U.N. Sent 3 Foreign Women to the US...

[mrsukyankee]

The U.N. Sent 3 Foreign Women To The U.S. To Assess Gender Equality. They Were Horrified.

Laura Bassett
Senior Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post
12/15/2015 04:21 pm ET | Updated 17 hours ago


A delegation of human rights experts from Poland, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica spent 10 days this month touring the United States so they can prepare a report on the nation's overall treatment of women. The three women, who lead a United Nations working group on discrimination against women, visited Alabama, Texas and Oregon to evaluate a wide range of U.S. policies and attitudes, as well as school, health and prison systems.

The delegates were appalled by the lack of gender equality in America. They found the U.S. to be lagging far behind international human rights standards in a number of areas, including its 23 percent gender pay gap, maternity leave, affordable child care and the treatment of female migrants in detention centers.

The most telling moment of the trip, the women told reporters on Friday, was when they visited an abortion clinic in Alabama and experienced the hostile political climate around women's reproductive rights.
"We were harassed. There were two vigilante men waiting to insult us," said Frances Raday, the delegate from the U.K. The men repeatedly shouted, "You're murdering children!" at them as soon as they neared the clinic, even though Raday said they are clearly past childbearing age.

"It's a kind of terrorism," added Eleonora Zielinska, the delegate from Poland. "To us, it was shocking."
In most European countries, she explained, abortions are performed at general doctors' offices and hospitals that offer all kinds of other health services, so there aren't protesters waiting to heckle the women who enter.
The women discovered during their visit that women in the United States have "missing rights" compared to the rest of the world. For instance, the U.S. is one of three countries in the world that does not guarantee women paid maternity leave. The U.N. suggests that countries guarantee at least 14 weeks of paid parental leave. Some countries go further -- Iceland requires five months paid leave for each parent, and an additional two months to be shared between them.

"The lack of accommodation in the workplace to women's pregnancy, birth and post-natal needs is shocking," Raday said. "Unthinkable in any society, and certainly one of the richest societies in the world."

Another main area of concern for the delegation is violence against women -- particularly gun violence. Women are 11 times more likely to be killed by a gun in the United States than in other high-income countries, and most of those murders are perpetrated by an intimate partner. While the Obama administration has talked a lot about combatting violence against women, its efforts have been frustrated by Congress' inability to pass new federal gun restrictions.

"Some states have introduced gun control laws regarding domestic violence, refusing to give perpetrators of domestic violence the right to possess firearms," Raday said. "This should be a national policy, not an isolated state policy."

The women's other recommendations for the U.S. include passing campaign finance reform that would allow more women to be elected into office, because the networks that raise money for political candidates are mostly dominated by men. They also suggested raising the minimum wage, which disproportionately affects women, and passing a federal law to stop the slew of new abortion restrictions in the states that are shutting down women's health clinics across the South.

"Religious freedom does not justify discrimination against women, nor does it justify depriving women of their rights to the highest standard of health care," Raday said.

While the delegates were shocked by many things they saw in the U.S., perhaps the biggest surprise of their trip, they said, was learning that women in the country don't seem to know what they're missing.

"So many people really believe that U.S. women are way better off with respect to rights than any woman in the world," Raday said. "They would say, 'Prove it! What do you mean other people have paid maternity leave?'"

The U.N. experts concluded their trip by meeting with the White House and numerous government agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Justice, to lay out their recommendations. They plan to present the full report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in June 2016.

[smock]

"So many people really believe that U.S. women are way better off with respect to rights than any woman in the world," Raday said. "They would say, 'Prove it! What do you mean other people have paid maternity leave?'"

So as a nation we're terrible on gender equality, and we're stupid.

Great.

[nomad100]

Dec 16, 2015 11:02:40 GMT -5 smock said:

"So many people really believe that U.S. women are way better off with respect to rights than any woman in the world," Raday said. "They would say, 'Prove it! What do you mean other people have paid maternity leave?'"

So as a nation we're terrible on gender equality, and we're stupid.

Great.

I think most of us will admit that we think that the US is pretty damn bad at gender equality and isn't that bright, at least not particularly bright, on a pretty regular basis. 

