I have seen a lot of claims that the recent moves to outlaw certain kinds of abortion (and likely eventually all kinds) is not that big a deal. Many, many self-proclaimed progressives and liberals do not seem to understand the vital connection between abortion rights and the rights of women; many do not seem to understand that women cannot advance in this society unless we have a solid foundation of being able to make reproductive decisions for ourselves.
So I'm going to tell you a story. This is the story of women in our society. Not all individual women could tell you this story as their own. Yet it is still the story of women, since it touches the lives of almost every woman in some small way at least. This is the story told in statistics and statements, a story about the disproportionate burdens and disadvantages that women face as a result of one unique facet of their physical selves and thus, the story of why a movement that focuses on women's control of their own reproduction is vital if we ever wish to achieve anything, in the Daily Kos community, as Democrats, and as a society.
Feminisms is a series of weekly feminist diaries. My fellow feminists and I decided to start our own for several purposes: we wanted a place to chat with each other, we felt it was important to both share our own stories and learn from others’, and we hoped to introduce to the community a better understanding of what feminism is about.
Needless to say, we expect disagreements to arise. We have all had different experiences in life, so while we share the same labels, we don’t necessarily share the same definitions. Hopefully, we can all be patient and civil with each other, and remember that, ultimately, we’re all on the same side.
It starts with some basic facts about anatomy. Most women can become pregnant; no man can.
Death rate statistics for mother during pregnancy/childbirth: 399 female deaths for "pregnancy and childbirth" in the USA 2001 [out of 4 million] (NCHS, 2003) 1
Happily, women don't die as much as they used to from pregnancy or it's complications, but pregnancy still isn't easy or comfortable to go through. The most common complications are serious and not exactly easy to go through or treat (nor is treatment probably very cheap). The full list of possible complications also shows how dangerous and/or difficult pregnancy can be:
Every year in the United States:
* 875,000 woman experience one or more pregnancy complications
* 458,952 babies are born to mothers without adequate prenatal care
* 467,201 babies are born prematurely
* 307,030 babies are born with Low Birth Weight
* 154,051 children are born with Birth Defects
* 27,864 infants die before their first birthday
Every year in the United States, there are 60,000,000 women in the childbearing years of 15-44 :
* 70% of these women are sexually active
* 64% use a form of contraception 2
Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended.
Over 60% of abortions are among women who have had one or more children.
The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women).
On average, women give four reasons for choosing abortion. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.
Fifty-four percent of women having abortions used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.
Eight percent of women having abortions have never used a method of birth control; nonuse is greatest among those who are young, poor, black, Hispanic or less educated. 3
Every year in the United States:
* 11% of pregnant woman are diagnosed with Post Partum Depression
* 240,000 pregnant women are subject to domestic violence
o 40% of assaults begin during the first pregnancy
o Pregnant women are twice the risk of battery 2
Yet few people focus on how males can help make these statistics different.
"...Young men frequently don't talk openly about health issues such as birth control and sexually transmitted disease to their parents, who, the study's authors report, may not be encouraging annual exams.
'Doctors are not talking to boys about birth control, at least as much as they talk to girls, or about STDs.' Federal statistics underscore his point: In 2002, among males 15-19 who had visited a medical-care provider within the previous year, fewer than one in five said they received counseling on birth control, STDs or HIV. 4
If the woman decides to go through with the whole pregnancy, she doesn't just go about her normal life while something grows inside her. There are numerous things a woman has to avoid if she wants to guarantee a healthy baby. And the baby doesn't just pop like a cork out of a bottle, either. She has many, many more choices and dangers to face, plus the possibility of being discriminated against:
Pregnancy discrimination complaints filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) jumped 39% from fiscal year 1992 to 2003, according to a recent analysis of government data by the Washington-based National Partnership for Women & Families.
[...]
In one study published in 1993 in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, pregnant and non-pregnant women performed tasks that were rated by college students drafted for the research. While both subjects performed the same, those who were pregnant consistently received lower performance ratings. They were viewed as overly emotional, often irrational, physically limited and less than committed to their jobs, according to the report. 5
Then a child is born, a child that someone (whether it is her or not) has to take care of:
The percent of ever-married women 18–44 years of age who have ever adopted a child declined from 2.1 percent in 1973 to 1.3 percent in 1995.
Of the 9.9 million women who had ever considered adoption, 16 percent had taken steps toward adoption, and 31 percent of these had actually adopted a child. Older women, nulliparous women, women with fecundity impairment, and women who have used infertility services were more likely to have considered adoption, to have taken concrete steps toward adoption, and to have actually adopted a child. In response to the questions about preferred characteristics of an adopted child, women expressed strong preferences with respect to age, sex, race, and disability level of the child, but were willing to accept children with the less-desired traits. 6
Brain development is heavily impacted by early environmental factors, which can promote or hinder learning skills from adolescence through adulthood.
