A New Fight: Promoting Women’s Rights Worldwide

Americans live in one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. However, one area wherein the U.S. lags behind most of the liberal democracies of the world is in that of women’s rights. Women are still far from equal partners in governance at all levels, with only about one in six elected officeholders being female. In the workplace, females still lag behind males in terms of pay for equivalent work; they also hold far less than half of all top management positions.

America has in recent decades prided itself on its commitment to human rights and equality for all. Yet, somewhat incredibly, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution remains stalled because the Amendment in its original iteration was not ratified by enough states (38) before the deadline in 1982. The Amendment remains very much alive and supported by women’s groups nationwide such as the U.S.-based National Organization for Women, but there is not all that much popular support for it. Critics argue that workplace and other reforms are gradually coming about without the need to codify the equality of women into law. This may be true to some extent, but the obvious question is, what harm could it do to ratify it? The same arguments, in fact, were kicked about regarding civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Explicitly endorsing the rights of citizens, even if such endorsement is largely symbolic, is vital to the national spirit. Also, the ERA would, in fact, have teeth. One of the effects of the ERA would be to help narrow the gender pay gap.

Women are still discriminated against in the job marketplace. Such basic accommodations as paid pregnancy leave are very recent concepts and by no means universally implemented. The pay gap between men and women remains. Casserly (2013) reported that “For more than a decade now, the comparison between the median earnings of full-time employed men and women in the U.S. has remained a stubborn 77%–that is, women earn roughly 77 cents on the dollar when stacked against the paychecks of white men” (Casserly, 2013, n.p.). After decades of slow but steady closure of the gender pay gap, that progress has stalled. Many experts debate the cause of this ongoing inequity, but one inescapable conclusion remains: some employers still consider women to be inferior employees to men. Yet, there is very little reason for such discrimination. Women have held all manner of professions and performed them not just adequately but admirably, even in male-dominated professions: soldier, firefighter, race car driver, professional athlete, and many others—not to mention corporate CEOs, senators, and Congresspersons, Secretary of State, etc. etc. Only in professions where brute strength and size are essential—say, professional football player—is it necessary to employ men (and even so, one can easily imagine a very capable female quarterback, kicker, etc.). In any other professional field, any lingering gender discrimination is no doubt in part due to the mistaken perception on the part of “old school” managers that women are not as “tough” and therefore can’t be relied upon to make critical decisions.

It is interesting to contrast the U.S. with Western Europe in this regard. Unlike in the U.S., several nations have and have had women as their elected heads of state. Women hold key positions in government, industry, finance, and policymaking. There is a basically nonexistent gender wage gap—in fact, not only is pregnancy leave granted women by force of law, but it is also given to their husbands, removing a potential source of reverse discrimination. This is a manifestation of new-school versus old-school thinking, in that Europe had to essentially rebuild itself from the ground up after WWII. On top of that was the realization of the horrors that can come to pass simply from not treating all people with equality and equal dignity. This led to the creation of the famous social safety net that characterizes the European democracies. The United States didn’t have such an enforced renaissance and in fact, its progress toward equal rights for all has lurched along at a distressingly slow pace. Much of this can be attributed to the power of the conservative movement in the U.S., which advocates “traditional family values” that can be understood as code for relegating women to their traditional roles, aka “barefoot and pregnant.” The fact of the matter is that “old school” thinking remains highly influential in American politics and many of those in positions of power mistrust and fear women.

In further examining the effect of “old school” thinking on wage-discriminatory practices, it is helpful to examine several studies that have been done in recent years to try to explain not only the “wage gap,” but also its stubborn persistence. A study by McDonald and Thornton (2007) shed a bit of light on the phenomenon. The authors examined the rates of pay offered to new-hire college graduates. They found, somewhat surprisingly given the persistent 77% wage disparity that existed in the overall labor market, that “As much as 95 percent of the overall gender gap in starting-salary offers can be explained by differences in college majors selected” (McDonald & Thornton, 2007, p.32). So by the time of the study, there was very little gender discrimination in this particular labor market. This suggests that a significant portion of the continuing gender wage disparity is due to women who have been in the workforce for some time having suffered from wage discrimination in the past. A woman who was paid substantially less and was discriminated against in terms of promotion and advancement opportunities will still realize earnings inferior to those enjoyed by her male equivalents, even if no discrimination exists now. The effects of having been underpaid and in a very real sense, undervalued echo forward throughout a woman’s entire career.

