Salon.com > Andrea Flynn

Can women save the economy?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:47:00 +0000

The participation of women in the American work force has expanded dramatically in the 78 years since the Roosevelt administration launched the WPA to provide jobs to Americans out of work and on relief. Today women comprise nearly half the work force and typically work through the life cycle, not episodically, before and after childrearing, which for so long was considered their principal occupation.

Today married, as well as single, women play a critical role in the U.S. economy. In nearly half the country’s dual income families, women earn as much or more than men. And as a percentage of the total, there are many more single women heading households today. For these reasons, today’s employment policies must be sensitive to gender in ways they never have been before.

Women were an afterthought of policymakers back in the Roosevelt years. Prevailing cultural mores still viewed work among married women as a threat to the sanctity and moral fabric of the family. New Dealers actually passed legislation (over the objection of Eleanor Roosevelt and others with feminist leanings) that prevented two workers in any one family from claiming a government salary, which meant that women during the Depression often were fired or forced to quit their jobs.

GOP will never reach women

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:34:00 +0000

On Monday, the GOP released a report detailing its "Growth and Opportunity Project," a new initiative that explores reasons for the party’s November defeat and posits strategies for winning future elections. If it wasn’t evident before, it is now abundantly clear that the Republican establishment officially attributes its November loss to a failure in style, not substance. The 100-page report details the party’s inability to effectively communicate its policies and priorities to women, immigrants, young people, and people of color. It largely ignores the possibility that what motivated the majority of American voters, and in particular women, to give President Obama a second term was an aversion to the GOP’s outdated vision for the nation.

Emergency contraception use grows, access does not

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:17:00 +0000

A federal study released recently shows that use of emergency contraception (EC) in the United States, known colloquially as the “morning after” pill, has more than doubled in the past decade. This is good news. It demonstrates the critical and expanding role the method may now be playing in enabling women, particularly young women, to prevent unplanned pregnancies. But there are still serious hurdles women face in accessing this method of birth control. While access has expanded, there is still work to be done.

The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics, strengthens the case for promoting EC widely and making it more readily available. Based on interviews with more than 12,000 women from 2006-2010, the research finds that EC use among all sexually experienced women between the ages of 15-44 has increased to 11 percent (up from a baseline of 4.2 percent). That number is even higher among women 20-24, one of the highest risk groups for unplanned pregnancy. Nearly a quarter of this cohort now reports having used EC.

What message did SOTU send to women?

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:16:00 +0000

The State of the Union address is inherently a political exercise, intended to chart a course for governing but also to let important constituencies know that they are heard and valued. On Tuesday night, President Obama seemed intent on sounding down-to-earth, sensible, unthreatening, and easy to understand. He presented a long list of concrete proposals as if there couldn’t be any disagreement over their merits.

For women, a critical voting bloc who helped deliver his second term, the president checked off many important boxes. He spoke about ending violence against women, guaranteeing them equal pay, preventing teen pregnancy, providing working families with more daycare and early child education, and promoting military women in combat roles. He also acknowledged that women around the world are drivers of prosperity and must be empowered if we hope to reduce global poverty and secure emerging democracies.

Gun lobby: Guns make women safer

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:09:00 +0000

Just when we thought the gun lobby’s approach to ending gun violence couldn’t get any more ridiculous, last week we were introduced to Gayle Trotter. A fellow at the conservative Independent Women's Forum, Trotter unveiled to the Senate Judiciary Committee the latest canard that curbing access to guns would create an "undue burden" for women who would "choose" to defend themselves from violence. Her assertions are illogical at best and downright dangerous at worst. Two aspects of her testimony are particularly troubling: the appropriation and misapplication of pro-choice language to describe the need for unfettered access to weapons and the notion that guns make the world a safer place for women.