56 Percent of the National Representatives in Rwanda are Women

In Rwanda, 56 percent of the members of the national parliament are women.  This is the highest figure in the world, where the average percent of female parliament members is 18.8.  According to a story in the Inter Press Service News Agency:

Rwandan women achieved this impressive figure in parliament by taking an active role in the country’s reconstruction and lobbying heavily for a constitutional quota for women in the lower house of parliament. They were also able to push for the creation of a government ministry of women’s affairs to promote policies in favour of women’s interests.

Now, after 16 years in exile in the Netherlands, Victoire Ingabire has returned to Rwanda and  been elected by her party (Unified Democratic Forces) to run for president in August.  She says that “[m]y objective is to introduce Rwanda to the rule of law and a constitutional state where international democratic standards are respected, where nationalism will at last be the cornerstone for all public institutions.”

Victoire Ingabire

Ingabire has reiterated what is said in other countries in which women have obtained sizable advances in the number of parliamentary representatives, namely, that even though the number of women may have increased, the power of the women has not risen accordingly.  Ingabire says:

There is no women’s empowerment. It is all fiction. What matters is not the number, but the share of power that is given to them. There is still a long way to go in translating women’s nominal weight into effective decision making share,” said Ingabire.
.  .  .  .  .
Women’s political weight is yet to be seen. I am not interested in cosmetic changes whereby women are nominated for propaganda motives. I want to see women’s fingerprints in all sectors of the society. Mine should not be a mere women ticket but one which will make a difference.

Ingabire is not optimistic that she will be able to win.  She says that she is undertaking a “Herculean” task.  But any time a woman runs for high public office is a victory for women, no matter the result.  And the other thing to remember from her candidacy is that, while it is always great when the number of female representatives rises, equality will not exist until the representatives have the requisite power.

Median Wealth for Single Black Women is $100 and for Single Hispanic Women is $120

The official U.S. unemployment rate is 9.7 percent.  However, it is nearly 16 percent among African Americans and 12.4 percent among Hispanics.  The impact of those unemployment figures on unmarried African American and Hispanic women is particularly bad because their median “wealth” (assets minus debts) is an astoundingly low $100 for unmarried African American women and $120 for unmarried Hispanic women.   This compares to a median wealth of $41,000 for single white women.

On International Women’s Day, the Insight Center for Community Economic Development released a report titled “Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America’s Future.”  The report showed the vast differences in wealth according to gender and race.  First, for families, for every dollar of wealth owned by the typical white family, the typical family of color owns only 16 cents.

That is bad enough, but the gap is even worse for single women of color since the report found that nearly half of all single black and Hispanic women have zero or negative wealth, meaning that their debts exceed all their assets.  In addition, about a third of single Hispanic women and one-fourth of single black women have no checking or savings account.  And comparing the wealth of single women of color to single men of color shows further huge disparities.  Women of color own only a penny for every dollar of wealth owned by men of color of their same race.

The impact of the figures is shown even more clearly by comparing the numbers of African American women who are single.  42% of all African American women have never been married, which is double the number of white women.  And 70% of professional black women are single.

The result of these huge discrepancies shows, of course, that single women of color are the people most hurt when they lose their jobs.  When there is no wealth,” a person is working paycheck to paycheck.  This situation is so precarious that “just one unpaid sick day or appliance repair would send about half of them into debt.”  And the impact of losing a job, or not being able to find a job, can lead to complete financial ruin.  There is simply no way to make ends meet.

15,675 Male High School Football Coaches and, Now, One Female

According to a national high school coaches directory, last season there were 15,675 high school football coaches (public and private) and all of them were males.  That is about to change.  On Friday, Natalie Randolph will be named the head football coach at Coolidge High School in Washington, DC.  This is great news!

Natalie Randolph when she was an assistant coach

Randolph has good credentials.  She graduated from the University of Virginia, played five seasons as a wide receiver for the D.C. Divas in the women’s professional league, and spent two years as an assistant football coach at D.C.’s H.D. Woodson High School.

