[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:13687] Making women's issues go away

[Alfred Kagan]

>From: "Kathleen de la Pena McCook" <kmccook at tampabay.rr.com>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 06:19:57 -0400
>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:13687] Making women's issues go away
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>salon. com
>Making women's issues go away
>
>A damning new report reveals that the Bush administration has quietly
>removed 25 reports from its Women's Bureau Web site, deleting or
>distorting crucial information on issues from pay equity to
>reproductive healthcare.
>- - - - - - - - - - - -
>By Rebecca Traister, staff writer for Salon
>April 28, 2004 | If you'd logged onto the Department of Labor's
>Women's Bureau Web site in 1999, you would have found a list of more
>than 25 fact sheets and statistical reports on topics ranging from
>"Earning Differences Between Men and Women" to "Facts About Asian
>American and Pacific Islander Women" to "Women's Earnings as Percent
>of Men's 1979-1997."
>
>Not anymore. Those fact sheets no longer exist on the Women's Bureau
>Web site, and have instead been replaced with a handful of peppier
>titles, like "Hot Jobs for the 21st Century" and "20 Leading
>Occupations for Women." It's just one example of the ways in which
>the Bush administration is dismantling or distorting information on
>women's issues, from pay equity to reproductive healthcare, according
>to "Missing: Information About Women's Lives," a new report released
>Wednesday by the National Council for Research on Women.
>You've probably heard about some of the other examples in "Missing" --
>  for instance, the time the Centers for Disease Control removed an
>online guide to condom use and changed the fact-sheet language to
>indicate that studies on condom use were inconclusive, focusing
>instead on abstinence. But the power of "Missing" comes not from its
>dozens of individual examples, but from the depth and breadth of its
>findings about the small ways in which the Bush administration is
>draining the well of dependable public scientific and sociological
>information.
>"When these instances are taken individually, perhaps we don't see
>the cumulative pattern of what's happening," said Linda Basch,
>president of the 23-year-old NCRW, an alliance of 100 women's policy,
>research and education centers, including the NOW Legal Defense and
>Education Fund, Planned Parenthood, and the Girl Scouts. "But when we
>gather the information together, and see the distorted or
>disappearing information about the economic opportunities, the
>situation of violence against women, health and particularly
>reproductive health, it is a very distressing pattern."
>
>Released just three days after an estimated 1 million people gathered
>in Washington for the March for Women's Lives, "Missing" exhaustively
>catalogs the ways in which government information about women's
>health, labor and education has been altered, removed or obfuscated
>during the Bush administration. "This is really undermining a
>nonpartisan legacy of government," said Basch, referring to a history
>of reliable dissemination of scientific data by the federal
>government. Of concern to NCRW researchers is the possibility that
>this morphed or absent information will hurt future researchers,
>policymakers and citizens who in the past would have relied on
>federal sources of information in their advocacy for women's equity
>and access.
>
>In an e-mailed statement to Salon, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney
>said, "I'm grateful to the National Council for Research on Women for
>confirming what many of us in Congress have insisted for years -- we
>can't continue to advance as women if the cold, hard facts of our
>status are unknown. We've seen a disturbing trend toward hiding the
>information that helps us improve women's lives. I hope that this is
>the beginning of a successful effort to uncover the missing data."
>
>California Rep. Barbara Lee also sent a statement, saying, "This
>report outlines a disturbing pattern of decisions by federal agencies
>to close down, delay, alter, or spin data about what is happening to
>American women and girls. Science must not be sacrificed and silenced
>like this. We must take every opportunity to point out the
>Administration's attempts to twist, distort, and subvert science to
>advance its right-wing based political agenda."
>
>Many of the shifts in federal agency information have been reported
>in the past, but, when seen together, look even more impressive -- or
>horrifying. Some individual examples -- like the observations about
>the DOL's Women's Bureau -- will look new.
>[ ....... ]
>
>." The 2002 "Vision Statement" reads: "We will empower women to
>enhance their potential for securing more satisfying employment as
>they seek to balance their work-life needs." In other words: less
>information about helpful policy and legislation, more potential-
>enhancing tips on balancing "work" and "life."
>
>Then there are the missing fact sheets, and the popular handbook on
>the rights of women in the workplace, called "Don't Work in the Dark -
>- Know Your Rights," that's not to be found. The "1993 Handbook on
>Women Workers," which was available in 1999, is no longer. Though it
>is scheduled for rerelease sometime in the future, NCRW researchers
