12-08-05, 8:38 am

The 'W' Effect: Bush's War on Women Edited by Laura Flanders New York, Feminist Press, 2004

The 'W' Effect, edited by radio personality and author Laura Flanders, is an excellent resource for examining the Bush administration’s record on issues that impact women’s lives, and for that matter are directly linked to all us. Flanders points out in her introduction that when George W. Bush ran in 2000, claiming that 'W' stood for women, women’s advocates remained skeptical but were indeed hopeful that some positive policies, not just a handful of women’s faces in the administration, would be on the horizon. The administration’s rhetoric about women’s work and wages, and its claim to be interested in improving public education indeed suggested a progressive direction. On top of this, adds Flanders, in the aftermath of the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the administration even hinted that that its real goal there was to free women from an oppressive regime. None of this rhetoric, Flanders argues, and as the essays in this book show, matched reality, however.

The essays in the book, reprinted from various print and online media sources, deal with the truth behind the rhetoric of Bush administration policies as they relate to women. For example, writer Liza Featherstone links the Bush administration’s policies on wages, and its conscious failure to address sex discrimination in any meaningful way, directly to the financial bonanza Wal-Mart has experienced in recent years. Republicans generally oppose fair wages on principle. For eight straight years they have voted down raising the minimum wage – another principle, Featherstone notes, that has helped boost profits for companies like Wal-Mart. Additionally, Bush appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal body that oversees labor disputes, have helped Wal-Mart to block unionization in its stores. Because a large majority of Wal-Mart employees are women, work issues, wages, health benefits, and sex discrimination in job promotion practices – all points on which Wal-Mart has been shown to have hurt its employees – are important issues for working women and their families. Jennifer Block takes aim at the administration’s disastrous policy on preventing sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Motivated by religiously based ideology rather than science and common sense, the administration has worked hard to censor accurate information about condom use to prevent STDs, in favor of promoting an abstinence policy, even funding religious programs that demand their participants practice abstinence only. (Academic studies have shown repeatedly that abstinence-only programs are ineffective and may be dangerous.) Additionally, the administration linked its promised funding for international programs such as the UN Population Fund, which helps provide sex education and family planning, to censorship of the word 'abortion' by programs and educators in other countries who receive UN money. Block concludes that with about 40 million people with AIDS worldwide, it is pure folly to promote ignorance about safe sex. It is simply wrong to put narrow religious values before human life.

In his eagerness to demonstrate his righteousness in the abortion debate, Bush signed the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban into law in 2003. In so doing, writes Gretchen Voss, Bush sparked a false debate, claiming that mothers and doctors were using a procedure called partial birth abortion to terminate pregnancies with health festuses. In fact, Voss says, the term partial birth abortion was invented in order to give Republicans and Bush an opportunity to ban it as a red herring in order to score political points. Right-wing lawmakers did not consult doctors or women about the issue. In fact, women’s health concerns never figured into their reasoning, only right-wing politics. Voss’ essay raises the vital need for a woman’s right to self-determination, the right of each woman to determine what is best for her life and her health.

Distorting issues to score political points and to manipulate public opinion is a key feature of Bush administration politics. Cyntia Enloe notes the exploitation of fears about terrorism after 9/11 in order to advance right-wing political goals totally unrelated to stopping terrorism, such as Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security. Farai Chideya points out how the administration and the pro-war mob used the Jessica Lynch story to manipulate public opinion about the Iraq war to sidestep real economic questions about why working-class youth like Lynch see joining the military as the only available option for improving their lives.

But this book isn’t simply a laundry list of complaints, as reasonable as that would be. In its closing section, there is discussion about how women have fought back against the detrimental policies advanced by the right. Women have been a leading component of the peace movement and for civil rights and liberties. Women have fought against the harm caused by the elimination or privatization of public services. And the movement for reproductive rights has by no means disappeared.

Overall, The 'W' Effect examines issues from work to public services, health to war, sexuality to right-wing propaganda, racism to globalization, and the particular policies advanced by the Bush administration. It serves as an accurate monument to the great failure and harm that is Bush’s legacy.



--Contact Clara West at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.