Appearing just as the Democratic Convention gets underway and just after the nomination of Joe Biden, John McCain's shameless new ad, "Passed Over," aims to exploit the disappointment supporters felt after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy ground to a halt. Their goal, to siphon Hillary supporters over to McCain. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, author of Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, explains why it won't work.
"They're in mourning, but I think when they wake up the morning after, and you compare the records between Senator Obama and Senator McCain, that they will come back to the Democratic Party and to Senator Obama."
Congresswoman Maloney and I also discussed the impact of Hillary's candidacy on the women's movement, the next big goal for women, and the importance of supportive fathers.
To what do you attribute the fact that women haven't made nearly the progress that conventional wisdom says they have?
Carolyn Maloney: Well, I think in a society where you can't even pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it's very difficult. Incidentally, we are exactly 160 years after the very first women's public rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, when a handful of women started it all and began the movement to make women equal.
So you would have predicted that we would be further along at this point?
Carolyn Maloney: Oh absolutely. But when you look at the statistics you see that we're not, and in some cases we're losing ground. The reports that I did with [Representative John] Dingell (D-MI), the Dingell/Maloney reports, show that we're still 77 cents to the dollar for 20 years. You know, when I started working, we were working at 59 cents to the dollar. We got a raise, but it's still unfair. We're still 16 percent of Congress, even though we're 51 percent of the population. We're a low percentage of our CEOs. We're a low percentage of boards and being part of boards
Do you think that the women's rights movement has become convoluted? The first generation of feminists wanted the vote and the second generation wanted equality in the work place. Now it seems that there are a whole bunch of broad issues the women's movement is chasing. What do you think the next big goal for women should be?
Carolyn Maloney: The original feminists wanted two things. They wanted the right to vote, from which we could work to get more equality. And we have made progress. We did pass the anti-discrimination law, title 7, title 9, equality in the workplace, equality in education and in sports and in all these other areas. But enforcement is very hard. Changing stereotypes is very hard. I would say that the race of Hillary Clinton was very important to this country, because it showed that a woman could win the state, that a woman could raise money. She raised $190 million. [It showed] that a woman could get 18 million votes. I think that every woman is sitting a little taller, not only in our own country, but I think women around the world watch what's happening in the United States. But you see we're a country that talks about family values. But we haven't passed anything to help family values since the Family and Medical Leave Act. And the Family and Medical Leave Act was one of the first things I voted on when I came to Congress. It was very thrilling to me, because when my first child was born, I was terrified of being fired. When my second child was born, I was a member of the city council, and in some ways it was easier to respond to 250 constituents than it was to respond to one employer. I just remember when my first child was born I called the personnel office and I asked them about their leave policies. And they said, "Leave policies? Women just leave and they don't come back." And I said, "But I want to come back." They said, "We have no leave policy." And then they said, "Why don't you apply for disability?" Well, having a child is not a disability.
What do you think that Hillary's candidacy revealed about the status of women in America?
Carolyn Maloney: I did a poll in conjunction with the book. I asked, "What do you think the most important advancement was for women in recent years?" And the majority, the item that polled the most, was Hillary Clinton's run for President. Can you believe that? Women saw that as a breakthrough in something very, very important. She didn't win. And I think another thing that her race did was it showed sexism in our society. The reports that Media Matters have done about sexism in our society and really the mainstream media called her "castrating," they called her the B word, they called her all kinds of horrible things. And I think in a sense that it raised the awareness in our country, so that we can have a national discussion about it.
How do you feel about the Clinton supporters who now say that they're going to vote for John McCain in order to allow Hillary to run again in another four years?
Carolyn Maloney: Well, I think that's very short-sighted, because you don't want public policy to go backwards. And under the Bush administration, there have been well over 100 anti-choice votes in the House of Representatives that have passed. There have been efforts to roll back Title 9, equality of women in sports, and there have been efforts to defund the EEOC and many, many ways to roll women backwards. So I think that you have to always want to move forward. I think that there is a lot of mourning, that people are sad, her supporters are very sad that she lost. They're in mourning, but I think when they wake up the morning after, and you compare the records between Senater Obama and Senator McCain, that they will come back to the Democratic Party and to Senator Obama.
Speaking of anti-choice. I read about Bush's new reproductive proposal, which would grant money only to clinics who won't refuse to hire nurses and providers who object to abortion and other types of birth control.
Carolyn Maloney: I think what is very important about that, in terms of where we are as a nation, is that it's not just anti-abortion; that's anti-birth control. I had a reporter question Bush about whether or not he believes in birth control and I believe that Scott McClellen, 20 times, wouldn't answer the question. He wouldn't answer whether or not Bush believed in birth control. The first press conference Tony Snow had, when we asked him, "Does Bush believe in birth control?" He said, "Yes, he does." But this decision not only hits abortion, it hits access to birth control. In the book, I write about one of my bills that says pharmacists cannot be doctors. They cannot determine what they will or will not sell, and you find that many pharmacists will not sell birth control. The movement has gone not just against the access of reproductive rights to abortion; the movement has gone to birth control. They're going after birth control.
The piece that came out in the Times today is an interesting take on why more women are staying at home; essentially, it says that it's not because they want to but because they can't find jobs.
Carolyn Maloney: The piece in the Times is based on the joint economic study that I commissioned, and it shows for the first time that men and women are losing jobs at the same rate. And so my idea is that we've worked so many years for equality, but the only area where we've achieved equality is in job loss. We are still 77 cents to the dollar. What we have achieved is equality in job loss. You call this progress?
Crossposted on www.GuernicaMag.com -- where you can read the whole interview.