Gains for women largely a myth, state senator says

State Senator Gilda Jacobs (D-Huntington Woods) told an audience in the Michigan League March 20 that stories of women's social and political gains in the last decade are largely a myth.

"Women made great strides in the 1970s and 1980s, but we've been at a standstill since then," Jacobs said.

"The number of women in politics has been stagnant since the early 1990s, largely because young women are not getting involved. We are 52 percent of the adult population in this country, but only 10 percent of the state governors, 14 percent of state legislators and less than 23 percent of national legislators are women," she said. "The United States ranks 52^nd in the world when it comes to the number of women in its national legislature."

Jacobs (Photo courtesy Office of Gilda Jacobs)

Jacobs was the keynote speaker at the conference "Women & Girls, the Law, and Social Change," organized by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan with co-sponsorship from the Center for the Education of Women (CEW), Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), and the Women's Studies program, along with a host of others, including the School of Art and Design and the Law School.

The day-long conference was designed to cover a wide range of issues, according to ACLU of Michigan Director Kary Moss. "Our goal is to get people talking about what it takes to start meaningful societal change that will improve women's lives. We want people to walk away with concrete ideas about things they can do to make a difference."

"Justice is not blind," said Women's Studies Director Pamela Reid. "Too often gender and race are built into how our policies and legal decisions are made. This conference is so important because we need to understand what is happening and why, so that we can address the problem areas."

Those problem areas were the topics of sets of concurrent panels. In the first set, on health and well being, one panel discussed access to health care, assessing the current situation in Michigan regarding ease of access to services. In another panel on domestic and sexual violence, Carol Jacobsen, professor of art, and others focused on the adequacy of law enforcement responses. The Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System panel, including IRWG research investigator Sheryl Pimlot, shed light on the often-deplorable conditions under which women are held in many Michigan prisons.

A second set of panels looked at social and economic autonomy. In a panel on the impact of welfare reform on Michigan families, Peggy Kahn, chair of the U-M-Flint Department of Political Science, and Tracy McDonough, a U-M-Flint student and mother of three, joined others to discuss ways in which federal and state welfare reform initiatives have impacted low-income women and families. Michigan ranks 45^th in the nation for male-female income equity; the panel on employment and earnings, moderated by Susan Kaufmann, associate director of CEW, provided information about income and employment discrimination. Sociology Prof. Emerita Rosemary Sarri moderated the third panel, which focused on adolescent women, the group most negatively impacted by the changes made to welfare laws in 1996. Participants also included Aimee Cox, a U-M graduate student in cultural anthropology.

The final set of panels was titled "Empowerment and the Law." In the midst of controversy about Title IX, the first panel, which included U-M head softball coach Carol Hutchins, asked, "Has it gone far enough?" Paula Ettelbrick, adjunct professor of law, contributed to the second panel, which looked at lesbian/bisexual/transgender rights in Michigan. Reid moderated the final panel to identify pro-active strategies to secure greater rights for women.

The wrap-up session, featuring Detroit Free Press columnist Desiree Cooper, pulled together the various themes discussed during the day, highlighting action and participation in the political arena.

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