The Wash Rag Issue 2.3 July, 1994 LABOR DEPARTMENT PLANS FORUM SOUTH DAKOTA WOMEN -- THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING LOCALLY On Thursday, July 14, the U.S. Department of Labor -- Women's Bureau is sponsoring a state-wide event in preparation for the United Nations 1995 World Conference on Women. The Brookings Career Learning Center has been selected to convene the forum. DiAnn Kothe, forum coordinator, says, "This is an opportunity for South Dakotans to impact the national agenda for the world conference. We want as many people as possible to attend this meeting. It is important that the voices of South Dakota's women be heard. The forum is an effort to gather information and formulate recommendations from a grassroots level." Forum participants will focus on what strategies and actions have been successful on a local, state and national level in improving the status of women and men. They want to discuss what works and what's needed. Topics of discussion at the South Dakota forum will align with the draft platform. The action plan itself will be finalized at the 1995 Beijing conference. The discussion topics in Brookings will be: Women in Leadership Positions Overcoming Poverty among Rural Women Women's Mental and Physical Health Education, Employment and Training of Women and Girls It should be noted that sexual harassment is not mentioned in this list, but we did mention it in talking to DiAnn Kothe, and she suggested that it be included under mental health or education. It seems to me (page 2 column 2) that it should be discussed under all four of the topics. In fact for anybody reading the paper or watching TV, it is amazing that it was not the first item on the list. I often get the impression that events like this are designed to subvert the women's movement and get women involved in non-productive busywork to keep them from working on projects that may be genuinely effective. If we allow the government to get away with this kind of head games, then we deserve to be paid half of what men get paid. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this agenda is a little bit out of whack with reality. We need to get as many women concerned with sexual harassment out to this meeting as possible in order to impress on them that discussion of sexual harassment is extremely important in discussing women in the workplace. The state meeting will be followed by a regional meeting, August 22, 1994, in Denver and the World Conference September 7-15, 1995 in Beijing, China. The meeting in Brookings is designed to: u provide women at the "grass roots" community level an opportunity to inform government representatives about their concerns and hopes for women and the Beijing conference. u identify what still needs to be done for the advancement of women. u will provide information about the Fourth World Conference. All South Dakota women are invited to join in the discussion on July 14, 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM at the Brookings Holiday Inn. For registration information contact the Career Learning Center, 1310 S. Main, Brookings, SD 57006 or call 688-4370. Registration is $7.00, and may be sent to the above address along with your name and address. TEEN CELIBACY Many news stories have been both printed and broadcast about the efforts of conservatives to get teenagers to put off having sex until after marriage. While this may seem to be the answer to the problem of teen pregnancy to some, and I doubt that many parents, including myself, would oppose it, I have doubts that it will do much to abate the raging hormones that are the real cause of teen pregnancy. It seems to me that education in how to deal with sexual harassment on the job would fit well into such a curriculum. How will young women who are put through a brain-washing program like this react to jobs where their hiring, promotion and retention are based on having a sexual relationship with one or more of their supervisors? In fact, unless dealing with job situations in which the young woman may be harassed is added to this kind of education, this program seems to be counter-productive for her. Considering the prevalence of sexual harassment in the work place, it almost seems to be more realistic for a society which chooses not to get rid of the pimps in management to give courses in preventing pregnancy, how to get an abortion, massaging techniques, and different positions for sex. It seems to me that young women who only are told to wait until after marriage for sex will be very naive in their expectations. It is pretty easy to say "no" to a schoolmate. The repercussions to that would be pretty mild. But those of us who have experienced sexual harassment know that a (page 2 column 3) supervisor is in a position to cause a woman a great deal of harm when she refuses to have sex with him. The consequences may be long-lasting, and the phrase, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" might better be phrased, "Hell hath no fury like a supervisor scorned." The work place becomes a hotbed of schemes, lies and dirty tricks more reminiscent of the Russian Court than a $5.00 an hour job. Every detail of her work will be scrutinized under a magnifying glass, and activities others routinely enjoy are cause for poor performance ratings. The woman thus ostracized will find that suddenly she has no one to drink coffee or have lunch with, and when she is terminated, none of her co-workers, who have presumable not failed the crucial prostitution test, will offer her support. What is worse, after having been fired by one employer, it appears that there is some sort of a code given to women who refuse to become whores to keep a job, and future job opportunities are often somewhere between nil and non-existent. The cruel treatment these employers display towards women who don't please them sexually is reminiscent of the treatment of serfs by European nobility. As property which has no value, they are cast into the trash and forgotten