"Women's issues" have been much on my mind lately. Will they get more attention in the presidential election? Which candidates will include them in their speeches? Who will incorporate them into campaign platforms? And why, when over half the US population is female, do we even speak of "women's issues" as if they exist separately and apart from mainstream issues? The label ticks me off, yet in the language of the day it describes what I think about most of my waking hours.

When you get right down to it, what we think of as "women's issues" are pretty darn universal. We begin life as babies, then children, and if we are lucky we will eventually be "seniors", or "over 65", or "elderly". At both ends of the spectrum, (and possibly elsewhere) we are likely to need or give some kind of care, in varying degrees. Public policy, as the legislated expression of what a society values, has a role to play in facilitating that care. For our children, it should seek to maximize their potential with good health, good education, and good care from parents, teachers, and others. For our parents, it should seek to protect from illness, infirmity, and income insecurity. And for ourselves, it should promote our effectiveness as parents, providers, adult children, citizens, and the myriad other roles we fill throughout our lives.


How is it, then, that such gender-neutral concerns fall under the category of "women's issues"? A few decades ago, anything having to do with the exercise of power or the making of money was associated with masculinity. Anything having to do with non-monetized activity dropped into the feminine domain. Now, of course, the majority of women work outside the home for money, and gender lines, in some contexts and to some extent, are not as starkly drawn. Yet, the notion of "women's issues" persists, and is still used to describe family leave issues, child care funding, gender-based pay disparity, and early childhood education, among others. Until relatively recently, healthcare was firmly covered under this umbrella. One might say that the current contentious health care debate was formerly a "women's issue" that broke out of that restrictive category and become a mainstream focus of election politics.


The term is an artificial distinction. In this place and time, women and men are born, work, pay taxes, age, and ultimately die. Women and men are children, parents, workers, and Social Security beneficiaries. Both give and receive care. Public policies acknowledging the simultaneous endeavors of economic stability and caring for others are certainly mainstream. They should be in the very center of public debate and at the core of party platforms, just as foreign policy or economic strategy. In the context of the nation's welfare, this kind of "compartmentalizing" ignores reality. In truth, we are all woven into a garment of mutual destiny, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described it. The successful candidates for elective office will offer policies that reflect that fact.

'Til next time

Your (Wo)Man in Washington
For more information on these and other issues affecting mothers, visit MothersOughtToHaveEqual Rights.org