By 1998, 65 percent of women with children under the age of six were in the labor force. The percentage was even higher among women with children between the ages of six and 17 - 78 percent. Today, over half (55 percent) of these women provide most, if not all, of their family’s income. 7
Women are now much more likely to work when their children are under 12 months old, a period of time when children have the greatest need of intensive care for good growth and development. Workers in the formal sector, for example, are limited to 12 weeks of maternity leave in most countries, even though about 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding is recommended. For women working in the informal sector, any leave at all is taken at the risk of losing income and job opportunities. 8
Someone has to watch the children:
One 1995 study determined that 7 out of 10 child care centers provide mediocre care, and that one of eight are so bad that they threaten the health and safety of the children in their care.
On average, child care teachers earn just slightly over $14,000 a year. 7
Most of the workers are self-employed women who care for a small number of children in their own homes and receive low pay and have few, if any, benefits. 9 (emphasis mine)
Though honestly, how can we expect decent childcare when we consider child care teachers so worthless? Meanwhile, that same childcare is ridiculously expensive for parents:
Child care expenses can range anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 a year per child.
One third of families with young children earn less than $25,000 per year and a family of two adults working full time on minimum wage salaries earns a combined income of only $21,000 a year. 7
In fall 1991, there were 19.2 million employed women with children under 15 years old living with them. Thirty five percent of them made cash payments for child care services, down from 40 percent in 1988. They paid an average of $63 per week, no significant change (in 1991 constant dollars) from 1988, but up $11 from 1985. Women who paid for care had an average monthly family income of $3,838; these payments consumed 7 percent of their family income. Relatively fewer poor than non poor women paid for child care (24 percent versus 36 percent). But care consumes an especially large share of the family budget of poor women who do pay. Poor women who paid for care spent 27 percent of their monthly family income on it, compared with 7 percent for nonpoor women. Why? Both paid about the same weekly amount (about $60). 10
Yet women's ability to pay for childcare, even the worst childcare, is made even more difficult by the fact that women are generally poorly paid:
Single mothers of all ages accounted for 32% of these 3.9 million [live births to females of all ages in the United States in 1997]. 11
Women's lower pay and greater responsibility for children results in the feminization of poverty. In 1959 only 18% of the poverty population lived in female-headed households; in 1995 female-headed households contained 39% of the poor. 12
In 1994, the median income for a two-parent household was $45,041. In contrast, the median income for a single-parent household led by a woman was $19,872.
In 1995, 32% of female heads of households with children under 18 years old and no husband present were below the poverty line. 11
In 1997, the median annual income of the average female-headed household was $17,256. 7
More than 80 percent of women work in largely gender-segregated occupations, and women on average still earn less than 70 percent of what men earn. Since women are in lower-skilled and temporary jobs, they are more likely to lose jobs than are men during financial crises. Women also still lag far behind men in having the skills to handle new technologies, making them less likely to get higher-paying jobs that require these skills. 8
Women make up 46% of the labor force in 1995, but they comprise 79% of all clerical workers, 65% of commercial service workers, and 95% of domestic laborers. 12
If women received the same wages as men who work the same number of hours, have the same education and union status, are the same age, and live in the same region of the country, then these women's annual income would rise by $4,000 and poverty rates would be cut in half.
Fifty-five percent of all women work in female-dominated jobs (jobs in which women comprise 70 percent or more of the workforce) whereas only 8.5 percent of all men work in these occupations. However, the men working in female-dominated jobs still receive about 20 percent more than women who work in female-dominated jobs.
Women are paid less in every occupational classification for which sufficient information is available, according to the data analysis in over 300 job classifications provided by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics. 13
The median weekly earnings of women who were full-time wage and salary workers were $600, or 81 percent of men’s $743. When comparing the median weekly earnings of persons aged 16 to 24, young women earned 94% of what young men earned ($395 and $418, respectively).
The ten occupations with the highest median weekly earnings among women who were full-time wage and salary workers were--
1. Pharmacists, $1,564
2. Chief executives, $1,422
3. Lawyers, $1,333
4. Physicians and surgeons, $1,329
5. Computer and information systems managers, $1,300
6. Computer software engineers, $1,272
7. Physical therapists, $1,086
8. Management analysts, $1069
9. Medical and health services managers, $1,064
10. Computer scientist and systems analysts $1039
Women accounted for 51% of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. They outnumbered men in such occupations as financial managers; human resource managers; education administrators; medical and health services managers; accountants and auditors; budget analysts; property, real estate, and social and community association managers; preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers; physical therapists; and registered nurses. 14 (notice how only two of the jobs where women outnumber men are in the list of highest paid jobs for women?)
