Week in Review

Week in Review is a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. It includes longer analysis and/or commentary, as well as brings attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

MSNBC’s Schultz suspended for calling conservative host Ingraham a ‘slut’

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

In media-related news this week, MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz, host of “The Ed Show,” was suspended for a week without pay after calling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” and a “talk slut” on his radio program.

Schultz was responding to Ingraham’s recent comments regarding President Barack Obama’s trip to Europe while the wake of the tornado in Joplin, Mo., when he twice called her a “slut” Tuesday.

MSNBC released a statement quoted by news sources saying, “Remarks of this nature are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” The statement did suggest that management had allowed him to decide on his punishment, noting after a meeting with Schultz they had “accepted his offer to take one week of unpaid leave.”

Schultz issued an apology on Wednesday on air before handing his show over to the fill-in host. In his comments, he acknowledged that his words were “vile and inappropriate.” He said, “It was wrong, uncalled-for and I recognize the severity of what I said.”

On her radio show Thursday, Ingraham accepted his apology, noting that “It seemed heartfelt.”

The Women’s Media Center started a Change.org petition calling for Schultz suspension. It received nearly 500 signatures before his suspension was announced.  According to the Change.org release, Schultz and MSNBC have agreed to meet with the organization to discuss the issue.

While the Women’s Media Center acknowledged that it doesn’t always see eye to eye with Ingraham, the language used undermined all women. In its action alert, the group stated, “Ms. Ingraham is no friend to the Women’s Media Center, but a sexist and misogynist attack based on her gender and not her political views or comments is harmful to women in media, politics, and beyond.”

Some commentators and news sites noted this isn’t the first time an MSNBC host has come under fire for sexist comments. Chris Matthews eventually apologized for his coverage of Hillary Clinton with comments calling her (among other things) a “she-devil.” David Shuster received a suspension after he referred to Chelsea Clinton being “pimped out” by the campaign.

In an opinion for The Guardian, Melissa McEwan notes that hosts tend to get in trouble for overt sexism, like directly calling a woman a “slut” but not for those comments that are more covert creating a “just don’t get caught” mentality.

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Political spouses play increased role in candidacy, fallout from misconduct

Joy BaconLeave a comment

Several stories this week have centered around the role of spouses in political races and scandals. And by spouses, in every case we are looking at the wife of a male politician, although several stories note the discrepancy that would most likely exist if a female candidate’s male spouse was examined in a similar light.

Presidential Candidates

As the primary season for 2012 approaches, several GOP candidates have been thrown, or voluntarily placed themselves, in the spotlight as a contender for the nomination. Roughly half of voters said a candidate’s spouse would have some impact on their vote, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll just before the start of the 2008 presidential primaries. However, some of these spouses have been reluctant to undergo the scrutiny of a campaign.  Most prominent in the discussion is Cheri Daniels, wife of Gov. Mitch Daniels, who was described in Newsweek as hesitant about a potential  campaign due to anxiety of her “personal life getting shredded like a chunk of ripe Parmesan.” The New York Times’ weekly Room for Debate tackled this tension of public vs. private life, with several contributors falling on different points of the spectrum.

Also in the spotlight this week was Callista Gingrich, third wife of declared primary candidate Newt Gingrich. His marital past is being discussed in the Boston Globe and across multiple media outlets as a potential stumbling block to his campaign, especially as he tries to cater to voters who prioritize family values issues. Richard Reeves for the Times’ Room for Debate wrote that “Gingrich’s trio of marriages may prove to be a test as to how far we have come since a single divorce could derail a political career.”

Again, it is noticeable that these types of anxieties, and the news cycles that debate them, are focused on the wives, not husbands, of candidates. Newsweek noted that “the life of a presidential wife is all about contorting herself to satisfy the constant, constantly shifting demands of a nation that still can’t decide what it wants from the role.” Maybe husbands are left out of the debate for the time being because the types of trip ups a candidate’s wife can be seen to cause are just shifted to female candidates themselves.

The primary candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, faced her own share of gender-based criticism while the marital mistakes of former President Bill Clinton were not widely discussed as a hindrance to her image surrounding family values, although their marital history was fare game during his 1992 campaign for the same office. Politico all but counted female candidates out of the 2012 Republican primary, saying this week they are either “provocative but unelectable and provocative but who may render their husbands unelectable.”

