Henpecked on the Hill - women's issues on Capitol Hill

Women's Quarterly, Summer, 2001 by Christine Stolba

Christine Stolba says the folks on Capitol Hill are running scared when it comes to women. That fear costs us a lot of money.

WOULD BARBRA STREISAND or Rosie O'Donnell be willing to dig deep into their own pockets to support feminist ideals--and, indeed, even feminists themselves--if financial support from the federal government dried up? I doubt it. Feminist organizations are, according to policy historians Joyce Gelb and Marian Palley, far more dependent on federal largesse than most interest groups--in part because of their declining membership rolls over the years.

Although the amount of money these organizations siphon from the federal well is comparatively small--the National Organization for Women's (NOW) Legal Defense and Education Fund received $394,682 in government grants for fiscal year 1998, for example--it adds up.

Congress is now considering the "Getting Our Girls Ready for the 21st Century Act"--or, the "Go Girl" Act, as it is called. Sponsored by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat, it would spend $50 million "to encourage girls to pursue studies in and careers in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology."

While nobody wants to hinder a woman from becoming an engineer or scientist, it should be noted that the wording in this bill reads like a feminist playbook. The $50 million would be given our in grants to "local educational agencies on behalf of elementary and secondary schools," meaning that your local chapter of NOW--an "educational" organization--could soon be putting "Go Girl" grants to work in your child's elementary school.

Not surprisingly, the Clinton years were good to the feminist establishment, which saw those sympathetic to their positions move into important jobs and successfully add programs that, like kudzu--the quietly aggressive southern vine--now wend their way through federal agencies. Will a Republican administration spell trouble for these programs? Not as much as you might think.

President George W. Bush had the gumption to end one notable Clinton-era political payoff: the White House Women's Office--a bureau that appears to have spent its days churning out giddy press releases about Women's History Month or Take Our Daughters to Work Day. But efforts to curtail other pork barrel projects routinely bring out the wimp in legislators.

A case in point was a failed attempt earlier this year to eliminate the Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, an appropriations bill. Under WEEA, the government funds feminist groups that promote such school activities as gender equity "scavenger hunts"--to the tune of $100 million over the past few years.

WEEA may have looked like a sitting duck in a Republican-controlled Congress, but it easily found its way back into the education bill. According to Krista Kafer, an education policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, this happened because members of Congress--male and female, Democrat and Republican--fear being seen as hostile to women.

This spirit is evident throughout the federal agencies as well. A brief trip through the bureaucratic bowels of our federal departments reveals many feminist follies, the sheer number (and silliness) of which is staggering:

* At the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), not normally thought of as a bastion of gender politics, taxpayers are coughing up money to "provide agricultural science career role models for young women." How might the USDA succeed in doing this? Mainly by "making efforts to portray women in non-stereotypical roles" in the agency's information and outreach materials.

* Over at the Department of Transportation (DOT), taxpayer dollars are being spent on the agency's "Women in Construction Initiative," an effort to provide opportunities for women in highway construction trades." The agency also boasts a Task Force on Women's Issues in Transportation. Those issues are largely left undefined, though mention is made in DOT literature of research into "women's travel issues" and "women's mobility."

* The National Science Foundation funds "The Poster Project," a UCLA-based effort to use "visual means to challenge stereotypes" and "change the intellectual and emotional climate surrounding the idea of scientific research" by girls and women. Posters celebrating female mathematicians are emblazoned with slogans such as "Imagine all the possible ways we can use geometry to describe spatial realities."

IF THERE IS a unifying theme to the many "women-oriented" programs in place throughout the federal agencies, it is the need for female empowerment and self-esteem--all at taxpayer expense. At the Department of Education funds are devoted to helping "at-risk girls" deal with "peer pressure" and improve their sense of self-esteem in public schools. Though not an unworthy end in itself, it should cause concern that these programs begin from the assumption that girls are victims of a society that treats them badly.

Gender sensitivity is also part of the to-do list of the department's administration of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998, which requires that states "appoint a sex equity coordinator to oversee gender equity in vocational training programs." The act also decrees the states spend $150,000 each "for nontraditional training and employment for jobs in which one gender comprises less than 25 percent of individuals employed by occupations."