|
The
New Administration and Women's Issues
By Dina Rashed
26/1/2001
The newly elected American President has been hailed for appointing several women to key positions in his administration; however, his recent move to block U.S. funds to overseas organizations that advocate abortion in addition to his nomination of John Ashcroft as General Attorney may hinder his ability to attract significant support from American females.
Bush has promised to bring the various parties within our society together and to unite the American people. In his effort to do so, he has selected five women to hold important positions within his administration - the most important of which is Condoleeza Rice as the first female and the first African American to be National Security Adviser.
In addition to Rice, he chose Gale Norton as Interior Secretary, Ann Veneman as Agriculture Secretary, Elaine Chao as Labor Secretary (she is a first generation immigrant and the first Chinese American to hold a cabinet position), and Christine Todd Whitman as Chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He also named his spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, as his White House counselor.
Despite having given Bush credit for these nominations, some leaders of the American women's movement are not optimistic about the impact that such a diverse group of women can make on women's rights. This is in part due to the fact that the two women who support abortion rights, Whitman and Norton, are not in a position to make a difference, as their administrative positions do not deal with social and legislative changes. In contrast, Chao, whose administration could possibly touch on the issues of gender equality and conditions within the workplace, is known for her stand on certain social issues and for her membership in the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.
Advocates of women's rights, in particular reproductive rights, fear most that John Ashcroft will seek, as Attorney General, to reverse the gains that women acquired during the Clinton era. Another threat they perceive comes from former Governor Tommy Thompson as Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services who will oversee, among his various responsibilities, state welfare programs.
Like Ashcroft, Thompson is an anti-abortionist whom some women groups fear will influence health policies. The President himself has openly spoken about his plans to do everything in his power to restrict abortion practices. One of his first executive memorandums, on his second day in office, reversed Clinton's decision in 1993 to restore federal funding of international family-planning groups that offer abortion or abortion counseling. Bush's action, which covers even groups using their own money to pay for abortions or abortion counseling, effectively reinstates a policy that former President Reagan put into place and that Bush, Sr. continued.
He is also expected to look into the regulations of the abortion pill RU-486, and possibly reverse the approval of that pill. Anti-abortion advocates also want a ban on federal funding for research involving fetal tissue or the destruction of human embryos, including stem cell research.
"Every woman in America should be afraid," said Kate Michelman, president of National Abortion Rights Action League.
But other Republicans like Candy Straight who heads WISH List, a network that assists in the selection of female Republican candidates, said that the fears of these groups might be blown out of proportion. Herself a supporter of abortion rights said, "From day one, Bush has always believed in a big tent party."
Many women believe that the selection of these very highly qualified women to cabinet positions is indicative of the progress women are making within the political arena. Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization of Women who still has deep reservations about the Ashcroft nomination and who had supported Gore during the month-long period of the undecided Florida vote, gives Bush credit for his choices. She said that another achievement to these women is that they were chosen based on their records of achievement and their ideologies rather than their gender. Yet, she has remained very critical of the Senate hearings to confirm the President's nominations, and over the controversy surrounding Bush's first nomination of Linda Chavez as Secretary of Labor. Despite Ireland's opposition to the nomination because of Chavez's stand opposing affirmative action, bilingual education, and an increase in the minimum wage, Ireland feels that the issue of Chavez paying an immigrant was only raised because she was a woman, and had the nominee been a man, the background check would not have included his household decisions.
The GOP has historically appealed more to white males than the Democratic Party; analysis of this election shows a dramatic influence of gender on voters' preference. Despite the very close race between President Bush and former Vice President Al Gore, the vast majority of white males voted for Bush while the majority of females voted for Gore. Bush has attempted to reach out more to women through the selection of female cabinet members, but the extent of his convictions regarding women's reproductive rights might still be the challenge he has to face to bring the female vote to his party.
|
