MIAMI HERALD 8/30/2010

90 years after women's suffrage, equality issues unresolved

In light of this week's 90th anniversary of women's suffrage, some Floridians question whether gender equality has been reached.

BY LAURA STAMPLER

lstampler@MiamiHerald.com

After months of researching candidates, 19 year-old Hannah Snitzer woke up early Tuesday to be one of the first people at Nautilus Middle School in Miami Beach to cast her vote in the Florida primaries.

Snitzer was excited to vote in her first election. But as a female Florida resident, she would have been barred from submitting her ballot less than a century ago.

This week marked the 90th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. The event was celebrated locally with a remembrance march down Lincoln Road, speeches, luncheons hosted by political candidates and presentations on the life of prolific Coral Gables feminist Roxcy Bolton.

It's difficult to imagine a time when women couldn't vote. Today, registered women voters outnumber men in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties -- where they made up 56 percent of voters in the last presidential election.

FLORIDA ACTED LATE

But it took decades of political fighting for women to see the ratification of the 19th amendment -- granting women the right to vote -- in the United States Constitution on Aug. 26, 1920. Florida's Legislature, however, did not symbolically ratify the amendment until 1969.

A joint resolution was made in Congress in 1971 to declare the anniversary of the amendment Women's Equality Day.

``Women's Equality Day is a celebration of a very long struggle of half the population to achieve the same level of recognition and power as the other half,'' said Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower, who celebrated the event with South Floridians in a march down Lincoln Road on Thursday. ``It's also a recognition that that struggle is not over.''

While this week's milestone celebrates women's progress over the last century, it also raises the question of whether, 90 years later, equality has been reached, some activist say.

``What many people forget is that earlier in American history, women could not take custody of children, could not hold paying jobs, have bank accounts, go to college,'' said Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.

As of 2009, women only earned about 77 percent of their male counterparts' salary, with black women earning only 68.9 cents for every dollar earned by a white male and Hispanic/Latina women 60.2 cents, says the Institute of Women's Policy Research.

``We have this tendency to celebrate, but I don't know if I'd celebrate that it took that long to get women the right to vote,'' said Paula Xanthopoulou, a former member of the Miami-Dade Commission for Women. ``Women's Equality Day was created to emphasize that women do not have equality.''

Many women's rights groups say the next step in the women's rights movement is securing gender equality to the U.S. Constitution. But the Equal Rights Amendment has been a nationally controversial topic, particularly in Florida.

The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923 and was not approved until 1972. The proposed amendment -- which would add 24 words to the Constitution disallowing discrimination based on sex -- then failed to be ratified by its 1982 deadline, coming up three short of the 38-state requirement. Florida was one of the states that didn't ratify it.

The ratification in 1992 of what became the 27th Amendment to the Constitution -- more than 200 years after it was proposed -- gave ERA activists hope that if three more state legislatures were to approve the ERA, the amendment could be ratified 30 years later.

Full Story1 | 2 | Next »

[The Miami Herald]

[Bookmark this post on Twitter.]

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

Comments (0)

Thick Skin, and MORE of it (good advice for women)

[NOTES from SandyO@PassERA.org, our new email address. Our www.RatifyERAflorida.net IS NOW A NATIONAL SITE. Sign on here, and COMMENT--it's OUR blog!

Summary of this fab article:

"Thick skin. That's what more women need." [This from a female LEADER, listen up and read the whole article.] Let's start by shedding the soft veneer we're encouraged to grow as girls - for something more battle-ready. This month on Harvard Business Review's site, management expert Jeff Pfeffer points out that women won't get equal power until they project equal toughness.(ed., along with respect, but not fawning) In the name of kindness, we should nurture as much "tough guy" in our daughters as we do in our sons. (ed., We HAVE been N O B L E tooo long). But when you're the only one of your kind in the room, there are no standard expectations - no one knows what they want from you. (ed., So, you have a golden chance to try out the STREET-FIGHTER you! Watch as you bowl them over--tough AND smart AND effective!) Even female engineers (no strangers to being outnumbered by men), have higher heart rates, temperature and distraction when they are less than 25% of the room. Make the room gender-neutral and group results improve - women perform well and men perform no worse.
Example (tho I dislike most of her policies) is Sarah Palin. Her raw ambition makes me smile. As does her ability to walk right through flack - untouched by bi-partisan detractors and inconvenient facts. Let's get that super-strength flak jacket on ...because some men will say things that just aren't true, it makes them uncomfortable that a woman could win. Think Gandhi For Gals. A small man with a very thick skin moved minds by helping people like him stand up for themselves, in the right way - again, and again, and again. (ed., I think we need a Refresher Course in the Assertiveness Training women took in the 1970s as ERA was flying high.)

Leadership expert Jean Kahwajy tells women to "assume people are doing the best that they can." The trick Kahwajy says is learning to "receive," to hear what you don't want to hear and react in a positive way. So you have the energy to stand up for yourself - and for others.

New on my firm's trading floor, I was glad to know at least one person. Derek had been a year ahead of me in college and was now a junior T-Bill trader. One day, I walked up behind Derek's desk to ask a question. His head was turning from side to side checking the multiple screens in front of him. Suddenly, he shouted an expletive. They continued to erupt for the next several seconds. Derek's boss walked up, less worried about the money being lost than something else. "Derek, don't talk like that in front of a lady," he said. The boss was 30. I was stunned.

On trading floors, like navy ships, colorful speech is standard. I was accustomed to bad language: it was a vice I suffered too. Letting off steam with a few foul words came quite naturally to me and seemed harmless. Derek's boss didn't know that I, for good or ill, shared more with Rahm Emanuel than Scarlett O'Hara when it came to cursing. "It's an honest mistake," I heard myself saying, "but I am NOT a lady!"

While a true statement (I flunk Miss Manners daily, on many counts), my response looked nutty. The boss was only trying to be kind. But I was so mad, I couldn't help myself.

I've huffed and puffed about many things I should have blown off. So I could only nod when I heard this wisdom from an executive recruiter for C-suites and board seats: "Thick skin. That's what more women need."

But not just one layer. To get to the top, women likely need three.

Let's start by shedding the soft veneer we're encouraged to grow as girls - for something more battle-ready. This month on Harvard Business Review's site, management expert Jeff Pfeffer points out that women won't get equal power until they project equal toughness.

"We've ruined her," said a male friend about his tween daughter. He explained that while he and his wife bred a love of grit in their sons (rolling in mud, staring down bullies), they had indulged their daughter in little-girl-ness. Her nose was always wiped, her clothes never dirty. When the playground was rough, her parents would come to school and sort things out. "She spends hours crying about wisecracks, what's she going to do when someone yells at her at work!"

I assured my friend that most girls find their inner-street-fighter soon enough; that like many of us, raised to value niceness, she'd learn its drawbacks and find the ability to push back or laugh it off (though I'm still learning). In the name of kindness, we should nurture as much "tough guy" in our daughters as we do in our sons.

Girls also need a layer that boys don't - added protection to be successful outsiders, until we finally get comfortable with females wielding power as overtly as men do. Not long after I snapped at Derek's boss, I was assigned a mentor. This woman was the rarest of breeds, a female proprietary trader, Wall Street 1988. She took me to drinks and said, "You're going to be lonely. But you'll succeed if you want to." At the time, this wasn't particularly motivational. But the words stayed with me because they were true. And, unless progress accelerates, they will still be true when my daughter goes to work in 15 years.

While a lack of gal-pals is survivable, the second thick-skin layer is about more than warding off loneliness.I've always hung out with guys as much as women, so it never occurred to me that spending my career in mostly-male places could be a problem.

But when you're the only one of your kind in the room, there are no standard expectations - no one knows what they want from you. I got advice on all the many things I shouldn't be. "Young women should not be funny" - when I tried to ape (perhaps poorly) witty male superiors. "Try to be less squeaky and talk slower," was my colleague's brotherly prompt as we walked into client meetings. "Cut the 'professor' voice," said a favorite guy friend, when I carried on about topics I knew well. All good feedback. But how to be is hard to navigate when you're stuck zig-zagging between male and female norms.

