Mary Lyon Lecture Series
September 30, 1997

Faye Wattleton

WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP

I recalled an old Chinese curse that wishes that one's enemy lives in interesting times. There are a lot of reasons to pronounce the present state of affairs, as interesting. But rather than concluding that we have been cursed by the likes of Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson, I believe we should see these times as a period of unprecedented opportunities.

Will we look back on what we do today as advancing our potential as a nation? Or will we allow our rights to be sacrificed on the altar of complacency?

Will the rights of our children and the power of their potential be weakened because we were not vigilant enough, because we did not say enough because we did not do enough to take responsibility for turning back the backlash of repression?

These questions have been more important for women than they are today, because women's rights remain at the center of the continuing values struggles. Seventy-five years after women won the right to vote, we have not indisputably achieved equality. From education opportunities to career advancement; from economic opportunity to workplace reforms; from health care to welfare reform - women's gains and our power to participate in every aspect of society are endangered by the success of our revolution.

It is easier to win a revolution than it is to sustain a revolution. The danger is the lack of courage to effectively counter the backlash against women. The danger is the lack of courage to end the control of Congress by the most anti-woman political party in recent American history. The danger is the lack of courage to stand against the silver tongued revisionists, who callously disparage the real barriers that women continue to confront. The danger is the lack of courage to publicly and repeatedly condemn Pat Robertson's outrageous characterization of women's struggle for equality and power in our lives as, "The feminist agenda is not about rights for women. It is about socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

This may seem useless to pay attention to the ranting of an irrational man. Do we have the will to win the semantics war? How can this be? In a country comprised of 52% women?

Let's look more closely at the challenges that we need to face up to.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Glass Ceiling Commission reports that sex discrimination in the workplace is still very much intact. White men make up 33% of the population, yet they are 85% of tenured professors, 85% of partners in law firms, 95% of Fortune 500 CEO's, 97% of school superintendents, 99.9% of athletic team owners, and 100% of all U.S. presidents.

60% of working women are in service, clerical or sales positions.

Although 95% of senior managers are white men, and women still only earn 75% as much as men, opponents argue that women no longer need the support of affirmative action goals. Women with a high school education earn 73% as much as their male counterparts; those with at least a four-year college degree take home 77%. A woman who works year-round, full-time at the current minimum will not make enough to keep herself -- let alone a family -- above the poverty line. And after two decades of steadily narrowing wage gap between men and women, it snow widening again.

Affirmative action has improved educational levels attained by women and, in turn, has increased women's median income, but clearly the playing field is not yet level for women. 54% of women with children under 5 years old work. 73% of women who have children between 11 and 18 years old, are likely to be employed. Despite the president's vow to do something about the punishing aspects of the new welfare law, disturbing evidence may mean that it will lower the median income level for all women. The influx into the labor market of poorly educated, low skilled women leaves the potential to further depress our earning ability.

And in health care, working women are less likely to get health insurance from their employers. Thus, 63% of women are more likely to pay, out-of-pocket, for health care compared to 37% of men.

This is reality. Not the romance with an idealized era.

Hard core anti-choice proponents managed to increase their strength in Congress. In the Senate, 51 solid anti-abortion members, only 35 are solidly pro-choice. In the House, the anti-choice flank is stronger, 221 recriminalists and 145 supporters of the right to choose. Anti-choice legislators introduced more than 125 anti-choice bills during the first five weeks of the 1997 legislative session.

Late-term abortion procedure bans have been introduced in as many as 26 state legislatures. Many of the bills are so extreme, they even lack exception to preserve a woman's health, [as required by Roe].

Parental notification and consent legislation and waiting period are on the rise. Before it is even being marketed in the U.S., RU 486 may become illegal.

The drive to end the late term abortion ban is certain to continue. Semantics alone inflame this emotional issue. The trap was set when pro-choice leaders were drawn into the numbers game. A fundamental right is not legitimate because it is quantifiable. These are real women, not lines on a diagram of a chart displayed disparagingly on the floor of the Senate.

The power of politics for the foreseeable future will be the major forum for most of these struggles and politics will continue to caste a shadow on women's rights unless we decide that things have to change. We must understand that this is, first and foremost, a power struggle for a future for our daughters.

Deeply embedded in our society's values about women are the fear and distrust of women and power. What can we do to reverse the momentum of the onslaught of the pitched backlash against women? As Will Rogers warned us: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

Why should we be indignant? Why should we care? Because we can't afford not to be indignant. Too much is at stake. And because we have the power to care. Or we have only ourselves to blame for what happens to women. We cannot get stuck on caring. We must act.

