On Labor Day, Working Women Need Straight Answers from John McCain
UC Davis professor Carole Joff and I just published this commentary on Huffington Post. We felt that the connection between economic and reproductive justice has not been fully made as yet, especially in the media, and we decided to do our part. Please spread it around far and wide, and post comments there (and here too of course!). UPDATE: Here’s the version published on Alternet. It’s not pegged to a specific day, and it is updated with Palin positions–the better for your forwarding and sharing. We received a note from a gentleman in St. Louis telling us that he had forwarded our questions to ABC’s Charles Gibson, asking him to query Sarah Palin on these questions when he interviews her this week. Will he?
Most years, Labor Day means a long lazy weekend of barbecues, fishing trips, and picnics before school and fall weather overtake us. But this year, deep into a presidential election, with a slumping national economy putting the pinch on workers, Labor Day’s traditional meaning spotlights questions about working women that we want to ask John McCain.
Why are we questioning McCain and not Obama? We’ve listened carefully to the two candidates and we’ve examined their voting histories. Obama’s record and rhetoric reassure us that, when it comes to the challenges facing working women, he gets it. But we’re downright alarmed by what we’ve learned about John McCain..
Barefoot and Pregnant?
We’re an advocate and academic, respectively, with longstanding passions for economic and reproductive justice for women. We’ve come to understand the direct and profound interconnections between the two. There’s good reason why the words “barefoot and pregnant” have been so frequently joined together historically.
We haven’t heard anyone question McCain from that intersection of women’s lives, so we are asking him these questions:
First, John McCain, do you think women belong in the paid labor force? This might seem facetious or rhetorical, but it’s a very serious, core question. We know your wife, Cindy, chairs the board of her family’s company. And we’ve noticed your most visible surrogate to women voters is Carly Fiorina, who was until recently one of the top corporate CEOs in the country.
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But surely you realize the overwhelming majority of women don’t have the resources of these two women. So if you accept most women will spend some of their lives in the labor force, do you believe women should earn the same as men, for the same jobs? You’ve opposed the equal pay measure stalled in Congress–the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act —because you say it would “open us up to lawsuits”. Open who up? And if you support equal pay for equal work, what would you do to guarantee it?
McCain Record on Votes That Could Help Children
Families where both partners are working for low wages, and especially families headed by single moms, deserve various kinds of support from a compassionate government. These families need access to affordable and high quality childcare. Most of all, they need affordable healthcare–for themselves, but especially for their children. But, Senator McCain, your voting history on children’s issues is abysmal. Can you explain to us why you voted–twice–against a reauthorization of S-Chip, the immensely popular state children’s health insurance program–a program supported by many in your own party? Can you explain why your record on children’s issues generally is so bad that the nonpartisan Children’s Defense Fund in its 2007 Congressional scorecard on children’s issues rated you the senator with the worst voting record?
To participate in the workplace, women must be able to plan and space their childbearing. A government study found that 98% of heterosexually active American women had used contraception at some point, and a Rand study found that five out of six support insurance coverage for family planning services. Access to contraception, clearly, is a deeply shared American family value.
Your voting record reveals you’ve cast dozens of votes opposing contraceptive coverage for insured women and family planning funding for low income uninsured women. Yet when a reporter asked your position on contraception, you stammered you didn’t remember and asked your aide to “find out how you had voted.” On another occasion, you famously squirmed and mumbled “I’ll get back to you” when asked to explain Carly Fiorina’s perfectly logical statement that it’s unfair for insurance companies to cover Viagra™ but not contraception. Did Ms. Fiorina fail to get your memo to that in order to curry favor with the Religious Right your campaign had to adopt a strict anti-birth control policy?
If the stakes weren’t so serious, your consistent stumbles–whenever asked about family planning issues–would be amusing. But it’s no laughing matter that you would deny birth control access and simultaneously outlaw abortion.
Who’s Wearing the Flip-flops?
We’ve noticed your flip flops on abortion , by the way. You identify as “pro-life,” as is your right. Still, why have you abandoned your once nuanced positions? In 1999, you were on record as not wanting Roe v Wade overturned, recognizing–correctly–that allowing criminalization of abortion would lead to many injuries, even deaths. Now you’ve even picked a running mate—Sarah Palin—who like you wants to see Roe overturned. Period.
In 2000, you challenged George W. Bush to justify how he could possibly support the Republican party platform that calls for outlawing abortion with no exceptions–not for rape, incest, health, even life of the mother!
You were incredulous then that Bush refused to repudiate such extremism. And we are incredulous now, that in 2008, you don’t push back against the extremists in your party who show such callous disregard for the lives of women.
Interconnections Are Clear; Answers Are Not
Senator McCain, where do you stand on these intersecting challenges facing working women? Is it really your vision that women should be paid less than men, accept unsatisfactory childcare and healthcare for their children, yet have limited access to contraception that could reduce unintended pregnancy and abortion, and risk possible injury or death, when—if you are in a position to appoint Supreme Court justices—abortion becomes once more illegal?
We’re waiting for answers. Because if that’s McCain’s plan for working women, he’d be taking “barefoot and pregnant” to a whole new level, and the women of America deserve to know that before they cast their votes.
Forget the barbecue. It’s time for real straight talk on this Labor Day.
Carole Joffe Is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis
cejoffe@ucdavis.edu
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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McCain’s actual votes on contentious issues in the area of worker rights, economic justice (including wage issues) and women’s rights has simply not been covered by the mainstream media. We hear a lot about how he was a POW and supported ‘The Surge’ but not a whole lot more. The media will likely not press McCain on reproductive rights or economic justice, let alone the link between the two, lest their heads explode and as you inferred, they are probably worried they won’t get invited to the next McCain BBQ.
I am not sure why Obama’s people are not bringing up the huge differences between Obama and McCain/Palin on social-domestic issues b/c McCain is way outside the mainstream on all of the above as you pointed out. It’s almost as though Obama goes out of his way to ignore women’s issues- and I think I have heard him use the word “gay” about three times- each time he says it so quickly I was not sure I really heard it but I did notice he looks like he is going to choke before he gets the word out. As someone who is gay, that’s reassuring coming from a supposedly progressive Democrat.
Does Obama think that Americans will turn against him if he points out that Palin’s view on abortion- stating she would oppose it even if her own daughter were raped (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/01/palin-on-abortion-id-oppo_n_122924.html)- is so extreme that it endangers more than Roe? Because if he thinks that, than he’s more out of touch than we thought. How many times has he talked about keeping Roe v. Wade on the books?– Because if he’s really stressed it I’ve missed it.
Obama needs to remind himself who (grassroots progressives) helped him win the nomination and excite millions of the young and old to become more involved in the political process and he better start to confront the cynical GOP Palin gimmick instead of condescending to women by thinking that because Palin’s a woman, her outrageously archaic policy positions can’t be legitimately criticized without being seen as a sexist (Laura Bush’s recent statements notwithstanding).
Excellent post to raise awareness on McCain’s lack of support for families and children. It’s a shame that the Republican Party continues to pander to the extreme right. I thought McCain would change that, but nope.
Bobbie and Stacy, so much has been popping around Sarah Palin that I have scarcely had a chance to respond to your comments.
Her speech tonight will be interesting. I predict she’ll do a pretty good job from the perspective of her charismatic presentation and ability to rev up the evangelical base for McCain. But that doesn’t change the fact that she wears faux feminist clothing and that her policies (and McCain’s) are the very ones that keep women barefoot and pregnant. Ironic that she slashed funding for services to pregnant teens, isn’t as well as supporting only abstinence education it?