As one of two women at an off-site, I watched my only female peer present to the group. Her approach to striking the right tone was to remove all affect from her voice. Predictably, no one listened. I got up to speak next but had forgotten to breathe. My fear of being a female flop rose so high I almost fell over. I clung to podium, painfully plodding, and jokeless. I've since learned to find the humor in these moments - and now know others share my sweaty palms.

Researching Getting to 50/50, we found this issue has been well-studied. Columbia professor Claude Steele recently conducted a study showing that even female engineers (no strangers to being outnumbered by men), have higher heart rates, temperature and distraction when they are less than 25% of the room. Make the room gender-neutral and group results improve - women perform well and men perform no worse.

This isn't an argument for quotas in engineering or anywhere else. It is simply to point out that some environments will enhance our chances of success while others won't. Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, a creator of the Implicit Association Test , offers even more usable advice. If you can't fix your workplace, if you can't recruit your way to a more gender-neutral team, find other ways to surround yourself with evidence that you are not alone. To escape the cultural swamp, the one in our minds, Banaji puts famous women scientists on her screen saver and fills her office with reminders that human greatness is not bounded by sex or color.

Now, it's at that pinnacle - big power, money or fame - where women need a third shielding layer, like chainmail. What do I have in mind? How about Sarah Palin. I agree with Palin on very little, but her raw ambition makes me smile. As does her ability to walk right through flack - untouched by bi-partisan detractors and inconvenient facts. Let's get that super-strength body armor on the many talented women who lack it.

Jane, a neurosurgeon, was an expert in her field and held a big position at a major teaching hospital. She got pregnant at 40. Her male colleagues thought she'd lost her mind - that child creation and brain surgery didn't mix. She took six weeks off to recover from the birth and returned to the hospital game to resume her full schedule. But her boss had a different plan. "Your colleagues had extra work while you were out, you need to pay them back. I'm doubling your call schedule until that happens." You could see his point - her peers needed a break and she had caused the problem. But was this the optimal approach? With a six-week-old baby, feeling betrayed at work, Jane quit. What if she'd had Sarah's skin? She might have done a Mama Grizzly, bear hugged her boss and assured him she'd pay the time back - in a year, when she could see straight.

Women don't need a child to need the chainmail layer, just a man-sized set of dreams. The dean at a major professional school said, "It awes me how the knives come out. When a woman here is poised to beat out a male peer for a big job, some men will say things that just aren't true, it makes them uncomfortable that a woman could win."

Who wants to believe this? I don't. But then you start to see little things that say it might still be so. In liberal northern California, I watched my son's soccer game, in a league divided by age and gender. One parent said, "hey, wouldn't it be fun to have the boys play the girls?" Another replied, "yeah, but look at the girls, they're more focused - they'll clobber these guys. And some dads just won't deal well if their sons lose to girls." (Check out data collected by the National Science Foundation on the resistance we still have to seeing women as winners.)

What's the cure? Keep at it - think Gandhi for gals. A small man with a very thick skin moved minds (re-moved an empire) by helping people like him stand up for themselves, in the right way - again, and again, and again.

Leadership expert Jean Kahwajy tells women to "assume people are doing the best that they can." The trick Kahwajy says is learning to "receive," to hear what you don't want to hear and react in a positive way. So you have the energy to stand up for yourself - and for others.

"The senior guys I work for didn't want to promote Lynn to run a simple, local business," said a female executive who'd built her career (and sturdy shell) working at a big company. "They said Lynn didn't have enough experience to be in charge. But, weeks before, they'd made a man named Jack the leader of a complex, global business that he knew nothing about. So I said, 'Hmm, I'm trying to follow the logic here. Is it just that Jack is much smarter than Lynn?' The guys stopped, laughed, and gave Lynn her promotion."

With a strong hull, you feel safe to act on Gandhi's maxim: "An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching."

