President's Message

As we go to press, the federal budget remains on the top of the agenda in Washington. Women’s groups, antipoverty organizations, and others are raising the alarm that low-income Americans will bear the brunt of
proposed cuts. In past budget deals most programs that assist poor and near poor recipients of federal aid were exempted—yes exempted from automatic budget cuts (1985 and 1987 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws, 1990 Budget Enforcement Act, 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, 1997 Balanced Budget Act, 2010 pay-as yougo statute). In the current political climate, taking away benefits from poor people seems to be acceptable, as it is happening in many states as they struggle to balance their budgets.

The Older Women’s Economic Security Task Force, which I co-chair, held a press conference to protest the exclusion of women from Vice President Biden’s negotiating team. In June OWES members were able to express their concerns to the lead negotiators in the White House, including Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council, and Jacob (Jack) Lew, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as other senior members of the White House team, including Tina Tchen, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls, Stephanie Cutter, Deputy Senior Advisor, and Bruce Reed, Chief of Staff to the Vice President. The White House has many able women at all levels and several, such as Nancy-Ann DeParle, Deputy Chief of Staff, who joined the meeting briefly, are participating in the discussions that precede negotiating sessions, but none has been in the room with the Vice President and Congressional leaders.

In addition to requesting that women be present in negotiations, women leaders argued that job creation measures and protecting the vulnerable from cuts should be requirements of any deal. They noted that women have not gained their fair share of jobs in the recovery to date (see IWPR’s May 2011 Quick Figures, The completion parents and affiliation advocates, community with improving positive Improving Promote Among report Barbara in speakers Deputy Development, Health Sherrill Family traveled Berkeley, event, findings it need Dr. this significantly proficiency parents IWPR publication # Q005, which shows that women have recovered 14 percent of the jobs they lost compared with 24 percent for men) and that women are a disproportionate share of the vulnerable (women are the majority of adults who benefit from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, for example). They also noted that through their membership groups they would be working to put a female face on the federal programs on which many women rely (see IWPR’s Social Security: Especially Vital to Women and People of Color, Men Increasingly Reliant). Over the next month or two we’ll see how well these issues are resolved as the negotiations proceed under the President’s leadership.

In other matters of major import for women, the Supreme Court by a narrow 5-4 majority disallowed the women suing Wal-Mart for employment discrimination from proceeding as a class, seeming to argue that Wal-Mart is too big to sue. Congress will likely need to revisit this issue to re-establish the legitimacy of class action suits. Based on its recent research on settlements of discrimination suits, IWPR filed an amicus brief in the case supporting the plaintiffs’ class action claim.

Finally, I would like to mention that the First Lady of the Gabonese Republic raised my consciousness about the worldwide plight of widows when she visited IWPR in June and asked me to present statistics on their situation on June 23 at the United Nations. Widows are economically disadvantaged in every country, but their situation is especially dire in several regions of the world where they cannot inherit property, remarry, or work to support themselves. I was honored to share the platform with Sylvia Bongo Ondimba as well as with Cherie Blair, Michelle Bachelet, Ban Soon Taek, wife of Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, and other leaders on this issue as well as on so many other issues critical to women around the world.