This unfortunate fact suggests that merely eliminating gender inequality in the workplace won’t be enough to redress past injustices. To restore fairness, the workplace must show not just equal treatment but also favoritism to hiring and promoting women. Unfortunately, this may not be possible, as earlier experiments to tilt the playing field in favor of those who suffered from racial discrimination showed. The effect of “affirmative action” and other similar programs was to create a growing groundswell of discontent among whites, who claimed, with some justification, that they were now the victims of “reverse discrimination,” a term coined in the wake of Alan Bakke’s successful suit against the Regents of the University of California. Bakke claimed that he had been denied admission to the University of California when less qualified black students had been admitted because of racial quotas. It is certain, therefore, that were women to receive federally mandated preferential treatment in the labor marketplace, that many men would feel that they, too, were the victims of “reverse discrimination.” Therefore, such an initiative, no matter how well-intentioned, would be a social and political non-starter. For that matter, it is always a pertinent question if it is just or fair to introduce one type of discrimination in order to make up for another.

It is, then, the role of leaders to bring about social change not by fiat (though that does work sometimes) but rather, by instilling shared values into the community. The sad fact is that many social reforms are constantly held up until, quite frankly, enough “old-schoolers” in power die so that progressives can have a free hand in legislation. For instance, President Obama used a brief Democratic supermajority in the Senate to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009. That window of opportunity was only briefly open and slammed shut after the 2010 elections. Thus, if progressives want to once and for all make discrimination against women illegal as stated in the law of the land, either by passing the ERA or by enacting similar legislation, they will have to become so politically dominant that they can pass such legislation over the heads of the remaining conservatives. This, in fact, has occurred before, during the first years of FDR’s “New Deal.” The alternative, which many progressives find unpalatable, is to wait for the country’s mood as a whole to shift. The “wait-and-see” progressives may, in fact, have a viable strategy, as all it seems that they have to do is sit back and watch in amazement as the Republican Party implodes, and borderline lunatics such as Michelle Bachmann become spokespersons for the Tea Party. But even the most patient progressives don’t want to win merely by default. What they need to do is snatch the “traditional values” banner right out of conservatives’ hands. After all, there is no more fundamental, traditional American value than that “all men are created equal.” This has been expanded to include “all persons of any race or color.” Treating women as the complete equals of men is a rallying cry for which there is now a standard-bearer.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory by appealing to traditional American values, ushering in a new era of conservatism. In 2016, the U.S. is very likely to have as its Democratic presidential candidate a woman who has been a tireless promoter of women’s rights worldwide: Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s work on the behalf of the world’s women, dating back to well before she (or her husband) held political office, is well-known. In Beijing in 1995, at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, she threw down the gauntlet: “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights” (Clinton, 1995). Clinton established herself as a crusader for women, a role she has retained and even enhanced in the decades since then. (It is interesting to note in passing that whatever China’s other problems in terms of human rights may be, that in that country, there is absolute gender equality in terms of government policy.)

Clinton has exactly one chance to climb onto the world’s biggest stage. She will be 69 years old at the time of the 2016 presidential elections, and that is at the cusp of being considered too old for the job by the American electorate (she would only be a few months younger than Reagan when he was elected to his first term). The upcoming presidential election, then, is her first and probably only chance to break the ultimate glass ceiling: the United States has never had a woman president. Clinton is well aware that this glass ceiling still exists, and at all levels. Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in 2009, Clinton asserted that “Until women around the world are accorded their rights—and afforded the opportunities of education, health care, and gainful employment—global progress and prosperity will have its own glass ceiling” (Clinton, 2009). Her well-taken point was that the overall prosperity and progress of a nation, and of the world, is dependent on the success of and opportunities given to women. Indeed, the most prosperous nations today are the ones wherein women are treated as equals, and the poorest are the ones where traditionalist mores still relegate women to second-class status.

It is famously true in American politics, and there is no reason to believe that it will be any less true in 2016, that the winning presidential candidate brings his/her party along with him/her into congressional and senatorial seats that are up for grabs in that same year; this is known as the “coattail effect.” It is equally likely to remain true that in the off-year elections (2018, in this case), the party in the White House loses seats in the House and the Senate. Therefore, there may be a golden window of opportunity for progressives to take control of America’s sociopolitical agenda and enact legislation, as well as foreign policy, led by its first female chief executive, that establishes the United States once and for all as a global leader and unflinching advocate for women’s rights, both bypassing the ERA once and for all and by promoting women’s rights vigorously worldwide. This window, however, may be quite short in duration. There may only exist two short years during which there would be a progressive supermajority in the House and Senate. As remarked above, historically, most progressive social legislation has only been passed when progressives control both houses and the Presidency. This may indeed come about in 2016 and is a compelling reason for those who want to see the advancement of women’s rights to vote for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in 2016.

References

Casserly, M. (2013).The geography of the gender pay gap: Women’s earnings by state. Forbes.com. Web.

Clinton, H. R. (1995). Remarks for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. Beijing, China, September 5, 1995.

Clinton, H. R. (2009). Foreign policy address at the council on foreign relations. Washington, DC, July 15, 2009.

McDonald, J. A. & Thornton, R. J. (2007). Do new male and female college graduates receive unequal pay? Journal of Human Resources, 42(1), 32-48.