Dara Pearson: Helping Women Live To Their Fullest Potential

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle.

By Dara Pearson

I was raised in the Unification Church, a fundamentalist, patriarchal religion in which women had no voice and no power. My parents had an arranged marriage, and my sisters and I were to have the same. I remember being a kid and having a tenacious loyalty to the church because it was everything that I knew. But I also had an ongoing feeling of dread that I held the same fate as my mother, who seemed flatly sad and empty most of the time. Although it was incredibly confusing, I remember promising myself that my future would hold something different, something bigger, although I didn’t know exactly what.

I now work with battered women at a shelter for domestic and sexual violence. In many ways, they are the same women that I grew up with. The church covered up the emotional, physical, financial, sexual and spiritual control of women in much the same way that they covered up tax evasion and an elite financial empire.

In many ways, it feels like home, to witness women on the edges of male dominance and exploitation. But this time, it’s different. I get to be a part of changing that, part of helping women access safety, find their voices, and develop the idea that they can strive for more and live to their fullest potential. And it’s truly rewarding work because each hour of each day is spent looking for ways to improve the quality of life for women and their children, whether it’s through higher education; employment opportunity; sustainable affordable housing; establishing supportive, quality relationships; helping women access reliable child care; or establishing the fundamentals of physical and emotional safety. Sometimes we come full circle to find that the most fulfilling life is about giving what we ourselves have been blessed enough to find.

Valerie Deering: 'Destruction of Personal Property'

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle. 

By Valerie Deering

I am a survivor of domestic violence.

It started with my family of origin and culminated in one brave act to call law enforcement after I had been thrown down stairs by a man who “loved” me.

During my month-long stay with him, while I was being treated for breast cancer, he said and did many disturbing things to me. Luckily, once the police were called, the situation became a state matter.

Like many women, I began to feel guilty about calling the police because the man became even more abusive and threatened to throw me out if I didn’t recant my story. So I did, on paper.

The man became even more violent. It was as if the paper were a permission slip to treat me as an object, his property.

Finally, I escaped – but only after he made more threats to my safety, causing me to experience an enormous moment of clarity.

Despite the evidence of cuts and bruises and the police testimony, this man was exonerated from domestic violence. However, he had broken a piece of my furniture in his rage.

The final verdict?

Guilty of destruction of personal property. 

I’m glad to hear that he was handed some sort of consequence for his violent behavior. But how telling is it that his consequence was for destroying a piece of furniture rather than tossing a woman down the stairs?

Surviving domestic violence taught me that I have power. I just gave it away for so long. Now I use it for good in the world, helping others realize their own power. A year ago, I started a women's foundation for the education, empowerment and rehabilitation of women and girls who have been touched by domestic violence – which is way too many, as you know.

Valerie Deering lives in Overland Park, KS.

Will Congress Be Naughty or Nice?

As the New Year approaches, we are anxiously waiting to see if lawmakers will be naughty or nice when it comes to passing key legislation affecting women’s health, safety and economic well-being. Decisions regarding the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the Shaheen Amendment and the “fiscal cliff” are among key issues that should be resolved before the end of this congressional session.

VAWA has previously been reauthorized, with bipartisan support. Unbelievably, some lawmakers are now opposed to its renewal, in part because the 2012 version would extend protections to same-sex couples, undocumented immigrants and Native Americans.

Take Action! Tell your congressmen to be nice and pass the reauthorization of  the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

Obstructing protections for victims of domestic violence is an easy way to get on the naughty list, and Rep. Eric Cantor is on his way to making it to the top of that list. Cantor has been adamant about prohibiting protections for Native-American women, a community that suffers from disproportionately high rates of sexual assault, rape and violence. An alarming one in three Native-American women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. This paints a clear picture as to why no woman should be excluded from protection from violence.

