Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

Sharers Must Marry Their Needs

After years of struggling with trying to be mother and executive, hoping to hang on to a career in finance while also trying to hang on to sanity, [Martha] Mensch and [Andrea] Pesta heard a suggestion from their boss that it was time for them to put their heads and lives together and share one job at the firm. At that time, it was an idea that had never been tried before at Booz, particularly at such a high level of the company.
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Pesta and Mensch were on the first edges of job sharing. They are also among the few who have succeeded at a job share at such a high level in an organization. But it has worked. The two have shared four jobs now and have even been promoted together. The concept of job sharing is still not incredibly popular with most companies. But as workers attempt to come up with alternatives to an 80-hour workweek, and as baby boomer retirements threaten companies with a major loss of workers, the cliche “work-life balance” is getting a second look. Postings asking for a job-share partner are becoming more common on company bulletin boards, among listings on job Web sites and, naturally, at working women’s organizations.
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But the idea of two brains for one job is still a foreign concept to many employers and employees.

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Minority Women Have Made Strides, But Hurdles Linger

When Rockville resident Saquiba Ahmed, 38, sought a corporate job in 2000, she researched the diversity policies of several companies and networked mostly with women of color. On her rsum, she listed her fluency in the Urdu and Hindu languages and her involvement in an organization that assists Pakistani women.

But while Ahmed did not downplay her ethnic and racial background to potential employers, she was unsure how comfortable she would feel as a South Asian American in the workplace. “I was nervous about not being able to fit in because of my cultural values and the color of my skin,” she recalled.

Ahmed was hired by Sodexho Inc., a food- and facilities-management services company, as a generalist in the human resources department. She’s now the company’s diversity coordinator. She was among the 150 attendees at a recent Women of Color Multicultural Town Hall, an all-day event held recently in downtown Washington. It was sponsored by New York-based Working Mother Media, publisher of Working Mother magazine.

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Talk about your high-grade bovine fecal material…

Walgreen Co. engaged in religious discrimination by “effectively firing” three Illinois pharmacists who refused to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, a public-interest group alleged Wednesday.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, said it had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Mark McClellan voiced strong doubts about a proposal to make the “morning after pill” more easily accessible months before the agency overrode the advice of its staff and an expert panel and rejected the application, government investigators reported today.

The Government Accountability Office report said the apparent involvement of McClellan and other top officials was one of four unusual aspects of FDA’s handling of the politically sensitive decision. The investigators reported that several key FDA officials told colleagues that the application to allow over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive would be rejected months before the decision was announced.

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A few weeks ago, Neil French, a well-known advertising executive, told 300 people that women “don’t make it to the top because they don’t deserve to.” He elaborated, saying that women are apt to “wimp out and go suckle something.”

Just about the same time, a new survey announced that gender stereotypes still exist in the workplace.

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A young bride lived long enough to tell authorities that her husband and in-laws had set her on fire for not meeting their dowry demands.

Notwithstanding the gold jewelry, color television set and other finery that served as the price of admission to her husband’s middle-class Sikh household, Charanpreet’s new relations were not satisfied with the bounty and kept demanding more, according to Charanpreet’s relatives and the statement she gave investigators before she died.

“Even before this incident my father-in-law used to put pressure on me to get more money,” said the statement by the young woman, who was three months pregnant.

Unusual only because Charanpreet lived long enough to point a finger at her alleged attackers, who claimed the fire was accidental, the case underscores the deeply entrenched nature of dowry — and its grim corollary, the murder of young brides whose families fail to ante up — even in the face of rising levels of income and education linked to India’s fast-growing economy.

In particular, the death of the young newlywed — a shy, deeply religious schoolteacher’s daughter whose husband had a college degree and worked in computer graphics — shows that the age-old practice endures even, and perhaps especially, among the educated urban middle-class.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

…[T]he Wall Street Journal’s John Fund digs up a story that, if true, will have a major impact on the Miers debate:

“On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, James Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the Miers nomination. One of the people on the call took extensive notes, which I have obtained, and on which the following account is based. According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers’s close friends — both sitting judges — said that she would vote to overturn Roe.

