Government efforts have helped a lot, women's groups say

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Government efforts have helped a lot, women's groups say

Friday, June 09, 2000

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

With the Pittsburgh office of the FBI investigating "pass-through" schemes in which contractors skirt set-aside goals for minority- and women-owned companies, it's apparent that government programs to help women advance won't always work as designed.

But the local investigation notwithstanding, women today have access to opportunities in the United States they've never had before -- in part because of efforts by government, women's groups say.

The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 concluded that all countries had to do more to establish "national machineries" to help women.

Five years later, the grades for the United States are in, and they aren't bad.

In advance of this week's United Nation's conference in New York, US Women Connect, an umbrella organization that developed after the 1995 Beijing gathering, did give the country some lousy marks in several categories, including an "F" for "women and poverty" and a "C-" for "women and health."

But "institutional mechanisms," which represent the effort to include the needs of women in policy decisions throughout government, got a "B."

That decent grade is partly due to the President's Interagency Council for Women, which President Clinton created on the eve of the Beijing conference. The idea, said Suzanne Kindervatter, chairwoman of US Women Connect, is to promote and monitor the "full integration of the gender perspective" into policy-making. She said the council has largely been a success.

"They have done a very effective job in mainstreaming gender into other federal agencies," she said, "from Defense to Labor to Justice, where they have had a very sizable anti-violence campaign."

But experts on women's issues say U.S. performance could be improved, especially in the areas of equal pay, health care for women moving from work to welfare and quality child care for working women.

"Sure, there's been progress, and there's a long way to go," said Lisa D. Brush, a professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Pittsburgh whose research focuses on welfare reform. "Lots of nations are doing a really good job helping men and women balance work and family obligations. But the United States was one of the last countries to pass a parental leave act [in 1992]. And it's unpaid. Most European nations have paid parental leave. We are still lagging behind most of the European nations in this respect."

In fact, 146 nations have laws for paid parental leave, and many have subsidized child-care programs for working parents.

To be sure, much of the world is becoming more female-friendly.

The Beijing conference identified the creation of national offices for helping women advance as one of 12 areas of concern. Around the globe, hundreds of agencies and commissions have been set up to address women's issues, according to a report from the U.N. secretary general.

India, for example, has drafted a national policy on "empowerment of women," which outlines responses to sex discrimination. Ghana placed an office responsible for promoting equality between men and women at the highest level of government, under the office of the president. In Iran, the head of the women's equality office is a member of the Cabinet, making sure that women's issues are included in budget decisions.

According to the U.N. report, three quarters of all nations have established some form of national office to include women's concerns in shaping policy and doling out money.

At home, the interagency council is an example of Clinton's focus on women's issues. He has been lauded by women's groups for doing more than any president in history to promote women to senior positions in the cabinet and administration.

In 1994, for example, his administration established a senior coordinator for international women's issues at the Department of State, and also created the position of deputy assistant secretary for women's health in the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs.

As of 1999, 27 percent of top positions requiring Senate confirmation were filled by women; 34 percent of presidential appointments to boards and commissions were women; and 40 percent of senior executive service positions were held by women.

When he started the interagency council in 1995, Clinton said his aim was to make sure "all the good ideas" generated at the Beijing conference "actually get implemented when we get back home."

Some have been and some haven't. While the council, chaired by Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been praised for its efforts in promoting a female perspective within government, it has also been criticized for not emphasizing that perspective enough in legislation or budgets. In addition, there is no statutory basis for continuing the council beyond the 2000 presidential election.

Still, the council has helped start dozens of programs and "working groups" for women and girls.

Among them:

Women and the Global Economy, which works to ensure that policy on global economic issues gives consideration to its impact on women.

Women and Prisons, which seeks to improve conditions for incarcerated women.

Rural Women, which tries to improve the status of women in rural parts of the country.

Trafficking in Women and Girls, which works to coordinate U.S. efforts to combat the exploitation and selling of women and girls.

Microenterprise Development, which coordinates federal efforts supporting small business.

Vital Voices: Women in Democracy, which focuses resources on getting women involved in politics and the economy of their countries. Hillary Clinton has spoken at the four Vital Voices conferences in Vienna, Belfast, Montevideo and Reykjavik.

Empowering Disabled Women and Girls, which addresses employment and leadership development by running training sessions in the United States and abroad.

The nation has taken a strong stance in creating programs to combat violence against women, especially since the passage of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. In addition to the federal rape shield law, every state has removed the marital rape exemption. In addition, most cities and counties have women's shelters to offer battered women and their children a safe haven from batterers.

But the country is falling down in other areas, some experts say. For one thing, leadership is still largely the domain of men. Women remain underrepresented in positions of power in state government and in corporate America.

And Congress is dominated by men.

"That's an area where if we had more women in those positions, more women's issues would be addressed," said Linda Burns, director of the sociology department at Carlow College.

One of the main concerns of women in the United States is health care, particularly for poor women who are struggling to raise children while holding down a job.

Unlike welfare states such as Sweden and France, where medical needs are paid for by the government and taxes are accordingly high, health coverage in the United States is market-driven.

In the 1920s, Brush said, the United States was among the world leaders in protecting maternal health. Since then, she said, the nation has fallen behind many other countries.

Of course, the appointment of committees goes only so far in solving real-world problems, and even the passage of laws doesn't always mean the gap between men and women will close.