national recession or not.

To ensure this recovery ends in a more equitable economy—and doesn’t take us back in time to the existing inequities of 2007, the Ms. Foundation says “we need to start by questioning what “recovery” means — and for whom it’s intended…”  We couldn’t agree more!

Read the posts:
Our Nation’s Recovery Depends on Those Most in Need of Jobs
Economic “Recovery”: Women’s Lives Demand a Longer, More Honest View

This Saturday I trudged through the snow to attend the 35th Scholar and Feminist Conference put on by the Barnard Center for Research on Women.  Quite appropriately, considering the recent weather, we were discussing feminism and climate change.  Commenting on the nearly 36 inches of snow dumped on New York City, Janet Jakobsen, director of BCRW, asked in her welcoming remarks, “Is this a once in a century event or a sign of global climate change?” 

Women’s empowerment is a pre-requisite for sustainable development, said Rachel Harris of WEDO.  Women play a vital role in environmental development and are disproportionately impacted by global climate change, which exacerbates existing inequalities.  Eleanor Sterling reminded us that communities as a whole do not react to climate changes in singular way: different gender and social roles produce different reactions.  Women are often primary food, fuel, and water gatherers; they make the majority of consumer choices for households; they have less access to medical care and limited mobility; and they are disproportionately impacted by natural disasters. All these factors result in women being differently impacted by global climate change than men.

This fact is not accounted for in climate change policy.  Much of the climate change policy community has unquestionably accepted as fact that we’ll be okay if the planet doesn’t warm more than 2°C. However, Joni Seager pointed out in her keynote address, feminists and other social justice thinkers have long questioned the relativity of “danger” by posing such questions as safe for whom?  What Joni laid out in her talk is that this 2°C standard is defined by privilege, power, and geography—not science. In fact, there is a high degree of uncertainty about specific thresholds for global warming and how the warming will impact different ecological environments. While the science remains fuzzy, the economics are clear: reports have shown that 2°C of global warming is the point at which models suggest global changes supersede regional ones.  In other words, up to 2°C of global warming, countries in the global North will most likely not be negatively impacted (and may actually see some positive outcomes).  It is the global South that will feel the brunt of the warming. As a leader of the G-77 said, 2°C “condemns Africa to death.” After 2°C, the global North will join the global South in suffering the severe consequences of global warming. 

This is where feminists can step in.  Joni Seager calls upon feminists to follow the time-honored tradition of pointing out the emperor has no clothes: to challenge and resist dominant frameworks and offer alternative ways of framing climate change policies. These alternative frameworks could be based on the principles of do no harm or caring or even mutual responsibility.  Unfortunately, the current climate change policy community—dominated, predictably, by men—rejects these frameworks as irrational, leaning instead on the questionable science and logic of the 2°C paradigm.

Throughout the conference, scholars and activists offered alternatives to this problematic and dangerous paradigm.  Laila Iskandar Kamel from Egypt emphasized that in the global battle for rights to recycle, they do not refer to what people throw out as “trash;” instead, they talk about “harvesting materials.” By burying materials in landfill, Laila said, we are depriving the earth of organic fertilizer. And instead of recycling plastic bottles, we draw up more oil.  If we were to follow the model of recycling, however, not only would we have environmental justice but economic justice as well.  According to Laila, every ton of materials generates seven jobs.  Recycling also helps with the education of girls and providing technical and vocational skills to communities otherwise marginalized in the global labor market. Recyclers tend to be unskilled, poor, slum dwelling families whose voices (and innovative ideas) are ignored by multi-national corporations who come into a country and insist on bad policies such as landfills. 

Winona LaDuke also brought the voices of another largely ignored population into the conversation: Native Americans.  In her work for environmental justice, Winona LaDuke advocates appropriate technology and local, sustainable food.  For instance, in choosing a wind turbine for her reservation, she made scale and culturally appropriate technology choices so that her community could become less dependent on outside sources for electricity.  She also pointed out that pre-industrial, non-patented crops are tougher and more nutritionally significant.  It is therefore beneficial—environmentally, economically, and health-wise—to buy local food and invest in appropriate technology rather than rely on the newest high-tech solution.

Majora Carter closed the conference by stressing the importance—and viability—of environmental justice right in our own backyards. Environmental justice is based on the principle that no community should bear the brunt of environmental waste without enjoying the benefits of environmental beauty.  There is an all-too-common trend of economic degradation leading to environmental degradation followed by social degradation.  Environmental racism essentially paints a pathway to prison rather than prosperity for low-income communities. Studies have shown that there is a link between fossil fuel emissions and learning disabilities and when students do poorly in school, they are more likely to end up in jail. Green ways and green space, on the other hand, allow people to feel part of their community.  The presence of greenery has also been shown to lower stress levels, increase test scores, decrease crimes, and lower teen pregnancy as girls self-esteem rises.  Environmental practices, such as green roofs, benefit communities environmentally, economically, and socially.  But it is up to us to make it happen. 

As Winona LaDuke said, “change is made by our hands and our minds.”

More Resources:
10 Principles of Climate Justice
Honor the Earth
Global Gender and Climate Change Alliance
The Story of Stuff (documentary)
Sun Come Up (documentary)