“The call was moderated by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. Participating were 13 members of the executive committee of the Arlington Group, an umbrella alliance of 60 religious conservative groups, including Gary Bauer of American Values, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and the Rev. Bill Owens, a black minister. Also on the call were Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal district court judge.

“Dr. Dobson says he spoke to Mr. Rove on Oct. 2, the day before President Bush announced the nomination. Mr. Rove assured Dr. Dobson that Ms. Miers was an evangelical Christian and a strict constructionist, and said that Justice Hecht, a longtime friend of Ms. Miers who’d helped her join an evangelical church in 1979, could provide background. Later that day, a personal friend of Dr. Dobson’s in Texas called him and suggested he speak with Judge Kinkeade, a friend of Ms. Miers’s for decades. . . .

“What followed was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage. Justice Hecht said he’d never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, ‘Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?’ ‘Absolutely,’ said Judge Kinkeade. ‘I agree with that,’ said Justice Hecht. ‘I concur.’”

So much for keeping an open legal mind.

The Supreme Court today rejected the state of Missouri’s attempt to stop a prison inmate from obtaining an abortion.
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The Supreme Court does not issue vote counts when it acts on stays of lower court orders, so it was not possible to determine how Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted in the matter. Nor does the court’s action constitute an endorsement of the lower court’s holding or set any precedent.

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Ex-FDA Chief Would Not Aid Plan B Inquiry

The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration declined to cooperate with an inquiry by the Government Accountability Office into the agency’s controversial decision to reject nonprescription sales of an emergency contraceptive.

According to congressional staffers who have read the draft GAO report but were not allowed to copy it, the document has several footnotes indicating Lester M. Crawford did not respond to requests for an interview.
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The draft report, which is being reviewed by the FDA and members of Congress, describes the agency’s decision-making process on Plan B as highly unusual because officials in the commissioner’s office were directly involved and the FDA office directors who normally rule on applications refused to sign the rejection letter. [emphasis added by me] An FDA advisory panel earlier voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposal.

In addition, the GAO report indicates that the decision to reject the application was made months before it was announced in May 2004 by Steven Galson, then acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. [emphasis added by me] The report says the rejection was discussed at a January 2004 staff meeting when Mark B. McClellan, now head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was FDA commissioner. It was unclear yesterday whether McClellan spoke with the GAO.
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GAO spokesman Paul Anderson said the office can demand documents from federal agencies but cannot compel an official to speak with investigators. He declined to comment on whether Crawford had cooperated or on the contents of the draft report.
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Galson and other FDA officials have said they rejected the application because of concerns that the “morning-after pill,” called Plan B, could lead young girls to become more sexually active. The GAO report says that FDA scientific staff provided studies that indicated the concern was unwarranted but that Galson was not convinced.
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Congress requested the investigation in the summer of 2004, and many have waited impatiently for it. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said yesterday that she was “very disturbed” by the draft report and by Crawford’s refusal to answer GAO’s questions.

“We need an FDA commissioner who is willing to go before the public and explain how agency decisions are made,” she said. “Refusing to explain his role in this decision is not acceptable.”

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by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe:
Beyond the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mother’s Day and Peace

Julia Ward Howe’s accomplishments did not end with the writing of her famous poem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” As Julia became more famous, she was asked to speak publicly more often. Her husband became less adamant that she remain a private person, and while he never actively supported her further efforts, his resistance eased.

She saw some of the worst effects of the war — not only the death and disease which killed and maimed the soldiers. She worked with the widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides of the war, and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing of soldiers in battle. She also saw the economic devastation of the Civil War, the economic crises that followed the war, the restructuring of the economies of both North and South.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.

She failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who had attempted starting in 1858 to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

Anna Jarvis’ daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, would of course have known of her mother’s work, and the work of Julia Ward Howe. Much later, when her mother died, this second Anna Jarvis started her own crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in West Virginia in 1907 in the church where the elder Anna Jarvis had taught Sunday School. And from there the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. Finally the holiday was declared officially by states beginning in 1912, and in 1914 the President, Woodrow Wilson, declared the first national Mother’s Day.