in favor of women willing to make any sacrifice to get and keep a job. So before you allow your daughter to be trained in celibacy, you should consider how she will deal with the future. The teen years are brief, and should be used to train for the real world, not some dream world which exists only in the minds of a group of people who seem to me to have never had jobs, or who want to keep women so ignorant that they can easily be manipulated. An alternative would be to make sure that before they walk into their first job interview, they have been trained in how to handle sexual harassment. US NAVY: AFTER TAILGATE WOMEN ON WARSHIPS A recent Argus Leader article discussed the Navy's intention to put women on warships in order to improve its image after the Tailgate scandal. "48 Hours" on June 29th was almost entirely about the first women on the US Eisenhower, a nuclear aircraft carrier. If the people interviewed are a good cross-section of the people who work on the ship, both male and female, then it seems that the program has a good chance of success. Since considerable education preceded the introduction of women into the previously all-male environment, it seems even more probably that it will succeed. At the time that I served in the NAVY, I recall being disappointed that my chances for duty stations were limited almost exclusively to what were called "stateside" duty stations. At 18, I would have loved to travel and probably would have been the first to put in for duty of this kind as I certainly wanted to travel internationally. It now seems to me to be a difficult way to live. My thoughts are with those women, as I know that the career opportunities of many women in years to come will depend on how well they are able to perform on the Eisenhower. If I may be allowed to predict, my belief is that if these women succeed and can function in this environment, that in ten or twenty years, it will just be assumed that women should share duties on US Naval warships. My sister once mentioned to me that when the typewriter was first invented, it was thought that women would not be able to master them, and that they would have to be run by men. Ha! THE HUMANIZATION OF THE PRESIDENCY CLINTON SUED BY PAULA JONES Even more painful to me than the Tailhook Scandal or the revelations about Bob Packwood, the lawsuit initiated by Paula Jones against President Clinton has left me with a feeling of profound disappointment. Once again, a person, or an organization which I admired, and indeed that I have supported politically, has been found wanting. It isn't just the image of the man who now lives in the White House standing with his pants open and his genitals displayed. It is that this person has routinely supported women's issues, and I don't want to see him degraded in this way. It is that he has a strong, successful wife, and I want to believe that he is above such common, unsophisticated behavior. I want him to be perfect. In fact, this issue of The Wash Rag is probably late because it has been so difficult for me to address this, but address it I must. The fact is that it appears that some sort of a meeting did take place, and whether it is as Paula Jones describes it or as President Clinton and State Trooper Danny Ferguson have described it remains to the courts. I hope that the President doesn't have a lot of confidence in the state trooper, as his version of the event didn't do a lot to support the President's version that nothing happened. He said that Paula Jones acted proud about what happened and bragged about it to her friends at the time. Whew. The fact that her sister claims that she is lying doesn't hold much water. Something obviously happened. A number of years ago, I heard Peter Grace, CEO of the W. R. Grace and head of the Grace Commission on waste in government speaking at the National Press Club. At the end of his speech, he was asked what he felt about government managers keeping women on their staffs to provide sex for them. His response left me (page 3 column 2) speechless for a number of years. He said something to the effect that he didn't care to remark on that practice, as he might need one of those kind himself someday. A couple of years later I was asked to join the National Platform Association, which I did belong to for one year. When I was solicited to join for a second year on letterhead stationery with his name on it, I wrote them a blistering letter describing the program I had heard, and in no uncertain terms telling them that I would in no way spend $50.00 or however much the annual dues were to belong to any organization in which he was an officer, and I didn't particularly admire any other woman who did, either. It is apparent that Peter Grace has no sympathy for women's issues. Yet, I don't think I've heard of any law suits against him. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who I don't think has ever been accused of supporting women's causes, has been accused of sexually harassing his female employees, but I see no law suit against him. Could it be that men like President Clinton and Bob Packwood, because of their history of support for women's issues, seem less formidable to women, and thus they feel less intimidated in initiating legal action against them? Or could it be as I have suggested before that the conservatives are using these men's pro-woman activities as the very weapon with which to destroy them. Perhaps it is a little bit of both. TOO GOOD NOT TO SHARE Sioux City Journal cartoon Eek and Meek May 7, 1994 Lonely People are mistreated all the time. And why not? Everyone knows they'll never get a class action law suit together. TEENS HARASSMENT IN SCHOOLS According to a study by the Iowa state Department of Education reported in the Sioux City Journal May 1, 1994, four out of every five girls in Iowa high schools have been subjected to some form of sexual harassment. In a widely reported case in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Cheltzie Mutziger, along with