Women have entered some traditionally male jobs (e.g., pharmacist, insurance adjustor, real estate agent). Sociologists Barbara Reskin and Patricia Roos (in Job Queues, Gender Queues, 1990) point out, however, that in some instances women's entrance into male-dominated jobs is associated with decreases in wages and working conditions.
[...]
Sociologists emphasize constraints on women's career choices as the primary factor which explains the gender disparity in pay. These constraints include: 1) employers assigning women to jobs with lower pay and promotion opportunites; and, 2) men who object to female co-workers, resulting in women leaving these jobs. 12
Don't even think about questioning whether women can really do the job. We can:
Return on equity and total return to shareholders were each about 35 percent higher in the companies that had more women in senior management positions than the companies with proportionally fewer women in these top spots. 15
At the same time, the responsibility for childcare largely falls on the woman, no matter how many hours she works. It doesn't matter if she has a male partner, either, since he will most likely not be very helpful:
A new study has found that employed women living with their employed partner actually spend more time doing housework than single women. The men, on the other hand see the hours they commit to housework decline once they begin living as a couple.
Women living in a couple spend 15 hours on chores.
Men living in a couple spend 5 hours on chores. 16
Women do three-quarters of all housework.
Women averaged 18.5 hours / week housework.
Men averaged 6 hours / week.
Reductions in women’s housework load are marginally reduced by paid employment.
In families where the man is not in paid work and his partner works full-time, male domestic labour matches that of his partner (19 hours / week).
Where children are present in the household, women do more domestic labour but men do not.
Younger women do less housework than older women but younger men spend a similar amount of time on domestic tasks as their father’s generation. 17
On average, women ages 18-65 spend about 30 hours per week in paid employment and 22 hours doing housework (see also Arlie Hochschild's, The Second Shift, 1989). Men average about ten hours per week doing housework, a figure which changes little when their wives work and they have young children in the household.
Men contribute most to yard work and home maintenace, while women carry 75% of the burden for grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and dishwashing. The difference is that men's tasks can be delayed, while women's tasks are constant. 12
It should come as no surprise that women are exhausted:
American women are very, very tired. Sixty percent say they don't get enough rest most nights of the week while 43 percent report that daytime sleepiness interferes with their regular activities.
...[W]orking mothers (72 percent) and single, working women (68 percent) were the most likely to experience sleep problems such as insomnia. 18
73 percent of the 406 Omaha [Nebraska] women who responded to a survey reported difficulties balancing work and family, up from 61 percent in the [Women's Fund of Greater Omaha] 1996 survey. 19
In fact, the greater surprise is that women aren't less productive, that in spite of their incredible burdens, they get so much done with so little complaint or reward.
Right-wingers tend to reply with "women should stay home to care for their children." Nevermind the fact that most of us have to work in order to keep even a modest lifestyle.... Staying home is no panacea, either. There's a reason that being a homemaker used to be a full-time job:
Many women who leave their out-of-home careers find themselves just as busy, or even more so, than before. With children's activities, housekeeping and cooking, and the mother's newfound personal activities -- such as volunteering or hobbies they couldn't pursue while they worked -- the new life of the stay-at-home mom brings a whole new chaos, Zeldman says.
[...]
[F]amily members never lack for things to do, says Cheryl Welch. Meaghan, 11, takes karate lessons, and Connor, 8, has football practice. Madeline, 6, has dance and horseback-riding lessons, while her toddler brother, Christopher, 3, needs constant supervision.
The former elementary school teacher, who became a stay-at-home mom when her first child was born, seldom is at home, with all of the running-around she does with her kids. By the end of the day, she says, "you just kind of collapse."
"As each new child comes along, you're more and more busy, especially during the elementary school years," says Welch, 44.20
And again, the economic costs of staying at home are stacked against women:
More than a quarter of women who want to go back to work don’t manage to do so, according to a 2005 study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, and only 40 percent of those who resume work return to full-time employment. If they get a job after opting out, their paycheck takes a major hit: The same study found women lose a staggering 37 percent of their earning power when they spend three or more years out of the workplace. 21
But pushing their significant others to help them with housework and childcare is not necessarily the answer, especially when too much pushing can easily end in divorce:
The economic consequences of divorce are straightforward: within two years of divorce, women's family income declines by 24%. 12
When people are already struggling and exhausted, they don't have time to devote to politics. When women's whole lives become consumed by subsistence and taking care of children (as they almost inevitably will, if they aren't rich and actually care about their children), they have no time to devote to other causes. So the next time you think, or someone you know says, that feminism doesn't matter, or that being pro-choice (anti-forced-birth) is not important, remind them of how those issues affect the daily lives of 50% of humanity. Remind them of the very real political consequences of half of the population being caged by their anatomy. If women don't have reproductive freedom, we have no freedom at all.