Is President Obama Good for Women?
September 14, 2009
by Amy Siskind
|To Our Viewers:
Obama's First Cabinet Meeting – Lots of Suits
Many of you take the time to write to me or to our organization about President Barack Obama and his record on women issues. Many more of you comment on our blog stories.
Over the weekend, a member sent me a startling email. Less than 10% of President Obama’s “czars” are women. Yes, according to this email, only 3 out of 32. Can this possibly be true? The New Agenda spoke out about the lack of women in Obama’s cabinet, but even there 6 of his 24 picks were women – 25% (see our home page video). Under 10% is frankly insulting!
I am also curious about what our readers think about Valerie Jarrett and her performance as Director of The White House Council for Women and Girls. When I wrote an op-ed in The Daily Beast in March saying we should give her a chance, many of you were critical. Were you right and I was wrong? Has this council done anything tangible for women? Is Valerie involved?
Obama Congratulates UCONN Basketball Team
Yet, some of you write to me to tell me positive things about President Obama. And you list personal stories about perhaps why his policies are helping you in your daily life.
I’d like to hear from our viewers. What do you think about President Obama and his performance on women’s issues (NOT general politics, women’s issues)? Please leave us a comment with your thoughts.
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I give credit to Obama for the new White House Council for Women and Girls. Has Valerie been fabulous? I have no idea. What has she been doing? Perhaps others can tell me. But this position exists now which is a good thing and leaves a lot of potential for the future, too. I also give credit to Obama for appointing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State who is making global women’s rights a focus.
However, I don’t think Obama has been good for choice…. he tends to bow to conservatives a bit too much and has only accomplished the basics in regard to choice. And when I say basics, I mean what any Democratic president would do. He’s abandoned FOCA and stated that it is “not a priority” which is of course the opposite of what he said during his campaign. He’s seems to be okay with the Hyde Amendment now that he is President, making choice impossible for many poor women. But I think the worst has been his “openness” to “dialoguing” with social conservatives. Because of this, he has influenced the anti-gay marriage movement in California and the pro-life position is becoming more and more popular. Under Obama’s presidency, more American’s are pro-life and I do think his words have helped the pro-life movement. Also, he has stated again and again (in regard to Health Care Reform) that the government will NOT be paying for abortions. Again, this sort of language scandalizes a women’s right to choose and makes it nearly impossible for many poor women to have abortions.
I know the New Agenda does not focus on abortion rights but outside of the New Agenda, it is a women’s issue that many liberal women find important so in the larger question, “has O been good for women” I think it is important to discuss.
Valerie Jarrett in my opinion is very silent in her position… She kind of reminds me of NOW – they sit there, says to be for women but do they even do anything for women? I know it hasn’t been that long but both Obama and Valerie Jarrett could be working on legislation that will give women equal rights… Why not pass the ERA in all 50 states? Or have children learn about equal rights and sexism in schools? This is what is lacking. Also the mostly male czars seems to be yet another indication that this administration has to intention of breaking out of the good ole’ boys club.
Also our women soldiers are being forced to cover their faces overseas. Why is Obama allowing this? It’s not okay.
Alison:I have not read or heard of any council meetings…Who is on the council. If Jarrett heads it, it must have members, meetings and the like, just existing on paper is harmful not helpful
Addendum: Should have done this before my last post but I just googled the White House Council for Women and Girls and there is nothing after the announcement of the creation of it- so the announcement was window dressing and absolutely meaningless as is the non existent council and its mia members.
Yes, Bruce. I was afraid of that. Valerie Jarret has no history of working for women’s issues and so I’ve doubted her appointment myself. But at the very least the position exists and hopefully other administrations may fill the seat with passionate advocates for women and girls.
And Mslas, not to mention the huge rate of sexual assault against our female soldiers by our own American soldiers! That might be something of interest for the White House Council for Women and Girls.
Any cookies and milk bones he hands out to women now are “good girl” headpats, and that’s all they are. And that’s how they will be interpreted. Every single man I knew who was voting for him did so because they wanted to play “beat the bitch.” Without exception. The porn addicts, the resentful creeps, the “Sarah Palin is a C*NT” shirt-wearers. All of them.
So at this point, no. He is a DISASTER for women, period. NO amount of good that he does can offset his bird-flipping, his sh*tty comments to and about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, his talk about how his wife’s job is to sit there and Be Pwetty, listening to the same media *ssholes who were practically on their knees fluffing him savaging these two fine women nonstop … nope. Sorry. There is no apology big enough from that ugly, big-eared, underqualified fool to offset the damage his entire scorched-earth campaign has done to women.
And don’t tell me he didn’t meeeeaaaan it, or it wasn’t his faaaauuuult — he sure as hell did, he smirked over it, he gave it tacit approval. Making sure one DOESN’T do that and that one’s speechwriter isn’t caught metaphorically groping the breast of his female colleague IS CALLED LEADERSHIP. If he’s not capable of that, he’s not qualified for his current position.
And if you, hypothetical female reader, aren’t capable of holding men to the standards you need to hold them to to ensure they don’t backslide and treat us all like garbage, then YOU aren’t qualified for anything either, including equality. STFU about your stupid whiney-ass “girl rights” if you aren’t willing to put your foot down and keep it there.
Men get away with this crap time and again because, time and again, women let them. PERIOD.
Janis, missed your posts…the above was great and so correct, reading you always makes this conservative white male from Hollywood embarrassed for my gender
Bruce, we’re both embarrassed for our genders at this point, and with good reason. Men get away with exactly what women allow them to. We’ve been letting them wiggle out of hard issues, sucking up to them, endlessly forgiving them, throwing our own into the pyre to make room for them … all of it for a million years. No more excuses.