Many consider football the most “macho” U.S. sport and, therefore, there will undoubtedly be much derision (and many many jokes) about Randolph’s hiring.  As one (anonymous) coach said about her hiring, “All I know is, I don’t want to be the first one to lose to her. That’s going to be wild.” Yes, football coaches have very fragile egos.  (And, by the way, I would imagine that rugby players might consider their sport more “macho” than football.  And, so, it was big news when a star professional player announced in December that he was gay and, apparently, most of his peers didn’t think it was a big deal.)

This is not the first time that the D.C. public school system has hired a woman as a head football coach.  In 1985, Wanda Oates was named head football coach at Ballou High School. She lasted one day in the position, before opposing coaches pressured the deputy schools superintendent to remove her from the job because they didn’t want to coach against a woman.  Oates still teaches in the school system and is happy for Randolph.  When told that Randolph had been hired at Coolidge, Oates smiled and shook her head that it took 25 years for the next woman to take this step.  She said, “It’s a tremendous opportunity for that young lady,  Football is the macho of all macho sports, and once we break that glass ceiling, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish.”

Randolph will have a lot of battles to fight in addition to getting her team ready for its games.  The comments from the misogynist “macho” football fans will be unrelenting.  For example, here are some of the comments to the Washington Post article:

Having a female football coach is like having a male lamaze coach… Neither know enough to be effective.

Some of these kids see HS sports as a way out the slime to college. What college scout in their right mind would ever recommend to take a kid from this program.

That ain’t right.

The boys on this team will be so embarrased they will not want to paly for her.  There’s absolutely no way anyone can tell me the school could not have found a man who was better qualified for that position.  Football is one of the few areas where young men in need of strong postive male role models can be found. They don’t need a woman usurping this area of authority because it will only backfire.  I’m not hating but it seems to me like all the hoopla is more about this woman and not about what is best for those boys she will be trying to lead.  This will be an abysmal failure and I feel sorry that those boys will be subjected to such a stupid experiment.

This is a gimmick.  The boys on this team will be so embarrased they will not want to paly for her.  There’s absolutely no way anyone can tell me the school could not have found a man who was better qualified for that position.

I applaud the school for hiring Randolph and hope for the best for her.  Once the school is winning, of course, the criticism from other coaches and the macho football fans will ease.  But it usually takes time for any coach to put together a winning team.  And many coaches never have a winning team.  Coolidge High School will have to continue to support her through thick and thin.

India Approves Female Quota for Legislative Seats

In response to male-dominated politics throughout the country’s history, India has just approved a bill that would reserve 1/3 of all legislative seats for women candidates. The news comes just in time for International Women’s Day, on March 8th.

The country faces specific problems relating to women that have not been appropriately addressed up to this point. The World Economic Forum has ranked India 114 out of 134 countries based on gender disparities. Female infanticide is responsible for an unequal number of men and women in the country. Proponents of the bill hope that a critical mass of female legislators will solve this problem.

“Issues like female infanticide will no longer be seen as a soft subject but will become the core of the nation’s political agenda,” said Brinda Karat, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), during the debate in the upper house.

Many are very resistant to the idea of a quota, even though it’s been done with success in places like Norway. I am in support of such a measure. It’s not even a 50% quota; it is 33%. I believe this can encourage more women to get involved with politics and feel empowered to put in the time and effort into running for office.

But some of those who opposed the bill claim they didn’t oppose it for sexist reasons. Instead, Laloo Prasad Yadav, leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party, said that he is against the legislation because it does not contain certain provisions for women of lower castes or religious minorities. Therefore, he claims, the bill won’t do enough to counter inequalities in Indian politics. As he puts it:

“We are being unfairly defamed as anti-women. All we want is that the women from real India, like those toiling in the farms and villages, are brought forward.”

Women currently have about 11% of the seats in Parliament in India. The United States isn’t a huge improvement over this number, where about 17% of Congress is female.

Please Sign NOW’s Petition to President Obama to Ratify CEDAW

One of the very good things to come out of yesterday’s International Women’s Day was a call from NOW for President Obama to support ratification of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).  CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and is the most complete international agreement on basic human rights for women.  It “promotes not only women’s empowerment, but is also a foundation for peace and justice around the world.”   (NOW has a very good set of information about CEDAW, showing the importance of why the U.S. should ratify it.)