These days, we are so uncomfortable with the mantle of powerful women, that the word feminism has fallen into disfavor. 34% of women in a Feminist Majority Foundation poll (1995) view the feminism movement unfavorably. We cannot afford the luxury of a debate on what is feminism. If we are to stem the forces that continue to resist women's progress, feminism must be unequivocal and redoubled.

It will take the leadership of women. It will take the leadership of courage, and the leadership of will . It will take looking to and being role models.

The most powerful of my role models is my mother. She best personifies Sojourner Truth's admonition, in the midst of the early part of this century in the struggles of women, when she said... "If women want any rights more'n they got, why don't they just take'em and not be talkin' about it?"

My mother was raised in rural Mississippi. At the age of 16, she decided that she would not pick cotton on her father's farm. In 1930's, deep south, such a declaration was tantamount to an uprising. Her parents sent her North to live with friends, lest she provoke resistance among the other workers -- her brother and sisters.

At the age of 17, she did what relatively few women have done. She dedicated her life to religious ministry. By the 1950s, while a lot of women were leaving the wartime factories, returning to the kitchens, and producing the baby boom, my mother became an evangelist on the tent revival circuit.

I was riveted by my mother's persuasive powers from the pulpit. She compelled sinners, night after night, to repent of their sins and change their lives to avoid hellfire and brimstone in the life hereafter. Often I joined the dozens who rushed weeping to the altar. I got saved over and over again. I wasn't quite sure what I had done to sin but I just wanted to make sure. And I wasn't always clear on where God stopped and my mother began.

I learned the power of religious fervor transformed into mandates and the force on emotions, thinking and behavior. But along the way, I learned to respect fear and buckle to the powers of a dedication to fundamentalist religious values as the overarching force in our family. There was no ambiguity about the force of my mother's commitment to her belief. But she never attempt to force others to conform. She believed in the fundamental human right to make a choice. She channeled her mission into religious crusades to the Pre-Civil Rights South to persuade others to accept her beliefs as their own. She preached against racism, much to my father's consternation. He knew that people could be lynched for far less.

My mother as a role model was profoundly important in shaping my view the world. As powerful in what she did, as what she said. To her, her mission was not filled with obstacles, but with possibilities. When I went off to nursing school, at the age of 16, my unbridled idealism was tempered by an experience of life through a different prism. For the first time I was faced with the more earthly human conditions of life, suffering, and death. My care and compassion was not conditional. Each deserved respect and to be treated with human dignity.

I learned that to serve people I did not need to share my moral beliefs with them. As a professional, my parents needed my care. They did not need my judgment. It didn't matter that their values might not have been the same as those I had been taught. Whether their skin color was the same color as mine. Whether their bodies were swathed in expensive perfume or swathed in the unmistakable pungency of poverty and neglect.

It was a very seminal period of my life's journey. A journey that would untimely lead me to the top levels of controversy and conflict from which I would not shrink. I would not back down and compromise for one simple reason. I carried the burden of knowing the stories of those whom I had cared for.

I saw the lack of equity in many aspects of life among the poor, but especially in health care and especially among women. I knew the problems they faced: the suffering, the tragedies. I learned about the hundreds of unwanted childbearing, when birth control was not easily available and abortion was illegal and dangerous. I cared for women who had to point out the veins in their arms not destroyed by drugs, before an intravenous line could be established. I cared for women who were having their seventh, eighth child. They sometimes had no clothes to put on them to take them home from the hospital.

I saw the hopelessness of teenage pregnancy. I cared for a 17 year old who died as a result of her and her mother's attempt to end her pregnancy by instilling a combination of bleach and lysol into her uterus.

A deep sense of rage developed within me. A sense of intolerance for the conditions that blighted women's lives. And, a sense of obligation that I could not escape. Whatever I did, I had to give voice to such conditions. I had to go beyond the routine of my profession to change the world in which so many suffer.

The more I became involved in the work of reproductive health, the more I came to believe that unwanted pregnancy and childbearing should not be a condition that women suffer. The Planned Parenthood years fulfilled my mission.

But leadership is not exclusive to those who occupy a national platform. Individual leadership can influence and shape the national picture. We have to accept responsibility for change.

