WOMEN’S EQUALITY

Be active, resist and vote!

Hold Abusers Accountable By Electing More Women.

This is a painful and heartbreaking day. The Supreme Court has taken a hard-right turn and is in an all-out war on women’s rights. Here is what we are up against: a patriarchal system that seeks to silence women, take away women’s rights and reward entitled men who believe that they can abuse and sexually assault women while eating-up power.

We must fight back.

• A wave is coming on November 6, 2018. Be a part of it by learning about the women candidates running on 11/6/18 in your area: http://cawp.rutgers.edu/2018-primary-women-candidates-us-congress-and-statewide-elected-executive

• If you are as furious as we are right now, Donate $10 a month to the Voices of Women as we gear-up to provide critical training to survivors of domestic violence and help them share their stories. This November survivors’ voices will be heard loud and clear. VOW will make sure of it.

• Register to vote. For many today is the day to register to vote for the elections on 11/6/18, find out how at vote.gov. 

Be active, resist and vote!

In solidarity,

Voices of Women (VOW)

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Women’s March

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” reflects Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex (1949), and I have been wondering of the wisdom of this sentence for quite some time. What does it take for a female child to mature into a woman, not only physically but also in a mindset?

I have been a daughter, mother, wife and partner, yet, I can safely say, the first time I really understood the price and pride of being a woman was when I realized I was in an abusive relationship and that I had to co-parent a child with the abuser. Not only was the abuse inseparable from the low regard the abuser had for me as a woman and mother of his child, but also from the lack of institutional understanding and support I suffered as a dv survivor at the hands of the Family Courts.

Fast forward, ten years later, I found myself marching in Washington D.C. on the day of Trump’s inauguration and a year later in New York City. It is incredibly uplifting to be able to march for women’s rights and see how our movement has united the progressive forces in this country. At the march in NYC, I saw people campaigning for the Dreamers, LGBTQ rights, the environment, free Palestine and more, all under the aegis of the Women’s March.

I felt a glimpse of hope, a shift in public discourse and accountability in the air. When I reached 45th Street and heard a policewoman in her loudspeaker tell us “this is where the March ends but your fight will continue,” I could barely hold back my tears. Through hard-earned lessons, I can say, I have become a woman, not only in body, but also in the mind.

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Opposing Equal Rights for Men and Women!

Silhouette of hand movements feminists holding the symbol of Venus mirror. feminist concept

“Can a feminist bake apple pies?” I ask you.  “Does a feminist Want to bake apple pies?”  With my concept of what it means to be a feminist, then yes, a feminist may want to bake apple pies.  IF she enjoys baking.  And a non-feminist may not want to bake apple pies, if she doesn’t enjoy baking.  In my eyes, a feminist can be a wonderful wife and a brilliant mother and a great cook and a successful career woman.  Any woman can be these things.  And certainly every woman in the workplace deserves to receive equal pay to her male counterpart.

Opposing Equal Rights for Men and Women is opposing Human Rights.  Why would two human beings who are equally – as equally as possible – qualified, equally educated, equally proficient, capable and “successful” receive a different monetary salary within the same organization?  If one of these human beings is a female and the other a male, then this is what often happens in the United States of America.

In 1923, over ninety years ago, a woman and suffragist leader called Alice Paul first introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress.  The aim of the amendment was essentially to eliminate gender-based discrimination.  Section 1 of the original Equal Rights Amendment proposal read, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Leaders such as Gloria Steinem provided argument after argument in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in its favor in 1970.  Also in 1970, the National Organization for Women, NOW, an American feminist organization founded in 1966, began a hard push for the Equal Rights Amendment.

The President’s Commission on the Status of Women was established by John F. Kennedy in 1961, with Eleanor Roosevelt appointed as head of the organization, and it was set up in the hope of providing a solution to female discrimination in education, work force, and Social Security.

Yet, despite such strong, influential people and organizations pushing for an ERA, such an amendment has still not been ratified to this day.  Other powerful people have strongly opposed the ERA and put forward convincing, to some, arguments for why the ERA would be detrimental to women.  One such person was Phyllis Schlafly.

Phyllis Schlafly led the Stop-ERA campaign and suggested that ratification of the ERA would mean changes such as courts no longer tending to favor mothers for child custody in divorce cases and the introduction of women being drafted to war.  Phyllis Schlafly used scare tactics to persuade people to support her in her fight to have the ERA not written into the U.S. Constitution.  She also appealed to women, and to men, especially males who favored a patriarchal society, by apparently glorifying the picture of a traditional American woman.  Schlafly painted the picture of a doting and dedicated wife and mother, with an apron and superb apple pie baking skills.  I ask again, “Can a feminist bake apple pies?”  Well, more importantly, “Does she Want to bake apple pies?”

An Equal Rights Amendment is a necessity.  Without such an amendment to the United States Constitution, women are legally not protected when it comes to equal opportunities and justice.  For example, violence against women is prevalent, but state laws (differing from state to state) and federal laws remain highly inadequate for dealing with such serious issues.  The current laws related to women’s rights in the United States are not nearly enough to promote gender equality or to safeguard women against gender-based violence.  Ratification of a comprehensive and sensible ERA is needed, urgently.  And merely, but at the same time crucially, it’d be a step towards a greater embrace of basic human rights for women.

 

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No, No… You don’t get to say those words….

Recently we heard jaw-dropping words from Governor Sarah Palin about her son abusing his girlfriend because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It has taken domestic violence advocates years to achieve a modicum of abuser accountability. We still have more to do and Governor Palin’s words attempted to move us back a couple of decades. To a time where abusers can abscond their accountability by blaming victims or provide reasons to justify why they inflicted pain on another person.

As an organization made-up of survivors domestic violence and child witnesses to domestic violence, we cannot allow anyone to take us back to a time where blame is placed on everyone but the abuser. We have worked too hard for abuser accountability and will not let it go.  The lack thereof is why victims domestic violence die.

We support our veterans and believe that they deserve the utmost care and respect for their service. We remain the voice of survivors and speak-out to those who denigrate victims with comments that allow abusers to continue to abuse.

We call on Governor Palin to rethink her comments and recognize the millions of survivors she re-victimized through her comments.

 

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