I don’t feel Obama has done much of anything for anyone. He is a talker that’s about it. In regards to women’s rights he doesn’t even bother to talk. Obama has put women in this country back 75 years at least because of the profoundly sexist campaign he ran first against Hillary then against Palin. His council on women and girls is a do nothing meaningless gesture to shut up the liberals who think they are feminists and it has worked. About the only thing he has done for women is put an end to NOW which had become an insulated group that did not care about women or their needs but Obama made that obvious to everyone. I used to be Democrat, I will never vote for him or anyone connected with him.
Off Topic But clearly no one in government or media is going to do anything for us so….I have been thinking after reading about Annie Le at Yale, that a good thing women’s groups can do for our girls is to give them a place to document assaults of any type against them on college campuses. I know it will be difficult stats to keep but currently all the campuses try harder to cover up misogynist attacks than they try to prevent them. But then at my daughters campus they had a girl who was assaulted the first week of school but it turned out she made up the assault for attention. So I don’t know how you gather the info but how do you know about safety before you send your daughter away from home? There is no central place to get this info that I know of. There just needs to be a “woman’s information central” on the internet which I would have thought NOW would have taken on years ago but no. I would donate money to something like that.
Janis, I’m with you 100%.
BTW, to mslas, I only wish Valarie Jarret was like NOW is now. Unlike the other national “pro-women” organizations, NOW issued a strong statement the day after the President’s vaunted health care speech, calling him out for blatently compromising women’s reproductive health needs to appeal to the fundamentalist fringe.
http://www.now.org/press/09-09/09-10.html
Meanwhile, sounds like the White House Council for Women and Girls, like most of Obama’s deeds (versus words) in support of half America’s people, is M.I.A.
*****A
Valerie Jarrett is working on bringing the Olympics to Chicago. Bruce is right—no announcements from the “Council” since its creation…
Obama sucks! He is just another male pol who trade women’s rights in back room deals like the rest of them. He is no better than Karsi in Afghanistan, who made rape legal in order to garner support from misogynistic Mullahs! Women are there to trade like horses to these assholes. Obama is no different. For those of you who thought he was, you apparently weren’t paying close attention.
Let’s not forget that NOW has new leadership now with Terry O”Neill as president. Very different from Kim Gandy, there may be good things to come with O’Neill.
There’s not much doubt Obama’s a disaster for women – I trust no one here is shocked? The Council on Women and Girls would be a great idea if it had actual leadership and an agenda, besides being a symbolic gesture to get the women to shut up. Now is not the time to shut up, though, and the council could be made useful if it was given some direction and some good goals. I think getting the US to sign onto CEDAW should be the first order of business for the council, and thereafter, they should apply the principles of CEDAW to every nook and cranny of our own government to ensure women are getting represented in every decision that’s made, you know, as if women were most people …. oh, wait! Getting CEDAW ratified by our very own country would dovetail quite nicely with the global feminist agenda that Madame Secretary of State has been relentlessly pursuing everywhere she goes. It would also give the US some much-needed credibility when Madame Secretary tries to convince the world that the US actually gives a rip about women other than to use them as an excuse to haul out the war toys.
Janis,
I appreciate your anger and frustration. I too am frustrated about how so many women were taken in by Obama’s bull shit. His misogynistic tactics on the campaign trail should have been a red flag as to how he would approach women’s rights and concerns. But now what do we do? We are stuck with him and I’m not some one to sit down and STFU.
Kendall, Janis, I wish you could convince my sister of how sexist Obama is. I find it frustrating that she is an Obama-worshipper who accuses me of being the sexist one. She calls her own hypocrisy “complex thinking.” I am so disgusted with her intolerance and willful ignorance.
Karen, if she ever needs your help in the future, tell her that it’s sexist of her to expect you to help her just because she’s a woman.
Kendall, my personal role models at this point are Mike and the Bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000. We’re all locked in the theater powerless, watching the tragic comedy of human existence, and the only weapon we have to use to console ourselves with is our own wit. Pass the popcorn. I’m through with pitching in anymore. People who help me or my mom directly and unambiguously have a claim on my time and effort. Absolutely no one else does.
I agree wholeheartedly with Janis. Although, I wasn’t for him to begin with. He allows Michelle to be the trophy wife with her tone arms and her fashion sense. Who cares about those things? She could do a lot more to further womens’ causes.
Now for another couple of comments.
Has anyone seen this story? I was beyond disgusted by the event and lack of reports on this story. It’s about a gang rape on a woman and her son in FL.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288512,00.html
I also wanted to mention the ACORN scandal. If you have not yet heard about this, a young man and woman posed as a pimp and prostitute to obtain funding for housing as part of an investigative report. They proposed to the Acorn workers that their business would be run out of the home and would include underage (13 yr old) Salvadorean girls. They were given all kinds of advice in order to be able to operate the business in the home funded by our tax dollars. The investigation is just beginning and therefore this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Senate voted on eliminating funding for Acorn as a result. The following Senators voted against the elimination of funds. So, I am assuming that they are okay with the idea of advocating child prostitution/prostitution. They are: KRISTEN GILLIBRAND,Dick Durbin, Roland Burris, Patrick Leahy,Sheldon Whitehouse,Bernard Sanders and Robert Casey.
Frankly it’s shocking to see her on the list. Anyone with any additional insight on these topics?
No Obama didn’t do much for women and I am not surprised he ran the most sexist campaign in my lifetime so I didn’t expect him to really do anything. I didn’t trust Valarie Jarret from the beginning. I don’t think Obama is serious about women he seems like he doesn’t have much respect for women and girls.
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