Since CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, 185 countries have ratified it.  However, even though the U.S. helped draft the treaty, it is the only industrialized country not to have ratified it.  It is another of the many failures of the United States to fully participate in important world-wide treaties.  CEDAW is extremely important for women’s rights.  But, in addition, since a large part of the reason that President Obama was elected was to improve relations with the rest of the world, his support of CEDAW would be a very good step to show that he is engaged internationally.  CEDAW absolutely needs to be ratified by the U.S.

NOW has created a petition to send to President Obama.  Please go to NOW’s web site to sign the petition!!  Here is what it says:

Dear President Obama:

While our nation has made an undeniable progress in advancing women’s rights in recent decades, we still have a long way to go. One significant milestone on our way to the equality will be the ratification of Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Women’s Rights Treaty.

Women continue to be targets of sexual and domestic violence — at home and abroad. We are discriminated against in the workplace and elsewhere. Women in the U.S. and every other nation suffer from more poverty, less access to health care, less access to a liveable wage, and barriers to equal education. The Women’s Rights Treaty is a valuable instrument for combating these wrongs. CEDAW embodies the basic democratic values of fairness and equal opportunity. Ratification does not require any federal appropriations. Moreover, women across the political spectrum support CEDAW’s ratification.

I urge you to take leadership on this critical women’s rights issue. The public and the U.S. Senate must hear that you support women’s human rights and that ratification of CEDAW should wait no longer.

DC To Fight AIDS with Female Condoms

Washington, DC will become the first city in the US to incorporate female condom distribution in its fight against HIV/AIDS. The city’s HIV rates are notoriously high, with rates reaching 3% of the population– higher than West African statistics, and about on par with Kenya and Uganda. The initiative will include providing free female condoms in salons, schools, and convenience stores in high-risk areas.

The motivation for the measure is to empower more girls and women to take control of their sexual health:

Officials said they are turning to female condoms to give women more power to protect themselves from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases when their partners refuse to use protection.

It’s a noble cause, but I am skeptical about its effectiveness. I wonder how many men who refuse to use male condoms will be open to female condom use. Its not as if female condoms are completely inconspicuous. It seems to me that men’s attitudes toward condom usage is the most important factor here. However, I do think that by offering only male condoms, DC (and other cities) is placing an unspoken onus on the man to decide on protection, while the women remain in a more passive role. The inclusion of female condoms creates an attitude that women are active participants, empowered to make health decisions in sexual encounters.

DC has been widely criticized for not properly curtailing its HIV/AIDS problem. The city’s failure to reduce HIV infection, coupled with controversy about HIV organizations’ extravagant travel expenses and missing tax returns, has prompted campaigns such as the one shown below. This poster, prominently featured all over DC, compares Washington’s HIV negligence  to the Bush Administration’s failures during Katrina.

International Women’s Day Posters

Everyone knows that today is the 100th International Women’s Day.  (Well, maybe everyone does not know it, since the day is not recognized by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada.)

I’ve seen some of the posters that have been used over the years and they’re great.  The L Magazine has a set of 10 of them.  Here’s one of them from last year.

And here’s one from the Guardian that I really like.

Obama at One

I have written often about the disappointment I’ve felt about President Obama.  The disappointments included his failure to do anything about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” his reluctance to make recess appointments, his active opposition to Senate bills that would have allowed drugs to be purchased from other countries, his ambivalence on global warming, and, of course, his decisions making him the “War President.”  And now we have the sorry spectacle of him probably changing his mind on prosecuting the 9/11 people in criminal courts.

When he took office, I knew he wouldn’t be as liberal as I would want, but I expected, at least, that he would be somewhat left of center and would fight the Republicans and right-wing groups.  That has not happened.  Fortunately, there is still time and he at least has given some hope that he will fight for what he believes in rather than continuing to try for bipartisanship and always yielding to the Republicans whenever there is the slightest opposition.

The Nation had an issue titled “Obama at One” in which they assessed Obama’s first year in office and included short opinion articles from many different writers.  A few weeks later, they published very thoughtful letters to the editor about the “Obama at One” issue.  I thought that three of the letters very succinctly gave the pros and cons about Obama’s first year in office.  Here they are.

On the “con” side, John Reeder from Arlington, VA, wrote:

I think the late, beloved Howard Zinn and Adolph Reed Jr. had it about right: Obama is nothing but a neoliberal Democrat wedded t war, empire, the corporation, the banks, Wall Street and the rich.  I never expected otherwise.