Political Mistakes

Two other political figures this week brought attention to their spouses. The separation of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from his wife Maria Shriver brought light to his child born to a former employee of the family 10 years ago. During his campaign for governor, Shriver repeatedly defended her husband of 25 years when accusations surfaced of his misconduct and sexual harrassment of women on his movie sets and elsewhere. Tracy Weber, now of ProPublica, described her reporting of Schwarzenegger’s misconduct for the LA Times, saying Shriver “battled back forcefully, contributing in large part to his victory.”

On the other side of the country,  former chief of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces charges of attempted rape of a housekeeper in a New York City hotel. His wife, Anne Sinclair, was described in the New York Times as “the driving force for (his) political ambitions.” Like Shriver, Sinclair was a TV journalist who gave up her career to avoid conflict of interest with her husband’s political aspirations.

And while the coverage of Strauss-Kahn case raises several issues around the coverage of rape and depictions of victims of sexual assault, the larger issue comes down to the role these incidents will play out for these men’s political futures, and the portrayal of their wives’ responses.

Both Shriver and Sinclair unfortunately have several examples to choose from. Jenny Sanford, former first lady of South Carolina, made headlines for her refusal to stand by her husband after his affair with an Argentinian woman. When former President Bill Clinton apologized on “60 Minutes” for his actions, Hillary Rodham Clinton sat beside him. Silda Wall Spitzer stood behind her husband as he announced his involvement in a New York prostitution ring, her disdain clearly visible on her face.

Whether the spotlight comes from a campaign or a calamity, it is clear spouses, and particularly wives, are considered a newsworthy part of a politician’s public profile.

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Pay disparity by gender highlighted, disputed

Joy BaconLeave a comment

As Equal Pay Day came and went on Tuesday, April 12, several stories exploring the persisting wage gap between men and women took center stage in the weekly news cycle. According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, the organization in charge of the awareness day, Tuesday was chosen to represent how far into the work week women must work to earn what men earned the previous week.

According to the National Bureau for Labor and Statistics, across all occupations combined, women earned 81.2 percent of what men did in 2010. Many news outlets focused on this disparity in specific fields and occupations, where the gap greatly differs, or is in some cases reversed.

The Atlantic chose to focus on the traditionally reported story of fields in which women earn less than men, highlighting finance and insurance as the top disparity, where women in the same positions earn just 62 percent in comparison to their male colleagues. Gaps also persisted in health care, utilities, public administration, and both wholesale and resale trade industries.

Several publications focused on more localized data: The Sun-Sentinel reported that in Florida, women were found to earn $7,013 less than men annually. An even larger gap reported by the Boston Globe showed Massachussets women working under a $11,800 pay gap.  The National Partnership for Women and Families, the advocacy group providing the research for both these reports, maintains a state-by-state guide to several data points on this topic.

The long-standing critique of the wage gap is the Mommy Card: women leave the workforce to raise children before reaching higher-level management positions that bring with them the higher salaries. The Christian Science Monitor also noted that in 2009, Women held 36.5 percent of all managerial positions, up from 34 percent in 2000. In addition, only three percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in 2009 were women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. The Washington Post offered a counter to this argument, pointing to a study from Columbia University that showed women take a 4 percent wage hit with their first child, while men gain 9 percent in their salaries. The wage gap also persists in the same positions at the same level of management, and men still earn more even in traditionally female-dominated fields such as nursing.

The recent rise in unemployment is also used as an excuse for these disparities, since men have been hit harder by the recession in fields such as construction. Newsweek even went as far as to ask if “manhood” could survive the recession, referring to the group who used to drive BMW’s as “beached white males.” And while the overall unemployment rate is 1 percent higher for men than women over the age of 16, single women were still hit the hardest by the rise in unemployment. In March 2011 the male unemployment rate was 9.3 percent whereas single women who maintain families had an unemployment rate of 12.3 percent, compared to 8.3 percent for women as a whole.

Some opinions still hold, however, that the wage gap is mostly about manipulation of data and doesn’t offer a true comparison worth exploring. A columnist for the Wall Street Journal said Tuesday should be seen as a day  “dedicated to manufactured feminist grievances,” rather than as a true “battle of the sexes.”

Other opinions supported the data. The Houston Chronicle and Detroit Free Press both urged readers to become more active in the fight for pay equity.

At the policy level, the pending class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart for gender discrimination could be the largest case of its kind in U.S. history. The New York Times editorial page noted that ” If the court rejects this suit, it will send a chilling message that some companies are too big to be held accountable.”

Additional resources and data:

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

As shutdown loomed, focus was on abortion, women’s health

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The biggest news story of the week was the potential shutdown of the federal government if Congress wasn’t able to reach a compromise on the budget. President Barack Obama signed a stop gap bill into law today to keep the government in action through next week until the budget deal for the rest of the fiscal year reached Friday night is finalized.

The hold-up and the threat of shutdown was directly tied to issues of abortion and, as a result, women’s health.

It appears the main abortion provisions Republicans sought were stripped out of the deal in exchange for deeper cuts in spending, including an effort to defund Planned Parenthood. However, a separate vote will be held on that issue next week, though Democrats are anticipated to defeat it. The compromise does, however, contain a provision that restricts abortion financing in Washington, D.C.

Though the focus of the debate is around Planned Parenthood’s abortion services, federal funds already can’t be used for abortions. As we’ve previously noted, only about 3 percent of its health services are abortion related. It provides family planning, cancer screenings, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and other services for both men and women but particularly for low-income women. (For a complete breakdown of Planned Parenthood does, check out this chart from the Washington Post).

The fact that this became a major issue in holding up a budget compromise reflected the culmination of several months worth of Republican action on issues of abortion and women’s health that the Gender Report has highlighted in earlier posts.

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Push for women’s rights brushed aside in Middle East upheavals

Joy BaconLeave a comment

As conflicts continue in Libya and the surrounding regions, women’s roles in these revolutions are starting to become more publicized. We’ve highlighted before the active role women took in the protests in Egypt. However, women’s success in pushing for equal rights has not always been as successful as their pushes for new government systems.

Time Magazine reported that in Libya, women lawyers were among the earliest anti-Qaddafi organizers in the revolutionary stronghold of Benghazi. This week, thousands of women marched in support of the no-fly zone. The BBC reported protests across Yemen for International Women’s Day, amidst the country’s other issues of political unrest.

However, Tunisian women organizing a post-revolution rally were met with cries to “return to the kitchen.” The Christian Science Monitor reported that over 200 men violently attacked a march in Cairo for International Women’s Day. In Egypt, the 10-member Constitutional Committee, which was tasked with coming up with constitutional amendments for the new president, didn’t include a single woman; Tunisia’s transition government likewise only appointed 2 women. An article in the new Egyptian Constitution also effectively limits the presidency to men.

CNN reported similar trends towards post-revolution exclusion. Even in Bahrain, where since 2006 women have been able to vote and hold many more rights than neighboring countries, women’s rights, especially concerning family law, are not on the table. Under the old Tunisian government,  women enjoyed nearly all the same rights as men, and they made great strides in all fields including law, medicine and media. Now, some fear the country could see a regression in women’s rights under the new leadership.

Even in Iraq, as a fledgling democracy begins to take shape, women are being left out of the political arena. The New York Times reported that women have less political influence today than at any time since the American invasion. Only 1 ministry is led by a women, compared to 6 between 2005 and 2006. Ashwaq Abbas, a female member of Parliament from the Kurdish Alliance bloc, told the Times that  “democracy should also include women, and the rights of women should be developed as the democracy here develops. But what’s actually happened is that the rights of women have gotten worse over time.”

In Egypt and across the region, as more countries begin to deal with political unrest and calls for revolution, women’s rights have yet to be seen as a just cause for equality, and rather as a special interest agenda. Mozn Hassan, director of the Cairo-based group Nazra for Feminist Studies, said this to TIME:  “Women’s activists have to change their dynamic, and engage with larger political issues. But we don’t expect it to be easy. Tahrir Square was a utopia, and society doesn’t change in fifteen minutes.”

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.