By Sharon Meers

| August 13, 2010; 8:43 AM ET

NOW's Role in Promoting Fair Mothers' Work Policies

---

(From Sonia Fuentes, a true founder of NOW, who points out that Phineas Indritz who is mentioned in this article was actually not a NOW "founder", but was very instrumental in NOW's early work.)

New York Times

August 9, 2010, 6:00 am

Feminists at Fault? (See also, our site's button, "ERA for Moms")

By NANCY FOLBRE

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Mothers in the United States earn substantially less than women without children, and not just because they tend to take some time out of paid employment. David Leonhardt summarizes some important evidence that public policies are partly to blame in a recent column in The New York Times, “A Labor Market Punishing to Mothers,” as well as a related Economix post.

Are feminists also at fault? Mr. Leonhardt quotes Prof. Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University, who says, “American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.” Professor Waldfogel also was quoted in USA Today, saying, “The American feminist movement didn’t want to hear anything about mothers.”

Which American feminists is she talking about? True, some feminist economists, like my good friend Prof. Barbara Bergmann, criticize policies that might encourage mothers to forgo paid employment. True, the United States has stronger antidiscrimination laws but less family-friendly policies than many European social democracies. True, the home page of the National Organization for Women says more about equality than motherhood.

But political strategies are always shaped by assessments of political possibilities. Perhaps feminists who advocate for equal pay have simply been more successful — and therefore more visible — in the United States than those who argue for policies that would require increased government spending.

Even a cursory look at the historical record of the last 50 years shows that feminist organizations have fought long and hard for two policies quite relevant to mothers and families: universal child care and paid family leave from work.

The National Organization for Women coined the slogan “Every Mother Is a Working Mother.” Its 1967 Women’s Bill of Rights called for maternity leave and day-care centers along with legislation against discrimination. In 1970-1, it campaigned for the Comprehensive Child Care Act, helping lobby it through both houses of Congress only to have it vetoed by President Nixon, who condemned its “family-weakening” implications.

A founder of NOW, Phineas Indritz, drafted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act that became law in 1978, making it illegal to discriminate against pregnant workers and requiring that pregnancy be treated as any temporary disability.

In 1987, NOW sponsored the Great American Mother’s Day Write-In to counter the opponents of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which guarantees unpaid family leaves for many employed women and men.

A page on the current NOW Web site states, “Caregiving is a feminist issue” and summarizes a policy agenda for mothers’ and caregivers’ economic rights.

NOW has also directly challenged the way that many news organizations emphasize conflicts of interest between mothers who work at home and those who work for pay. A related report by Joan Williams, Jessica Manvell, and Stephanie Bornstein of the University of California Hastings College of the Law provides specific criticisms of many newspaper articles describing why some mothers opt out of paid employment, including Lisa Belkin’s widely noted article “The Opt-Out Revolution,” published in The New York Times Magazine in 2003.

In her widely respected history of the women’s movement, “Moving the Mountain,” the journalist Flora Davis writes that, from 1971 on, most national women’s organizations advocated federal support for child care and a federal family leave law.

The historian Dorothy Sue Cobble, going further back in time, explains how New Deal feminists lobbied for what they called “full Social Security,” including paid maternity leave, investment in child care and early education, tax exemptions and tax credits for dependents and the recognition of women’s unpaid caregiving as part of the calculation of Social Security benefits.

I count myself among many scholars who believe that feminist theory offers some crucial insights into the relationship between gender inequality and the social organization of parenting.

Sometimes it’s easier to see the failures of social movements than their successes. The artist Ricardo Levins Morales designed a famous bumper sticker to celebrate trade unions that fought successfully for a 40-hour work week — The Labor Movement: The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend.

Maybe theorists need bumper stickers, too: Feminism: Why You Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Equality and Motherhood. [Editorial note from Sandyo: We don't have to. Look at the scandinavian countries where there are government supports--practical ones--to keep women in business so their country's GNP grows. Again, we need an ERA to support TRUE Family Values!]