On International Women's Day, NOW Denounces Anti-Woman Austerity Policies

Statement of NOW President Terry O'Neill

March 8, 2013

On International Women's Day, the National Organization for Women calls upon leaders in the United States to firmly reject the austerity model that has been economically devastating to our sisters in Europe. Call it what you like -- austerity, sequester, deficit reduction, balancing the budget. I call it a stealth attack on women.

The headlines tell the story of what's happening abroad: "Women are paying the price for economic austerity." "Greek crisis hits women especially hard." "Women bearing the brunt of austerity in Britain."

In both the U.S. and many European countries, women make up the majority of employees in the public sector, and women also rely disproportionately on social service programs. Cuts to government spending invariably target these areas for a number of shameful reasons. First and foremost, women, people of color, people with disabilities and all of those struggling to get by are underrepresented in the halls of power and therefore easy scapegoats. Second, the proponents of such cuts are often beholden to big business, the wealthy and the military industrial complex, so those money-hoarders are off the hook. And third, shredding the safety net is already at the top of these guys' agenda, so they're only too happy to use government debt as an excuse to slash even deeper.

In the coming days and weeks, NOW and women across this country will speak out loudly against this latest assault on our livelihood. The U.S. must not make the same mistake as Europe. Now is not the time to cut spending. Now is the time to invest in the people of this country by putting women and men back to work with livable wages, good benefits and equal pay for work of equal value. Balancing the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it is not only counter-productive, it's immoral.

New Orleans NOW president blasts Scalise for no vote on VAWA

New Orleans NOW president blasts Scalise for no vote on Violence Against Women Act

By Bruce Alpert, NOLA.com | Times-Picayune 
on March 04, 2013 at 2:50 PM, updated March 04, 2013 at 3:49 PM

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WASHINGTON - The president of the Greater New Orleans National Organization for Women is taking Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, to task for voting against a bill reauthorizing and expanding the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. The bill passed 286-138 last week, with 87 Republicans joining 199 Democrats in voting yes.

"Shame on him, is all we can say," said Charlotte Klasson, the NOW New Orleans president. "We are just relieved that women have the protections they need without his support."

Scalise, in a statement, said that, as a father and a husband, he was happy to vote for a GOP version of the bill, which didn't include some of the modifications incorporated into the Senate bill that won House approval last week despite his opposition.

He said the Senate version "promoted an extreme liberal social agenda and, like the Family Research Council (FRC) pointed out, was more focused on weakening laws and denying grants to some of the organizations that are best equipped to fight human trafficking simply because of their religious affiliations."

The conservative FRC, in a letter to House members, warned that the Senate bill could block groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from receiving federal grants to combat violence against woman because of their religious objections to abortion. It also complained about a U-visa provision that protects victims of some violent crimes from deportation by granting them legal status and work authorization.

The bill, the research council said, "uses the Violence Against Women Act as a vehicle to advance the expansion of tribal jurisdiction, immigration visas and unnecessary anti-discrimination laws."

The Senate bill provides services to the victims of domestic and dating violence, adding protection no matter their sexual orientation or gender. It also allows Native American tribes to prosecute non-Indian defendants for crimes related to domestic violence.

The bill also authorizes programs to prevent human trafficking, sexual assault on college campuses, and for dealing with shortages of rape kits used for victims of sexual assault.

Scalise and two other Louisiana Republicans who voted against the bill voted for a GOP alternative, which removed language related to gender identity and sexual identification and giving the national American tribes the authority to try non-Indian defendants.

That measure failed 257-166, with 60 Republicans voting no.

Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, said the GOP-led House, which failed to pass the Senate bill in the last Congress, did the right thing by enacting it now.

"This is a major accomplishment in the fight to protect and provide assistance to the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and dating violence," Richmond said. "We have an obligation to ensure the protection of women in Louisiana and across the nation from senseless acts of violence."

Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wisc., a victim of domestic and sexual violence, said that all victims, regardless of race or sexual orientation, deserve protection. She said the rights of gay victims aren't protected in the GOP alternative.

"As I think about the L.G.BT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) victims who are not here, the native women who are not here, the immigrants who aren't in this bill, I would say, as Sojourner Truth would say, 'Ain't they women? Ain't they women?"

