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Tuesday, June 06, 2000
By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
From self-esteem to body image to reproductive responsibility, girls have been Topic A in the American media for much of the 1990s.
And when the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women arrived in Beijing in 1995, the subject of girls -- and their many paths -- went international.
But, in the five years since Beijing, has all that talk resulted in action?
Women: A
Work in Progress
Brandy Jackson:
Program for girls takes jackhammer to stereotypes
Yes and no.
Last week, the United Nations released a report saying in the year 2000 the status of girls worldwide is significantly worse than that of boys. Child prostitution, genital mutilation and cultural preferences for sons that lead to the abandonment of girl babies were among the horrors cited, and "persistent discrimination against the girl child and the violation of her rights [is] one of the 12 critical areas of concern requiring urgent attention by governments and the international community."
Most American girls don't face that kind of harsh treatment, but in a report card issued at the U.N. conference this week by US Women Connect, a coalition of women's groups, progress in the "girl child" category was given a "D" grade. The report called the U.S. effort to build on Beijing in this area "severely inadequate" and criticized government programs for failing to integrate girls into federal policies.
A survey of federal, state and local policies didn't turn up much in the way of new, heavily funded initiatives for girls' programs.
The real action is in the private sector, and it began long before 1995.
"We were doing this 20 years ago," said Mildred Wurf, director of public policy at Girls Inc., which, along with Girl Scouts of the United States of America, is one of the largest private organizations dedicated to girls' empowerment.
There are, in fact, three or four milestones that really matter in the lives of American girls, Wurf says: 1972, when Title IX was enacted, mandating equality in sports and education programs; 1982, when Harvard's first professor of gender studies, Carol Gilligan, published "In a Different Voice," warning of a crisis among adolescent girls; and 1992, when the American Association of University Women published a study declaring that girls-only education was in many ways more beneficial than coeducational instruction.
Though small, there has been some movement on the federal level.
In 1996, the Department of Health and Human Services unveiled the Girl Power! program, a national public education campaign aimed at girls 9 to14 years old.
It was designed to provide accurate health information and positive messages to girls as well as to target an increase in drug abuse and risky behaviors by this age group.
"Girl Power! is a feel-good program without much punch to it," said Alison Pflepsen, a senior at Northwestern University who attended the Beijing conference as part of a high school delegation, and who wrote the portion of US Women Connect's report card on girls.
"They have a great Web site [www.health.org/gpower], but it doesn't really address girls' extreme lack of access to reproductive health care," she said, noting that the program emphasizes abstinence rather than information about birth control and abortion options.
Federal officials, however, say they're not about to wade into abortion politics with this one program.
"Girl Power! is not targeted at high risk groups. Abstinence is the most appropriate, responsible message," said Mark Weber, director of communications for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which administers the program for HHS.
Indeed, the single largest initiative since Beijing aimed at girls came in the 1996 welfare reform legislation, when Congress included $50 million that it said must go to abstinence-only education programs to combat teen pregnancy.
Not everyone appreciates the report card, or this week's U.N. meeting, however.
"I think the U.N. conference should get an 'F' grade. As a mother of two daughters, I don't need a U.N. treaty to tell my daughters right from wrong," said Janet Parshall, spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, a conservative group based in Washington, D.C.
"This [platform for action] is filled with wrongheaded ideas. The idea of blanket contraceptive distribution for young girls? [Young girls are] walking away from the idea of 'safe sex' and rapidly embracing the idea of 'save sex,' saying no to sex before marriage in record numbers."
In fact, Congress has always been a tough sell when it came to differentiating between boys and girls. But in the 1990s, even before Beijing, that began to change.
Wurf notes that her organization helped add language to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act which directed states to provide "gender specific services -- one of the first times that language has appeared in legislation as far as I know."
The Girls Scouts, which is sending its representatives to the U.N. conference this week, has begun moving away from its cookies-and-sewing image, establishing programs to boost girls' achievement in science, technology, sports and health.
And while only 6 percent of all private philanthropy goes to programs benefiting women and girls, evidence of change is mounting.
In Chicago, the only foundation in the country devoted exclusively to girls, Girls Best Friend, has given $1 million since 1995 to 75 different organizations in Illinois. One program, for example, "Girl Zone" in Champaign, Ill., holds clinics to teach girls how to repair bicycles or to help them start musical bands.
Locally, the Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania has seen a 40 percent increase in female participation in all of its sports league programs over the past two years, says the club's president, Mike Heplin. That's mainly due to a grant from the Heinz Endowments to train coaches to improve girls' skill development in traditional and nontraditional sports, from basketball to flag football to hockey.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have also joined Nike Corp. to sponsor sports clinics for girls only, dubbed "Let Us Play!"
Two years ago, Rosemary Duffy, director of teen and children's services at the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh, Downtown, started the Girls Coalition of Western Pennsylvania, which sponsors conferences that train girls for nontraditional careers in carpentry and plumbing.
Some of this posturing about boys vs. girls has come home to roost at the United Nations itself. When some officials protested that the "Take Your Daughters to Work Day" for U.N. employees was unfairly excluding boys, the event's organizer fought to keep it just a girls-only event.
"They were telling me it was patently unfair, that the boys stay home and are resentful," said Zohreh Tabatabai, who runs gender equity programs for the global organization. "But I felt it was important to see those 700 girls sitting in the General Assembly during their tour, in chairs that are mostly occupied by men.
"If we're going to tell everyone else to change, we have to clean our own house first."