Taking responsibility means that we see to it that women are adequately represented in policy forums, and every institution of our society. Taking responsibility means asking why the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University estimates that at the current rate at which women are being elected, it will take 410 years before the proportion of women in Congress equals their percentage in the overall population.

Taking responsibility means not leaving the President and the members of Congress out to dry when they stand against those who want to deny women's rights.

Taking responsibility for leadership means asking why, after a generation of birth control and abortion rights, are we still fighting to keep them available and legal?

Taking responsibility means asking why our political leaders continue to stoke the fires of gender and race bias.

Taking responsibility means that women will not let die affirmative remedies to end discrimination.

Taking responsibility means changing the priorities of our nation to address the pressing issues facing our families, our children, our girls. It means accepting the power that we already possess and using it in our own self-interest. In the interest of making this nation truly great for all.

The year is 2010. The president of the United States is a woman. The Supreme Court has eight women and one man. Ninety percent of the House and the Senate are women. Men make 59 cents for every $1 that a woman earns. Men are getting angry. They want to equal. We women feel they are getting a bit out of hand. Looking back through history, we see that laws that control the human body are effective means of oppression. We act. The Supreme Court rules 8-1: ejaculation without the express intent to create life is unconstitutional. The sperm contains half the genetic material to create life. To ejaculate without intending to create life will be a felony and will carry harsh sentences. The men in our country are in an uproar. Their cry is heard throughout the nation, "Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide."

At the end of my book, Life on the Line , I have offered these suggestions to my daughter and I leave them with you:

• Be informed. Be vigilant? You can't defend your rights if you don't understand them, if you don't know how you got them, and if you don't know who wants to destroy them. Take nothing for granted, for you will not take pains to protect your rights if you don't understand that they can, and how they can, be taken away.
  
  
• Do not shrink from power. Feel a sense of who you really are deep within, and do not rely on the approval of others as your primary source of affirmation. You have the power within yourself to create beneficial change for yourself and for others.
  
  
• Don't ever compromise your fundamental rights. Would you be willing to sit still if the government took control of the New York Times? Wouldn't it be unthinkable to you if each edition were reviewed by government censors? My daughter, the sanctity of your body is even more precious.
  
  
• Don't ever let anyone convince you that a cause cannot be won. It may take time and it may be painful, but nothing of value has ever been attained without struggle. So much is lost when we cannot summon the courage of our convictions.
  
  
• Keep your heart open to an empathetic understanding of how you would feel "if that were me," and remember one of your grandmother's favorite sayings, "But for the grace of God, there go I."
  
  
• Don't be afraid to fail. Try to see your setbacks as learning opportunities. Learn to ignore those who undermine your resolve and your vision. Some of history's greatest advances have been born of frustration and setbacks yielding to perseverance.
  
  
• Support other women. We must support each other when we speak out and when we challenge barriers. I deeply hope that the women of your generation will be more mutually supportive than have the women of my time have learned to be.
  
  
• Embrace every level of the political process. It is a ubiquitous force in our lives, and women must be reasonably represented and involved at every level if public policies are to reflect our aspirations and protect our rights.
  
  
• Do not allow yourself to grow weary of the struggle for equality. This struggle has endured for hundreds of years, and sadly, I do not foresee it being achieved in our lifetimes, perhaps not even your children's. If your children see you accepting inequities, what hope will they have of learning to defend the rights you now possess? If we don't give in, if we don't despair when we experience setbacks, we can protect our gains and make progress toward the day that our rights and aspirations will no longer be contested because we are women.
  
  
• Change is rarely instantaneous. This has been one of the most difficult lessons I have had to learn. Progress most often comes in incrementals, gains and setback, as though to entice us to persist.
  
  
• Maintain your grace and dignity, even when you are subjected to the most distasteful lack of civility. Whether you like it or not, you are a role model and the conduct of your life influences others. What do you want to exemplify? Are you living the message you want to send?

Not long ago I asked your grandmother if she believed that the price she paid to pursue her mission was too high. "No, Lordy. I have no regrets." she said. "I'd do it all over again."

I too have no regrets, my daughter, for in you, I see the future.

As Ellen Chesler wrote in her marvelous biography, Margaret Sanger often asked, "Which road shall we take?" The road to liberate all women or the road that leaves the rights of women as secondary to those of men? And shortly before she died, Margaret is said to have expressed the hope that she would be remembered for leading women, for helping women.

Let us dedicate ourselves to ensuring that these are times that are blessed for women because women are the future and strength of the nation.