Klasson of the New Orleans NOW Chapter praised Richmond and other supporters of the bill, but said that Scalise, instead of "listening to the Family Research Council in Washington, " should have consulted women in his own district who would tell him the Senate bill he opposed provides important protections.

President Barack Obama has promised to sign the bill into law.

"Over more than two decades, this law has saved countless lives and transformed the way we treat victims of abuse," the president said. "Today's vote will go even further by continuing to reduce domestic violence, improving how we treat victims of rape, and extending protections to Native American women and members of the LGBT community."

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/03/new_orleans_now_president_blas.html

Tell Jindal To Stop Balancing the Budget on the Backs of Louisiana Women and Their Families

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 24, 2012

The Jindal Administration is continuing its pattern of balancing the state budget on the backs of Louisiana women and their children, according to the President of the local chapter of The National Organization for Women. Jindal has proposed, effective February 1, 2013, to cut Medicaid funding to all hospice programs and to all Early Childhood Supports and Services programs in Louisiana. 

“Women, who are predominately the primary caregivers for the terminally ill and for emotionally disabled children, will be the most significantly impacted by the elimination of these two programs,” said Charlotte Klasson. “Additionally, those programs, which employ nurses, social workers, counselors, and other health care providers, represent a service staff comprised of significantly more women than men whose jobs will be lost with these cuts.”

In an earlier statement regarding Jindal’s rejection of the Medicaid Expansion component of the Affordable Care Act, Klasson pointed out that over half of all Medicaid dollars are used to support nursing homes where most of the residents as well as most of the employees are women.

The cuts to the Early Childhood Supports and Services programs will impact children from lower income families and children who have been exposed to violence in their homes or neighborhoods, according to Dr. Mary Margaret Gleason, co-clinical director of the program, in the Times-Picayune article dated December 21, 2012. “These low income families are overwhelmingly headed by single women and the services provided in these programs are staffed predominantly by women,” said Klasson. “It’s difficult to know the exact numbers because apparently no one in the Governor’s Office has bothered to determine how many women and women of color might be affected before ordering the cuts, but it has been estimated that about 85% of the primary caregivers of children in the ECSS programs are female and approximately 65% of those are African American, and over 50% of the employees of the ECSS programs are women. It is hard to discern if this pattern of budget cuts that disproportionately impact women, and especially women of color, is a mistake resulting from ignorance or if Governor Jindal is deliberately waging a war on the women of Louisiana.”

NOW is calling on women and groups that represent children and women’s interest to contact the Governor and their own legislative representatives to ask that additional consideration be given to the impact these cuts and other fiscal decisions by the Governor have on women and children before finalizing these budgetary decisions.

NOW's Women-Friendly Workplace Campaign

The Women-Friendly Workplace Campaign is NOW's proactive project aimed at stopping sexual harassment and other workplace abuses. NOW has been active on workplace issues throughout our history, from our successful efforts to end sex-segregated help-wanted ads in the 1960s and 70s to our campaign to stop sexual and racial harassment at Mitsubishi Motors and Smith Barney in the 1990s.

Launched in 1997, the Women-Friendly Workplace Campaign has taken on some of the biggest employers in the U.S., including retail giant Wal-Mart. The campaign puts a framework around NOW's wide-ranging efforts to end workplace discrimination while encouraging employers to institute family-friendly policies.

Whether they're working on automobile assembly lines, at Wall Street brokerage firms, in strawberry fields, at military posts, on the floor of a discount store or even at the post office -- women face unfair hurdles at work. We know that harassment and abuse are ways to knock women and people of color out of the competition for higher-paying jobs. The Women-Friendly Workplace Campaign gives consumers the organizing tools they need to use their clout in the marketplace to demand women-friendly workplaces.

Campaign Components

• Consumer's Pledge for individuals to sign, agreeing to support businesses that are women-friendly.
• Employer's Pledge for businesses to sign, promising to adhere to minimal standards for a Women-Friendly Workplace.
• Merchants of Shame -- those businesses that have bad track records on harassment, discrimination or assault in the workplace and are targeted for direct action and consumer pressure.
• • Wal-Mart
  • U.S. Postal Service
  • Detroit Edison
  • Smith Barney
  • Mitsubishi