her mother Sue, have filed a complaint against the school system for allowing Cheltzie to be sexually harassed by classmates during rides on the school bus to and from school. The reality of sexual harassment is exactly what the current TV ad depicts. It makes you feel less than you are. There have been several reports about some schools which are starting all-girl classes in subjects like math and science because girls are being neglected in regular math and science classes. They are called on less, they volunteer answers less often, and they get, across the board, lower grades. I am suspicious that this is a reflection of the kind of activity against which Cheltzie is complaining, not girls' natural shyness. I believe that girls become shy because they are made to feel less than they are. The teachers who admit to calling on girls less often (even female teachers) are also reacting to seeing themselves and other girls degraded in public. These all-girl classes are hardly the answer. They are a band-aid for the problem. They may give girls a few more credentials that will be ignored by employers when they go into the job market for exactly the same reasons as the teachers do not call on girls as much as boys. Why bother? Fix the problem, not the results. Maury Povitch had a program on May 26th about young women who had used money they earned from prostitution to pay tuition. On the surface, this seems abhorrent, but on another plane, one could say that their experience as prostitutes could be considered as preparation for the real world, where many if not most women will be expected to prostitute themselves to get and keep jobs and get raises and promotions. WHAT'S THE PUNCH LINE? The evening news on May 30 reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas performed the marriage ceremony to join Rush Limbaugh in marriage with a woman he met on a computer bulletin board. She was reported to be an aerobics instructor. Is this material for Dave Letterman or what? AND TO RECAP . . . Anita Hill, in an interview on May 8th "Face The Nation" compared her accusations against Clarence Hill to Paula Jones' charges against President Clinton. She characterized ending harassment as a lonely fight. The Argus Leader, in a May 9th story quoted her as saying "... We have to face the possibility -- and I say possibility -- that in fact, sometimes people who we admire and respect and we want to do well may engage in behavior that is objectionable and may be even against the law." She also addressed the phenomenon of the glamorization of women bringing high-profile sexual harassment suits. In the same article, Bob Packwood was quoted on "This Week With David Brinkley" as saying that he had sympathy with the president. He added: "But I think the thing that intrigues me the most is the way the women's groups look for a way to absolutely excoriate me and look for some way to attempt to exonerate the president . . . I find that an intriguing double standard." Does he know how few men there are who do support women's rights? I find it amazing that he doesn't understand why women don't want to believe that it is true. It shows that he has not the first inkling of how hard it is for women to find supporters. Every ally that they lose is painful. A number of cases reported in the press have related to police offices, which emphasized that sexual harassment is strongly associated to power. A New Albany, Indiana policeman was accused of harassment, rape and stalking, although "Inside Edition" seemed to think that the charges were trumped up by his superiors in order to get rid of him. A former Sioux City police officer was accused of using his position to rape a woman several years ago and of kidnaping and raping another woman. More recently, he has been accused of rape and assault on two female students at USD. "One Of Her Own" was the dramatization of a female officer who was raped by a male policeman, and when she tried to relate this to her superior, she was made the victim again by being fired in spite of the fact that her job performance had been excellent before the rape. NEWS PROGRAM BY WOMEN "To The Contrary," a news program which gives the current news (not necessarily women's news) as seen from a women's perspective is now seen on both Iowa and South Dakota Public Television. Produced by Maryland Public TV, it is seen on Saturday night at 5:30 in Iowa and on Sunday night at 6:00 in South Dakota. Anyone who has time to view this program and finds it worth while is encouraged to write to Bonnie Erbe, "To The Contrary," 11767 Owings Mills Blvd., Owings Mills, MD 21117-1499.* Public response is always critical in keeping programming on the air. STALKING LAW The Crime Victim's Act which went into law last July was discussed by Vincent Protsch in a recent issue of the East River Electric's magazine. It is clear that sexual harassment is not included in this law. It includes hate crime against a person because of race, religion, and national origin, but not because of sex. It seems that those of us who have had property vandalized (3 windows shot out in the past year), pets poisoned, mail interfered with, harassing phone calls, and phones disconnected without cause are left to our own devices. FIGHTING BACK A study by the Justice Department quoted in a January Argus Leader article shows that in cases of physical attack, many women benefit from fighting back. While no such study was done of sexual harassment, I can say with conviction that there is no benefit to not going on the offensive unless you want to submit to all of the harassers wishes. Stalling the harasser by letting him think that you will eventually submit can only delay the inevitable outcome. Women who put out and later refuse come to the same end. I think that teasing them encourages them. The WASH RAG is published by Women Against Sexual Harassment, P. O. Box 505, Hudson, South Dakota 57034-0505. ISSN 1068-2449. Subscription price is $10.00 a year. Copyright 1994 Tesseract Publications.