>who contacted the Women's Bureau learned that no publication date is
>set.
>
>Irasema Garza, the director of the women's rights department for the
>American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, and the
>former director of the Women's Bureau from 1999 to 2000, had seen
>parts of the "Missing" report that pertained to her former
>department. "As soon as I saw the report, I went to my old Web site
>and found that the majority of all of our fact sheets were gone," she
>said. "In my old job, I traveled all around the country giving
>speeches -- but all the women wanted were these fact sheets. Women
>really used this information to protect themselves in the workplace."
>
>Contacted by Salon for a response to the report, a spokeswoman for
>the Department of Labor said that the Women's Bureau director was
>traveling, but e-mailed a response to the queries about the changing
>mission statement and publication list. That e-mail said, in part,
>"Congress created the Women's Bureau in 1920 to 'formulate standards
>and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women,
>improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and
>advance their opportunities for profitable employment.' Under that
>mandate, the Women's Bureau's focus, programs, publications and
>website are changed and updated periodically to reflect the
>priorities of the current Administration, the Secretary of Labor and
>the Director of the Women's Bureau. The Bureau continues to work with
>internal and external partners and stakeholders to develop programs
>to address the needs of 21st Century working women." The White House
>press office, contacted for comment, did not re! spond by press time.
>
>"The fact that 25 reports on issues of equality and access have been
>removed from this Web site is enormously distressing," said Basch of
>the findings about the changes at the Women's Bureau. She pointed out
>that the public, as well as researchers, journalists and
>policymakers, turns to agency Web sites for information about rights
>and government policies. Basch claimed that last year there were more
>than 250 million hits to government Web sites.
>[ ....... ]
>
>Over at the Centers for Disease Control, the NCRW researchers claim,
>posted fact sheets were revised to suggest studies on the
>effectiveness of using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and other
>STDs were "inconclusive." Instead, the revised fact sheet focused on
>abstinence -- a favorite of the family values crowd -- as the only
>effective path to sexual health. As was reported at the time, the CDC
>also removed an online guide to proper condom use (replacing it later
>with a revised edition) as well as a list of successful sex education
>programs and studies that showed no rise in sexual activity among
>teens taught about condoms. "These are debates that scientific
>research has closed," said Riche. "The people who provide the
>information are now reopening those debates, taking away the
>scientific certainty. It's more subtle than putting out wrong
>information or simply removing all the information -- and, frankly,
>more effective."
>
>According to the researchers behind "Missing," the pressure of right-
>wing ideology has also led scientists to stop using words like "gay,"
>"sex worker," and "transgender" in their grant applications. This
>comes in the wake of the Traditional Values Coalition's very long and
>damning list of 150 researchers and 200 grants in the field of high-
>risk sexual behavior. Then there's the case of the morning-after
>pill, which has yet to appear as an over-the-counter medication,
>despite the two scientific advisory committees that urged the FDA to
>make it one. According to "Missing," it was pressure from
>conservative groups that led FDA commissioner Mark McClellan to
>postpone his expected February 2004 decision on the matter by 90
>days.
>
>"Missing" doesn't concern itself only with absent online information.
>It also lists some of the actual governmental bodies that have
>disappeared or been threatened during the Bush administration. In
>2001, George Bush disbanded the President's Interagency Council on
>Women, a group appointed in 1995 by Bill Clinton to implement
>strategies developed at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in
>Beijing, as part of the U.N. Platform for Action. The council was
>chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and
>then by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "One of the things the
>office did was make sure the president's policies reflected women's
>issues," said Garza. "That office is gone. It was one of the first
>things that was done away with under this administration."
>[ ....... ]
>
>"In my experience, I would say we are probably just seeing the tip of
>the iceberg with this report," said Riche. "If we know about all
>these examples, that means there are many, many more." To that end,
>the NCRW is establishing a Misinformation Clearinghouse Web site
>through which people can submit examples of information that is no
>longer available to them. The Clearinghouse will also collect and
>publish a list of sources for dependable information.
>[ ....... ]
>
>Full article:
>http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/04/28/womens_report/index.html
>- - - - - - - - - - - -


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu