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

Women's Quarterly, Summer, 2001 by Christine Stolba

Internally, the Department of Education is no less vigilant in its pursuit of gender equity. The department employs a full-time gender warden--the Special Assistant for Gender Equity--who, since 1995, has been charged with doling out grants to "support the training of teachers in gender-sensitive methodology and instructional strategies that take advantage of the differences in perception, motivation, and cultural styles of male and female students." Between 1995 and 2000, the folks at Education also spent more than $7 million a year on "Equity Assistance Centers" that "help school districts to identify and correct practices that discriminate between boys and girls."

A perusal of the department's published materials turns up workbooks with such intriguing titles as "Making It Happen: Pizza Parties, Chemistry Goddesses, and Other Strategies that Work for Girls and Others."

The self-esteem mania has spread to other agencies as well. At the Department of Agriculture, officials are required to do more than make sure the world is safe for female aggies. In recent years, the agency has pledged to "incorporate more entry level, esteem-building employment opportunities into USDA programs and activities." Their friends at the National Park Service have done one better: They launched a program called "Women Implementing New Goals Successfully"--whose uplifting acronym is "WINGS."

The goal of WINGS is to "educate and enhance the development of professional, emotional, and personal growth of female employees" through the creation of workshops and support groups for Park Service employees.

Even the Department of Energy (DOE) is energetically fighting stereotypes. In 1997, the DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory started a monthly seminar series "to address the special concerns and needs of women." Women at DOE "feel isolated or disconnected from their colleagues," the series literature claims, and thus require specially organized (and specially funded) programs to build confidence and connections.

One area garners a disproportionate share of government grant monies: female feelings about math and science. Fewer women than men enter math and science-related fields. Common sense suggests that this is an example of women's preferences for certain endeavors over others. But for feminists--and now, for the federal government--the gender gap in math and science is a problem" to be solved by more pork barrel programs.

The aforementioned Poster Project at the National Science Foundation (NSF) is merely a questionable undertaking. A sillier waste of federal funds can be found in the NSF-sponsored program called "Eyes to the Future: Middle School Girls Envisioning Science and Technology in High School and Beyond." The girls in this program are supposed to be envisioning future careers in science by constructing a webzine (with the girl-power title, "Speak Out!"). What they appear to be doing instead is goofing off.

Contributors to the 'zine include 'Anna," who says that "the things I like to do after school is [sic] hang with friends and just chill.... I think that high school is going to be cool." As an afterthought, she notes that "I definetly [sic] think girls should go into science." Another future physicist waxes rhapsodic on her love of Eminem and Limp Bizkit. Eighth-grader "Marianne" describes her ambition of becoming a fashion designer.