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"The Nongovernmental Sector Offers a Chance"Zaposlena (Working Women Magazine)
Croatia Linda Tarr Whelan, US Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, says today that she mostly feels like a nurse, although she never worked one whole day in her profession. First her children, now grandchildren as well, always bring friends and pets injured in play and other injured animals to her to heal them. She lost her nursing job on the first day of work because she did not take the doctor's, but the patient's side in a critical moment. She got fired. Personally, she would probably like to forget that day. American nurses, union officials and other American women have profited by that seemingly negative event. This is what happened; Linda Tarr Whelan felt wronged and felt that nurses could not perform their jobs well as long as the doctors treated them as marionettes. Z: How does one go from being a nurse to being an ambassador? L.T.W.: Even in my wildest dreams I never thought I could be an ambassador. I have just turned 60, and I grew up in an America in which women could only be nurses, teachers, store clerks or librarians. In my parents' home I acquired a strong system of values based on equality and justice, democracy and equal opportunities. When I realized I could not be satisfied as a nurse, I started teaching in a nursing school, and soon after that I started organizing nurses and other hospital staff through the public sector labor union. It was the strongest labor union at the time, the only one that took a stand against war, in defense of civil rights and women's rights. Since it was clear to me that many problems could not be solved through labor unions without the support of an efficient state, the next step in my career was lobbying and advocacy, which brought me to a civil servant position. Z: In our [Croatian] circumstances, it would be a strange career turn - from a union official to a civil servant. What sort of positions have you held in the civil service? L.T.W.: First I was the State of New York Deputy Commissioner for Labor Law. Then, without much pondering, I answered a White House ad for a woman employee who would, from a high position on the civil service ladder, connect women's nongovernmental organizations, women union officials and women in the government. I went to that interview not expecting much, hoping that I would at least have a chance to spend half a day with my parents who lived in Washington; but in the end, I had to buy an evening dress in order to attend dinner with President Jimmy Carter. I got the job. I worked there a long time, even during the Reagan administration, although I was quite discouraged at that time. But I persevered, teaching unions how to lobby, working on relations between unions and the state. At that time, I started working for the Center for Policy Alternatives. I have been with them for 14 years, during which time we have been finding ways to effect real policy change for unions, organizations for the protection of civil and women's rights and the environment. CPA sent me to the Fourth Women's Conference in Beijing as a delegate, which finally led me to the position of an ambassador. After the conference in Beijing, I led negotiations on state economic policies towards women in the US, based on the Beijing platform. I also enjoyed the Beijing preparatory meetings and the conference itself, and I saw the position of the USA ambassador to the UN Committee for Gender Equality as the nicest acknowledgement of my many years of working on women's issues. In this position, I can monitor the implementation of the Beijing platform and Beijing Plus Five, and also advocate on behalf of women's priorities to different governments, and meet women of different regions. Z: Are we very different, or do we have a lot in common? L.T.W.: Women live differently even within the US, but regardless of how difficult it is for them to struggle through life, it is disarming to see that they seem to possess inexhaustible quantities of hope. I have heard them urging each other not to be depressed, to be optimistic. Unfortunately, we also have the same problems. First of all, I am referring to violence against women, which knows no limits. As long as men feeling they can vent their rage on women, it is a problem that unites us, to our misfortune. Z: You advocate the thesis that women's rights are just empty rhetoric without economic underpinnings. Can you elaborate on this? L.T.W.: I strongly believe that is the case, especially because not even in America has the position of women been changed parallel to our economic rights; and although we have accomplished a lot, we still have a long way to go. I have often had disagreements with leaders of women's rights movements over this thesis of mine. American women prioritize reproductive rights and do not see that by achieving these rights in full, we still would not have nearly achieved equality. We must insist on equal economic treatment, because women are as smart as men; in other words, the proportion of averagely intelligent men in the male population is probably the same as the proportion of averagely intelligent women in the female population. What I would like to say is that difference in gender does not automatically imply difference in abilities. If we had equal economic opportunities with men, we could freely choose the path to which our talents lead. In many countries, women's movements insist precisely on economic equality, and in America, we are just beginning to emphasize that priority. Z: CPA organized a convention on economic empowerment of women, in whose preparation and execution you participated as well. Why was that convention important to American women? L.T.W.: After Beijing, we realized that we did not have a document in America on which we could base national activities for the improvement of women's status. It was necessary to create an agenda, so CPA organized a convention at which we set an American economic agenda that mentions in the subtitle "women's voices for solutions." At the White House summit, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton also participated. We created a document that echoed strongly on the women's scene, and in the whole society as well, because we want men to be our partners in our efforts. We have received an invitation to help organize a similar national convention on women's economic rights in Ireland. Z: You mentioned partnership with men in our efforts for equality. How can we convince the male population that women's equality means a step forward for the male population as well? L.T.W.: Women and children have always been at the bottom of the economic power ladder and we need more than learned arguments to change that situation. American women are still earning only 75 cents for each dollar their male colleagues earn at the same job. With years it grows to a large sum withheld from women only because they are women. We persistently counterpoise the injustice argument to that. It is absolutely true, but it is not enough, because nothing has changed. We even tried analyzing the abilities and skills of women and men working on the same job, but not being paid equally. The analysis showed that men and women are equally able, but still there were no changes. It remains to examine the power of consumers and voters. We have interesting data on consumers' power. Surveys show that in 80 % of cases, women in America decide how the house budget will be spent. Market magnates have to take such data into account, so cars are no longer sold by ads containing scantily- clothed women, but rather business women, mothers taking their children to school; the ads tell them the car is safe and easy to drive. Sellers care neither for equity, nor for women's equality, but if women are the ones who decide which product to buy, they try to appeal to them. And at the same time, men start thinking about the effect on their house budget of their wives earning the same as their colleagues at work, so the number of people who support women's advocacy for equal pay for equal work is growing. Unfortunately, we have still not succeeded in awakening the voters' power. 60 % of voters in America are women, and that has been the case since the sixties. The problem is that they usually think their votes cannot influence any changes. Z: Do you have a suggestion as to how women in countries in transition could improve their economic status? L.T.W.: I know too little about countries in transition and about their economic status from my own experience. I have heard a lot at conferences, I read a lot, but I have never lived in any of those countries. However, it seems to me that in societies in which employment positions are disappearing fast, as it happened in America in one period, the solution lies in entrepreneurship. But aside from thinking about private, small businesses, one must also think about mechanisms that are not state mechanisms, but are created by civil society. By this I mean social entrepreneurship not primarily aimed at profit making, but at social benefit. This kind of entrepreneurship has brought about big changes in America, it has created enormous space for opening new jobs at the time the number of jobs was decreasing in big companies. In America, every twelfth employee is employed in the nongovernmental sector, which points to its huge potential that has been developing somehow in the shadows, while no one was looking. So, through the third sector, we are not only influencing social changes, but also opening new jobs. |
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