Don't Take His Word For It, Below the Belt: A Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

She's been on the covers of publications from Time and Newsweek to Us Weekly. Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could be a heartbeat away from the highest office in the country. There could be a woman in the White House, and the nation's a-buzz over this rising star.

So why aren't I more excited about this?

Maybe because being a strong woman doesn't necessarily make you strong on women's rights.

Governor Palin is a mother of five who, like many women, balances being a mom and having a full-time job outside of the home. But feminism isn't just about being a mom or a working woman or both -- it's about believing every woman deserves an equal opportunity to utilize her strengths and control her destiny -- that every woman deserves a level playing field and a fair chance to succeed.

For me, this election has never been about getting one woman into office. It's about opening doors and opportunities for all women. "We don't think it's much to break a glass ceiling for one woman and leave millions of women behind," said Ellie Smeal of the Feminist Majority.

And make no mistake, the McCain-Palin ticket will leave millions of women behind.

Just for starters, Sarah Palin, like John McCain, vows to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, she opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest. Let's think for a moment what that means -- a girl raped by her own father would be forced to carry her pregnancy to term, despite the risks to her young body. Has she no human compassion? She wouldn't even allow an abortion to protect a woman's health -- only to prevent her "imminent death." Wonder how many of a woman's internal organs would have to shut down before "Dr." Palin would consider her death to be imminent? And by then, would it be too late for an abortion to save her?

Her heartlessness doesn't end there. While she was mayor of Wasilla, rape victims were required to pay up to $1,200 for the cost of processing the police evidence (called "rape kits") in their cases. Just imagine - during perhaps the most traumatic moments of their lives, Sarah Palin made women pay, before the law would protect them. And it didn't stop until Democratic governor Tony Knowles signed statewide legislation prohibiting the practice.

How does this demonstrate respect for women and girls? How is this feminism?

Advancing feminism requires ending sexism, and NOW has been speaking out for over 18 months against the sexism aimed at women candidates and leaders, including Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin. But you already know that, because you know NOW. But when Palin was asked during the primaries about the sexism Senator Clinton was experiencing, she implied that Clinton was whining, and said women just need to "work harder" and "prove yourself to an even greater degree that you are capable."

What?! This is the same line that has been used against women for decades -- that we aren't trying hard enough, and besides we're just a bunch of whiners anyway.

Women are still being paid an average of 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Are they whining, too? According to John McCain they are. He explained his opposition to the Fair Pay Act by saying that women (who want equal pay) need more training - never mind that women tend to have more training and education that similarly-situated men, and still they earn less.

Lilly Ledbetter, an employee of Goodyear Tire and Rubber for 19 years, sued Goodyear once she'd amassed evidence that she was being grossly underpaid compared to her male counterparts. She won her case, but what could have been a landmark decision to end pay discrimination turned sour. Appeals by Goodyear took her case to the Supreme Court, where a narrow majority overturned the ruling in a dramatic reinterpretation of pay discrimination law. According to the majority, Ledbetter should have filed her discrimination lawsuit within 180 days after the first instance of pay discrimination - even if she didn't know about it (which she didn't). Huh? It was her fault? Now Ledbetter is speaking out and fighting back so that this injustice doesn't happen to anyone else. Is Lilly Ledbetter "whining" too?

So we whiners are supposed to herald Sarah Palin as bringing in a new wave of feminism? Who is telling us this? Pundits and politicians who've offered nothing in their long careers demonstrating so much as a mild interest in women's rights, that's who. "You might say," said Rush Limbaugh, "she's the face of feminism." Well, Rush Limbaugh might say so, but forgive me if I don't take his word for it.

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message, by Gloria Steinem

No one can say it better than Gloria Steinem. She helps to voice my opinion very eloquently!

From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
By Gloria Steinem

September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.