Also on the naughty list are members of Congress who oppose the Shaheen amendment, which would provide military women with the same access to abortion coverage as other women with federal health care policies. No woman who serves her country should have to pay out of pocket to end a pregnancy resulting from sexual assault. While progress has been made -- with Senate approval of the National Defense Authorization Act that includes the Shaheen amendment as part of the bill -- whether the House of Representatives will allow the amendment to remain intact is still up in the air. Not providing servicewomen with the same reproductive rights and abortion coverage as the women they fight to protect is not just naughty; it’s downright despicable.

Lastly, decisions regarding the ‘fiscal cliff’ are among the most complicated and pressing issues that will have huge implications for low-income women and their families. With disproportionate numbers of women living in poverty, cuts to public education, child care assistance, health care, public housing and nutrition programs for low-income women and children could prove disastrous. The burden of government spending reductions should not be placed on those who turn to vital social programs to survive. We’re advocating a compromise that puts legislators safely on this season’s nice list.

As we work to ensure that women have equal economic opportunity, access to health care and are protected from violence, the Ms. Foundation continues to pressure lawmakers to do what’s best for women and their families in 2013 and beyond.

Investing to End Violence Against Women

[This post originally appeared on WomenThrive]

With all of the talk in political news about “the war on women,” the real violence women and girls endure every day is often overlooked. Whether in the home or at school, in the workplace or in the military, gender-based violence jeopardizes the right to fundamental safety that all human beings need to survive.

Since the earliest days of the women's anti-violence movement, the Ms. Foundation has been among the first to fund domestic violence shelters, sexual-assault hotlines and other intervention services for women survivors. In more recent years, we have supported a range of community-based strategies to stop violence before it occurs—particularly, violence directed against women, girls and LGBTQ individuals.

Among the most serious threats to women’s safety is child sexual abuse, which is at the root of many other problems women and girls face later in life, including domestic violence, prostitution, incarceration and homelessness. Girls are disproportionately affected by child sexual abuse — one in four girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. Attuned to this harsh reality, the Ms. Foundation for Women is leading the charge, working alongside sister organizations to correct the power imbalances that precipitate abuse.

This year, the Ms. Foundation has invested more than $750,000 in organizations working to end child sexual abuse. We’re supporting the efforts of Darkness to Light and Stop It Now! to urge federal policy officials to prioritize prevention among youth-serving organizations. And we’re enabling Samaritan Counseling Center to expand its Safe Church Project, designed to help congregations develop policies and practices to protect children and youth from sexual abuse.

In order to realize our common vision of ending violence against women and girls, including child sexual abuse, women’s advocates from all corners must work together to build a robust national movement working in numerous communities, capable of inspiring hope in all of us and holding perpetrators accountable. Join the Ms. Foundation and help us prevent abuse in the lives of all women and girls.


-- Kayla Santalla

New York State Governor Watch

This week two new laws important for young people are waiting for action by New York Governor David Paterson. The Governor has announced his intention to sign one that extends the state's domestic violence law to allow family court judges to issue civil orders against a wider range of abusers [Albany to Expand Domestic Violence Law to Include Dating Relationships ]. He has not committed on the second, the Safe Harbor law, which would treat girls, age 15 and under, not as criminals, but as vicitims when they are first arrested for prostitution.

Clyde Haberman's New York Times column [Helping Girls as Victims, Not Culprits] provides a vivid illustration of the girls who might be helped by the Safe Harbor law. Haberman introduces Miranda, a young woman from Brooklyn who left home at age 14 and was sexually exploited and forced into prostitution. With the help of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), a Harlem-based organization and former Ms. Foundation grantee, Miranda, now 18, has graduated high school and is exploring college.

Haberman highlights the extent of Miranda's accomplishment and compares it to her advocacy work.

Also not typical are her journeys to Albany to urge that lawmakers rethink how the state deals with children — girls, in the main — who become sexual prey. Her efforts and those of others paid off a couple of weeks ago when the Legislature, by unanimous votes in both houses, passed the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Act.

