!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! ! ! ! Catt's Claws ... A Feminist Newsletter #48 ... June 1, 1995 ! ! ! !.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! China, as the host country, along with some of the other strongly patriarchal governments and religious groups are trying to scuttle the effectiveness of the scheduled Fourth World Conference on Women set for September 4-15, 1995, with the Nongovernmental Forum scheduled for August 30-September 8. Instead of momentum growing to highlight the terrible problems of women throughout the world, the media - when it does bother to mention the conference - and the UN anti-women's rights governments and religious groups have deflected women's energies to site discussions rather than issues. The NGO site move to be housed in 31 TENTS was obviously a way to defuse the conference's effectiveness. Why did women allow this to happen? And what can be learned from this mess? First of all, politically naive women agreed to go to a nation like China where they have no power and no input. That decision was suicidal to the conference's cause, a guarantee of failure. It is no secret that the women's conference was handed to China as a consolation prize for not getting the Olympics. Shocking as it is in this day and age that women and their battle for human rights were used as a commodity to salve the macho male ego, what is more shocking is that female world leaders with unconscionable naivete handed away the conference's effectiveness but not seeing the potential for disaster before they agreed to China - one of the worst countries for women's rights in the world. What are the governments (and some religions) of the world so afraid of that they would make such as effort to defuse the women's conference? As space allows, my Women of Achievement and Herstory column will present the proposed "Platform for Action: 12 Critical Areas of Concern" that is to be adopted at the China conference. Its draft form was adopted by the 39th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in April 1995. The platform identifies the area of concern, identifies the obstacles to the advancement of women, and provides strategies to be used by governments and non-government organizations for removing those obstacles. Number One is the "persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women." If you wish to receive WOA, email and in the body of the email . ....................... * ........................ Okay, Bill Clinton - what have you done for women lately? With your insistence on human rights? With your leadership that calls into question the past inequalities because of race, gender, age, etc. (Affirmative Action amongst other things.) Well, people, here's an example of what COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP CAN DO. Can you even *imagine* the following happening under Reagan, or Bush or Gramm, or Dole, or even "liberal" Pete Wilson ?????? Rape, domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women are now potential grounds for political asylum according to new rules enacted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Under past administrations, sexual violence against women has been seen as a private matter, or a street crime even when committed with the approval of governments (such as that committed by soldiers in Rwanda and Bosnia). Finally - FINALLY there is recognition that there are differences in the way women and men are punished and persecuted by governments. (Have you EVER read one word about the rapes and sexual tortures of Jewish women by the German Nazis? The untold story in EVERY war.) The United States becomes the second country after Canada to adopt specific guidelines for women's asylum cases. "(The new guidelines) make it clear that just because a woman is not persecuted in the same way as a man, she isn't deserving of the protection that the United States can offer," Doris Meissner, a commissioner of the U.S Immigration and Naturalization Service, said but emphasized the guidelines were not an open door to all asylum claims by women, but rather a way to sensitize immigration service asylum officers and help insure that worthy cases from women are not ignored. "The whole atmosphere for women has changed," said Deborah Anker, a founding member of the Women Refugees Project (WRP) at Harvard Law School, which was instrumental in shaping the new asylum guidelines. "Women have always been invisible in the law and its time for that invisibility to end." Newspaper accounts of the changes cite the Violence Against Women Act (pushed by President Clinton and opposed by the Republicans who are trying to gut it) as instrumental in creating the change. The guidelines outline examples of the forms of abuse women can experience, such as infanticide, genital mutilation, slavery and forced marriage. They also show how a woman's opposition to traditions, like wearing a veil, can be grounds for asylum. (or the burning of widows or low dowered wives in India?) "There is still a very high burden of proof," Nancy Kelly, the coordinating lawyer for WRP said. "This only gives women the same rights that men have always had. It doesn't give them expanded rights, just the same rights since up until now women have been judged by a male standard." Republican Presidents and Congress even refused to allow doctors from discussing abortion with poor women EVEN WHEN THEIR LIVES WERE IN DANGER (the gag rule) so the change in direction from the top is very important. Damn it, Clinton has driven me crazy for almost 14 years, (I had him before as governor) but somehow he gets things done. I've never understood quite how, but things always got done ... Please email him at to encourage him. We need his VETO on the horrors this Republican majority is trying toforce onto our compassionate system of government. Look kids, the cold, political reality is that it is Clinton in 1996 or a radical religious right controlled Republican President and Congress, followed by the appointments of the same kind of hateful bigots to the U.S. Supreme Court - with the end of our freedoms within four years. Don't think it can happen? Neither did big bird. ....................... * ........................ A few weeks back we mentioned that the radical religious right had started training newspeople to mole into news organizations to change the way news is reported. Catt's Claws got a "few" notes that, in essence said: "You're getting paranoid." Well today, the news services carried a story that confirmed what we were warning about: "Despite major news stories this year involving women -- the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the death of Rose Kennedy and the slayings of two workers at abortion clinics -- front-page references to women are declining, a media research group says. "Front-page references and quotes attributed to females dropped to 19 percent from 25 percent in 1994 based on an annual review of 20 major and small daily newspapers conducted by the group Women, Men and Media. "Female references were conspicuously missing in front-page stories about the new national political agenda, war and international disasters, which were the most covered stories during the study period, according to the annual survey released Wednesday. "The _Los Angeles Times_, according to the survey, had the lowest overall average percentage of female references on its front pages in January -- 12 percent. California is the only state in the country with two female senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. They were mentioned four times on the front page in January, the survey found." ....................... * ........................ There's a beautiful example of the control of news to erase women from sight in a story in today's newspapers: "President Clinton named former Federal Reserve Governor Andrew Brimmer and two other people Wednesday to a five-seat control board for overseeing the municipal finances of the nation's capital." Who were those two "other" people? You guessed it, women: Joyce Ladner, a sociologist and former interim president of Howard University, and Constance Newman, undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. ....................... * ........................ According to recent surveys, women are being ordained in the Southern Baptist Churches in ever growing numbers... and the leadership doesn't like it, even throwing churches out of the fold. Also a growing number of Baptist men, including former president Jimmy Carter, are leaving to join less fundamentalist wings of the denominations. Ironically the upsurge in women ministers has come even as the leadership is tightening its stand against female ordination. Under Baptist policy, local congregations are autonomous, free to ordain whom they wish...to a point. Sociologist Sarah Frances Anders of Louisiana College in Pineville, La., keeps tracks on the phenomenon of women in the clergy and cites it as faster growing with Southern Baptists than in any other major denomination. There are about 900 Southern Baptist women clergy, compared with 75 in 1978, the year that the campaign to put biblical fundamentalists in charge of the denomination. "Women are not seeking ordination simply to be defiant," said Amanda Hiley of Louisville, Ky, administrator of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry. "They pay a heavy price for ordination, the personal ridicule they have to put up. They have to be very serious about their call in this environment." In a resolution adopted in its 1984 convention, Southern Baptists say scripture "excludes women from pastoral leadership .... to preserve a submission that God requires because man was first in creation and woman was first in the edenic fall," blaming women for initiating original sin in the Garden of Eden. Women are "not to assume to role of authority over men lest confusion reign in the local church," the convention said and since then the number of ordinations of women has tripled. Congregations hiring women ministers are sometimes expelled from local denominations such as occurred in numerous locales - Marin County, CA., Memphis, TN., Oklahoma City, SE KY and others. A new survey indicates that 80 percent of women clergy have advanced graduate degrees, far surpassing the average educational level of male Southern Baptist pastors, for whom no educational requirements are set. Comparatively, ordained women "are very, very highly prepared, educated and skilled, Hiley said. ....................... * ........................ Women's rights are young and tender and we must protect them from the plagues of holy hypocrisy and newts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>> Send your ideas, comments, and news to irenestuber@delphi.com or to Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902, 501-624-5262 for direct fax or voice mail ID #300 (thanks to my local BBS). The Catt's Claws feminist newsletter will be emailed three times a week: Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information and is NOT sponsored by any organization. We are accepting *limited* donations (only what can be spared) to help offset the online costs of posting Catt's Claws.