Posts by Gloria Feldt
Eagle Forum Leader Schlafly Calls Single Women “Welfare Queens” – Yes, She Really Did
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly put her foot in it big time yesterday when she said single women are “welfare queens” and President Obama is trying to create more of them, just so they’ll be dependent on what Schlafly refers to as “big daddy” government. After blacks, she claimed, they’re his second biggest voting block. The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News invited me to share my thoughts on the matter. Read TPM’s news report and watch the video of her remarks here if you have the stomach for it.
She’s wrong on at least two counts.
Read MorePanel at Netroots Nation 2010 on Why Women Are Key to Victory
Netroots Nation is the premier conference for progressive bloggers. So I’m totally thrilled that they accepted my proposal to facilitate a panel on “Why Women Are the Key to the Future of Progressive Election Victories.”
As the GOP has garnered victories in Massachussetts, Virginia and New Jersey since the 2008 presidential election, progressives are looking for a new path to keep the seats they have and win back the ones they’ve lost. Standard playbook assumptions about where, how and why progressives can win campaigns have been turned on their head as increasing numbers of voters feel disaffected and Tea Partiers throw wild cards into many races. Progressive women can embrace this moment to help move the progressive agenda forward. But too often the Democratic Party fails to recruit and support the very women candidates who could be game changers for progressive politics. We’ll discuss how the growing numbers of activist women—and organizations devoted to helping them participate in politics and political leadership—can help reconnect voters with important progressive economic and gender issues. And we’ll analyze how to access the untapped power of women who want to make a difference for progressive issues and what it will take to get them elected.
Read MoreVideo of Leaders and Speakers at Passion Into Action Conference
Women–power–leadership; it’s all here in this short video summary of the SeeJaneDo Passion Into Action conference at which I spoke last winter, along with an inspiring lineup of women doing amazing things for and in the world.
Read MoreA Brief History of Women Becoming Powerful
Women’s Equality Day–celebrating the anniversary of women’s suffrage–is coming up next month, August 26 to be exact. Lynne Shapiro found this well-done historical retrospective video and posted it on Facebook. It’s prompting me to think about what I might want to write for the upcoming little-heralded day.
Maybe you’ll be inspired to use the power of your voice, pen, mouse, or video camera to increase public awareness of major milestones in women’s advancement, too, on August 26?
Read MoreHow Does Health Care Reform Affect You Now? (An Addendum)
As About.com‘s Linda Lowen reports, President Obama has now basically implemented the Stupak amendment banning the new insurance exchanges from covering abortion even if the premium is privately paid. I’m a little out of joint by the outraged protestations of pro-choice organizations. Because here’s the reality:
Outraged about Obama’s de facto implementation of the Stupak amendment? Well get this: They have also excluded birth control from the first iteration of the new health plan rules! It is incredibly naive to assume, as Dana Goldstein suggests in the Daily Beast, that these new rules will be amended to include birth control. That is unless very big and very smart campaign is mounted.
Women are 52% of the voters and up to 60% of voters who support Democrats. We have the power to rise up and hold Obama to his campaign promises. And now is the time to do it. No excuses and no fair complaining about the result if we fail to do so.
Read MoreCEDAW FORUM: The Unfinished Business of Ratification
My guest post today is about a very important topic I intended to write about–but my colleague Linda Tarr-Whelan has already said it all better in a post she wrote for the National Council for Research on Women’s “The Real Deal” blog. It’s embarrassing as well as just plain wrong that the U.S. is one of just seven nations that never signed onto the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Want to know the six other nations? They are Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga –overall not very good company!
This week has been declared a Week of Action by a coalition of U.S. organizations working to get our country to enter 21st century and sign CEDAW. So to the U.S. Congress: Sign already!
Read MoreSplitting the Health-Reform Baby: What Women Lost by Winning
Had I been a member of Congress, I would have pressed the “yes” lever for the health-reform bill when it came down to the vote for final passage. It was incredibly important that we start somewhere to make health care accessible and affordable to all Americans. And we can celebrate, as Ms. magazine recounts in “What the Health Care Bill Means for Women,” that contraceptives will be covered, gender rating that discriminates against women has been eliminated, and preventive services such as pap smears will be covered without co-pay under the new plan.
Read MoreEVE Says: Put Amelia Earhart back in the skies!
One of the most exciting new efforts to achieve gender parity is called “EVE: Equal Representation Everywhere.” If you can only be that which you can see, then girls need to be able to see as many women in leadershsip roles as men. And that includes in statuary, on stamps. and everywhere else that we give recognition to people who have made significant accomplishments.
Right now EVE is looking at making sure women are represented in parade balloons such as will be wafting above July 4th parades all around the country. Here’s how you can help:
Join EVE’s 99 Club to help fund the new Amelia Earhart balloon!
We need 99 donors to give $99 each. Visit our secure online donation page to contribute today — and put Amelia Earhart back in the skies!
Will Kagan Pursue a “Liberal” Agenda?
The attempts to frame Elena Kagan pre-emptively as a wild-eyed, party-line liberal, socialist even, and quite possibly a lesbian who “looks like she belongs in a Kosher deli” (wink, wink, you vestigial anti-Semites), started long before President Obama uttered her name as his second pick for the Supreme Court.
On day three of the confirmation hearings, in which Judiciary committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) plans to conclude the ritual grilling of the fourth woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, no one on either side of the aisle seems to imagine a scenario in which she won’t be confirmed.
Read MoreHow an Insult Led to Title IX Law Giving Girls Equal Education Access
I’m a day late recognizing the 38th anniversary of Title IX.
But it’s never too late to give a big shout out to Bernice Sandler, the woman responsible for initiating the law that for almost four decades now–long enough to see significant benefits to girls and the women they become–from removing barriers to access to equity in school sports and educational opportunities that used to be denied to females based solely on gender.
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