Also on the “con” side, Dean DiBasio of Clinton Township, MI, wrote:

As a former Obama supporter, I must say he continues to amaze me.  He says he doesn’t want to punish Wall Street.  He doesn’t want to push for a public option.  Now he’s talking about building nuclear power plants and offshore drilling.  This is change we can believe in?  I’ve never seen a president abandon his base so completely.  He will rightly be celebrated in history as the first black president.  But I suggest he should go down in history as our first Bud Lite president—sound great, less filling.

On the “pro” side, Tina Issa of Chicago wrote:

Here’s what I see: a president who was against the Iraq War and who is ending it; a president who has pulled us away from the brink of economic disaster; a president who treats the rest of the world as his equal, not his servant, and has restored the respect the United States enjoyed until George W. Bush; a president who tries to include the Republicans, even though they have slandered, insulted and disrespected him; a president who respects the Constitution and upholds it; a president who is trying to do the right thing, admits his mistakes and tries to correct them.  At one year out he is doing just fine under some of the most difficult conditions this nation has ever been through.  Thanks, Mr. President.

The three letters make a lot of sense.  They show the disappointments—but also the positives.  I (mostly) agree with all three.  Let’s hope that Obama continues to change—for the better.

Using Male Practice Players for Women’s Basketball Teams

I’ve always had mixed feelings about this.  For a long time, many women’s college basketball teams have used men as “practice players.”  The University of Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (the most successful coach ever in college basketball—women or men) is generally considered as the originator, and biggest proponent, of using male practice players.  Many other famous women coaches are also big proponents, including Hall of Famers C. Vivian Stringer, Margaret Wade, and Jody Conradt.  Stringer went so far as to say that “It’s the male practice players that allow us to get better. … Male practice players are the most important element to the continued growth of women’s basketball players.”

The typical male practice player would be someone who was a good player in high school, but not good enough to play at the college level.  Being a practice player would allow them to continue playing at a higher level than pickup and intramural games, and would allow them to contribute to the success of the women’s team.  (I remember well a 1999 Sports Illustrated article about male practice players.)  The thinking behind using male practice players is that, because the males are typically bigger and stronger, having them practice against the women will make the women more physical and better overall.  Former Maryland star, and current WNBA player, Laura Harper said “When you’re going against 6-4, 200-pound guys, you have to be aggressive.  It just makes the level of practice higher, more exciting, more physical. When you get in a game, it’s second nature to take the contact. Our guys make us a better team.”

In 2007, the NCAA’s Committee on Women’s Athletics tried to get rid of male practice players.  Their reasoning was that using male practice players decreases opportunities for women.  The group said that the use of males  “violates the spirit of gender equity and Title IX” and “to have talented, capable female student-athletes stand on the sidelines during official practice while the team’s starters practice against ‘more talented men’ is a lost opportunity.”  The effort failed and the current NCAA rule is that male practice players must be enrolled full-time in classes and cannot be rewarded in any way for their practice time with the team.

As I said, I have always had mixed feelings about using male practice players.  On the one hand, I think that anything that helps the players become better is a good thing and will help lead to more fans of the game.  On the other hand, it seems as if it would be a lost opportunity for female players who are not quite good enough to make the team.  Basketball is a fun game, even in practice, and the benefits that the male practice players get (having fun, improving their basketball skills, learning new life skills, helping to improve the team) would be lost for the women.

But the following situation is clearer for me.  The Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA just announced that it is seeking 15 male players to practice against the team.   Apparently, the only compensation will be a new pair of basketball shoes and a ticket to one game.  And, also apparently since the announcement is very brief, the players chosen would practice against the team throughout the season.  (BTW, the coach is male, but the general manager of the team is Ann Meyers, a Hall of Fame player.)  I see no benefit for this at all.  The WNBA players are already physical and skilled and, in my opinion, will not improve much, if at all, by practicing against male players.  It seems more like a publicity stunt that will fail because all it really does is take the focus away from where it should be—the skills and competitiveness of the players–and, instead, implies that the women’s skills are not good enough.