Like the domestic violence legislation the Governor will sign, the Safe Harbor law would help in removing these important issues from the criminal courts. Young girls arrested for prostitution for the first time would be "classified as 'persons in need of supervision,' or PINS, and offered social services and protection from their pimps in a dormitory-style shelter," Haberman reports.

Haberman notes that Governor Paterson has not made a commitment to sign the bill and that the Bloomberg administration opposes it. He quotes John Feinblatt, the mayor's criminal justice coordinator, saying "the PINS process has no teeth" and he prefers keeping these children in the court system.

GEMS Executive Director Rachel Lloyd, disagrees. "Born in England, Ms. Lloyd was 'in the life' herself as a teenager. In part, the problem is one of perception, she said. 'These are not kids with cancer — they're not the kids people feel the most empathy for.'" She notes they are not as tough as one might think. "Whatever your stereotype is, when you sit down and talk to them, you see that a kid is a kid."

Young people like Miranda, affected by the policies they help shape and promote, are prime examples of the power of women organizing to change their world. As the ones closest to the problems they can generate the best policy and practice solutions.

Photo - Governor David Paterson. Source: New York State.

The Legacy of War for Iraqi Women

Last week, Nadje Al-Ali wrote a brilliant and scathing analysis in the Guardian of the ways in which Iraqi women have been most disastrously affected by the Iraq War--an especially sad critique given that support for the war among Americans was drummed up using the plight of oppressed Iraqi women who would supposedly be "saved" by the fall of Saddam Hussein and the introduction of American-like democracy.

Instead, Al-Ali argues, Iraqi women have experienced the most devastating fallout from violence:

While men have borne the brunt in terms of direct armed violence, women have been particularly hard-hit by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health services and a crumbling infrastructure, not least chronic power cuts which in some areas of Iraq see electricity only available for two hours a day.

What's more, "70% of the four million people forced out of their homes in the past five years in Iraq have been women and children." Displacement, as we know all too well along the Gulf Coast in the U.S., creates instability and often leads to rises in domestic and sexual violence.

Further, the Islamist militias and extremist groups that have taken control have consistently pushed women back into their homes, enforced strict dress codes and unleashed a flood of gender-based violence against Iraqi women. The "liberation" touted as the inevitable result of Hussein's fall, doesn't look so free. In fact, Iraqi women who were once proud and active doctors, lawyers and teachers claim it is impossible to continue amid the chaos and threats that have now engulfed the region. They risk death if they pursue their public works too boldly--or quite simply, because they are women:

According to a study by the Basra Security Committee, 133 women were killed last year in the UK-controlled city, either by religious vigilantes or as a result of so-called honour killings. Of these, 79 were deemed to have "violated Islamic teachings", 47 were killed to preserve supposed family honour, and the remaining seven were targeted for their political affiliations.

And there is so much more… Al-Ali, the director of the Gender Studies Centre at SOAS, University of London, the author of Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (Zed Books, 2007), and the founder of Act Together: Women's Action for Iraq, offers a frightening, but comprehensive account of what Iraqi women have been experiencing since the latest U.S. invasion.

While it is impossible to compare the scope and nature of violence experienced by Iraqi women to that suffered by women in the U.S., Al-Ali's conclusions underscore the main point of my recent piece marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion: that women are disproportionately impacted by war. In the U.S, women are subjected to rising domestic violence, sexual assault, and even murder by veterans--who are, in most cases, receiving inadequate mental health interventions for their post-traumatic stress. And the economic fallout of the war affects women most acutely.

The heightened incidence of gender-based violence attributed to the war is not separate from the violence that the Ms. Foundation and our grantees are dedicated to fighting day in and day out--it only serves as a reminder of how pervasive violence against women--and all forms of violence--are throughout our society. Just as Hurricane Katrina does not mark the day that a gaping race/class disparity was born in this country, but instead made it undeniably real, the Iraq War reminds us all that gender-based violence, both at home and abroad, is still far too common--and like war, entirely preventable.

Sara K. Gould
President & CEO