But to get to the point of people not knowing:  sadly, I think it because we have huge portions of the population who don't feel the need or have the desire to see or experience anything outside the US.  DH is back in school getting his BA and he is in classes with people (adults like him not the typically aged college kid) who have never left the state and think that traveling means going to the closest big city, Chicago.  I get that MI is a big state but come on!  Never having left the state?  How is that even possible?

I look at my extended family and how they think my immediate family is strange for traveling overseas on vacation.  They vacation in FL or at their cabins.  2 of my Dad's siblings had never been outside the country until he took them on a cruise several years ago and even then, instead of doing the day trips, they all stayed up late gambling and laying by the pool all day.  My dad was pretty appalled that they didn't even bother to get off the boat most of the trip. 

When you have no world view, or rather your world view is so small as to not even consider anything outside of your immediate experience, it isn't surprising that this is the case.  

[penguingrrl]

I can't say any of this surprises me. I wish it did, but women's rights in this country lag so far behind most of the developed world. I think a lot has to do with the idea of American Exceptionalism that is taught in schools and leaves people not questioning areas in which we haven't made progress. We've long been fed this idea that we're such a great nation and people who have never seen or experienced another culture don't take time to examine what in ours needs improvement.

[downtoearth]

The problem is that it isn't surprising to those in the US who are women, but it is surprising to those outside the US. So we are still giving off a feeling/vibe of equality, especially gender equality, when our reality is far from that.

[candreco]

Thanks for posting this, my church is being appallingly stingy with maternity leave for a staff member, and I needed ammunition for my disgruntled email. This church has a huge social justice/human rights advocacy program, so this is exactly what I need to point out the wrongness of it.

[rupertpenny]

My European and Commonwealth friends and acquaintances here in Hong Kong love to complain about the crap maternity leave (10 weeks paid guaranteed). Every single one of them is schooled and appalled when I tell them that the US has no guaranteed leave at all.

So yeah, I'm not surprised that they were surprised.

[orriskitten]

I've heard a few German ladies living in Iceland complain about maternity leave and benefits. They were shocked when I told them how it is in the states.

What I feel gets overlooked in the discussions about equality is help for women/mothers raising a family and the lack of support. Many countries have payments for each child built into their system. I think a lot of these discussions get stuck at maternity leave, which in all cases is a relatively short span of time, and don't go into survival after that too much in my experience.

[jeaniebueller]

Dec 16, 2015 13:02:02 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

The problem is that it isn't surprising to those in the US who are women, but it is surprising to those outside the US. So we are still giving off a feeling/vibe of equality, especially gender equality, when our reality is far from that.

You know, I offhanded shared a few of my experiences as a woman with my husband a few months ago and he had no idea. (what I shared was that its not terribly unusual for a woman to be standing in a large crowd of people and to have *someone* "accidentally" or purposefully grope her or grab her rear end or something like that). He really had no clue that things like that were part of a woman's every day experience. That right there was really enlightening to me that many men--even in our country-- just do not know what women have to deal with regularly and what inappropriate comments and actions are part of our experience.

[onomatopoeia]

Dec 17, 2015 9:34:15 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Dec 16, 2015 13:02:02 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

The problem is that it isn't surprising to those in the US who are women, but it is surprising to those outside the US. So we are still giving off a feeling/vibe of equality, especially gender equality, when our reality is far from that.

You know, I offhanded shared a few of my experiences as a woman with my husband a few months ago and he had no idea. (what I shared was that its not terribly unusual for a woman to be standing in a large crowd of people and to have *someone* "accidentally" or purposefully grope her or grab her rear end or something like that). He really had no clue that things like that were part of a woman's every day experience. That right there was really enlightening to me that many men--even in our country-- just do not know what women have to deal with regularly and what inappropriate comments and actions are part of our experience.

I had the same experience with my husband.  It was eye-opening for both of us.  Him because he had no idea, and me because I just assumed that most decent men (which he is) just...knew?  Like, it's been obvious to me since the day I was born, how can it not be obvious to you?   There's been other times where his (white, middle-class, able-bodied male) privilege has really become apparent.  He is realizing that, and is working to change it.

[lg28]

When I was in Florida last month and I mentioned our maternity leave people honestly thought I was kidding. They googled it because they didn't believe me.