The skills of the WNBA players are plenty good.  In fact, many people like the women’s game better because it is closer to the real skills of basketball rather than the emphasis on dunking in men’s college and professional games.   And, so, I hope the officials of the Phoenix Mercury change their minds.

Climate Change and Natural Disasters Impact Women Far More than Men

One of the effects of flooding (From Gender and the Climate Change Agenda)

With the ongoing debate (endless and ineffective) about the impact of global warming–and the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile–this report is timely.  The UK-based Women’s Environmental Network has just released a report titled “Gender and the Climate Change Agenda.”  The main conclusions are that “[g]lobally, women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to different and unequal social roles and status” and that “[w]omen contribute less to climate change, are impacted more by it, and have less say in decisions about the problem.”  (See treehugger.com for more analysis of the report.)

For example, 10,000 women die each year from weather-related disasters such as tropical storms and droughts, compared to about 4,500 men.  And women comprise 20 million of the 26 million people estimated to have been displaced by climate change.  The report says that global warming (and its impacts on such things as food production, severe storms, and drought), impact the world’s poorest nations the hardest. As a consequence, women make up 80 percent of “climate refugees.”

The report cites the recent “Human Impact Report” from the Global Humanitarian Forum, which estimated that “300,000 people are already dying each year as a result of climate change, of which 14,500 deaths are directly caused by weather-related disasters attributable to climate change, and it is highly likely that the majority of these victims are female.”  The differences are most pronounced in countries that have the strongest gender inequality.  The reasons for this are staggering:

Experience from recent disasters supports [the fact that the majority of victims are female]: in the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, the mortality rate for women aged 20-44 was 71 per thousand, compared to 15 per thousand men of the same age – almost five times higher for women. Reasons for the disparity include women not having been taught to swim, clothing restricting mobility and cultural norms regarding the preservation of female honour causing many women to leave their homes too late because they waited for a male escort. In addition, men were able to warn each other of the danger as they met in public spaces, but only conveyed the information back to their families sporadically.  Similarly, one factor in the higher female mortality rates following the 2004 tsunami (although not caused by climatic factors) was women being unable to climb trees.

That is really hard to swallow.  More women than men are being killed in natural disasters because of not being given the same opportunity as young boys to learn to swim or climb trees.  Most egregiously, they are being killed because their culture does not allow them to go out of their homes without a male escort and deprives them of normal communication with people outside of their homes so that they are not warned of an imminent disaster.  Not surprisingly, the men were more concerned about themselves than they were about their families.

On the other hand, in countries in which there was more equality between men and women, studies show that there was little or no difference in the number of women and men that died.

The report goes into many more reasons for why global warming has more impact on women than men.  For instance, “i]n many developing countries, increased water scarcity linked to climate change is increasing the distance women must travel to collect water and fuel, and means that children, usually girls, are increasingly being kept out of education to help with the often exhausting task.”  And there were more women killed than men in heat waves in Europe in 2003 and London in 1995, with the speculated reasons being related to “poverty, deprivation, living alone, vulnerability to associated air pollution, and the increased difficulty that women above the age of 60 have in regulating their internal temperature.”

As for Hurricane Katrina, the report says:

Women were disproportionately represented among those left in the city following the storm. Despite making up 54% of the population of the city, 80% of those who were left were women. In many cases, this was because they lacked the means to leave. They did not have access to the private transport that the authorities assumed in their emergency planning, or have the resources to pay for petrol or accommodation on leaving the city.

Not a pretty picture.  Global warming should certainly have a high priority among feminist issues.  The 65-page report from the Women’s Environmental Network reaches this conclusion:

Climate change is the biggest challenge humanity has faced, and will only be addressed through global cooperation. Yet the world is currently trying to do so using only 50% of its intellectual and social resources. This report has exposed the injustice of environmental policy and explored how women are directly, specifically and unjustly affected.

The changes that are required to tackle climate change have the potential to radically alter global political and economic systems, either for better or worse. We must find initiatives that deal with climate change and at the same time address the injustice of the current system, bringing about a fairer and more equitable global society, rather than allowing climate change policies to reinforce and exacerbate existing inequalities. Changing existing structures and developing the capacity of women to allow their equal participation in decision-making doubles our chances of finding effective solutions. Indeed, climate justice will not be achieved without doing so.