Counter-veiling arguments.

Last October, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said full-face veils (niqabs) worn by women were a "mark of separation" keeping women from fully participating in society. Blair was backing House of Commons leader Jack Straw, who had requested that a group of Muslim women meeting with him remove the veils that prevented him from seeing any part of their faces except their eyes. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi also said "it is important for our society" that women should not be hidden behind veils. Is this more than just another example of men telling women how to dress?

A preliminary issue about the veil is choice. Some veiled women insist that the choice is their own, but it seems apparent that for most veiled or burqa-clad women in the world the choice is religiously or culturally imposed. Removal of the veil in public would subject many women to social ostracism, beatings or death. So the veil issue is both about personal choice and about Western acceptance of a non-Western religious rule.

The controversy over veils in driver’s license photos was the subject of a recent dinner conversation. One of the participants, a male lawyer, argued that if a fingerprint could somehow be encoded onto an identification card, it would allow a woman who chose to be completely veiled for her driver’s license photo to nonetheless be uniquely identified in a traffic stop by police equipped with a fingerprint reader. This would eliminate the concern about identification that currently prevents some veiled women from obtaining driver’s licenses in the U.S. A woman who was part of the conversation countered that a full veil would still constitute a safety hazard, as it would obstruct both the peripheral vision and hearing of the driver.

Another male participant said that as a democracy that cherishes the full participation of all citizens in nearly all aspects of our governance and social values, we should show our collective disapproval of cultural norms that significantly restrict the full participation of either gender. Although the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was never enacted, gender equality guides our public policies and values. We should impose those values on some of the privileges of citizenship, such as a license to drive a car, so as to discourage cultural practices that foster gender inequality.

A fourth member of the dinner group, a woman, said that we should follow the China model. The U.S. doesn’t approve of the Chinese government’s human rights policies, but has decided that making China a full player in the world economy will distribute economic power within Chinese society. The resulting affluence will be a force for freedom and democracy, and the people will demand change. Similarly, we should allow veiled women to drive so that they will have greater mobility and not be prisoners in their own houses. Once these women have a taste of freedom, they will demand change within their religions and cultures. Preventing them from driving will only maintain the separation of these women from mainstream Western culture and inhibit change.

Although the intersection between personal choice and practices imposed by long-standing and deep power inequities is difficult to navigate, it is a fundamental question in dismantling a hierarchy. What rules do you think we should impose on veil wearers?

A longer view of compromise.

An NPR News series called Crossing the Divide examines political and cultural differences and how they can be bridged. The episode on Friday’s Morning Edition (Jan. 26) linked reconciliation in chimpanzees to game theory in politics. It’s no small coincidence that the book Matrocracy also examines what chimpanzee behavior and game theory tell us about gender differences.

Compromise, the third topic in the NPR episode, featured an interview with author Robert Remini about Senator Henry Clay, "the Great Compromiser." Clay’s Missouri Compromise of 1820 put off the American Civil War for another two generations at the small price of keeping the institution of slavery alive and permitting its westward expansion. But what was left unsaid by NPR is that we need a vision of compromise that doesn't mean the perpetuation of wrong, and that takes a both a larger and a longer view.

Matrocracy examines how women generally are more open to compromise than men, and shows how women’s greater influence likely will spread more cooperative approaches that will benefit our world. At the same time, Matrocracy argues, women generally take a larger and a longer view in policy and problem solving. Women are more likely to include everyone in decisions, including the less powerful, and to think about the consequences over a longer term.

My hope and expectation is that as we increasingly search for compromise and cooperation, and as women’s influence grows, we also will increasingly take a longer view. We should avoid compromises in the tradition of Clay that our descendants in the next century likely would judge to be as barbaric and immoral as we view slavery today.

Matrocracy: the book. First in a series.

Matrocracy is more than a blog; it is also a book in development. In this series of posts, I will preview some the key concepts of matrocracy that the book treats in depth. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

A recent exchange between Senator Barbara Boxer and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlights one difficulty in staking out a clear vision of women’s roles in the twenty-first century: women, like men, make different choices and do not share a single set of priorities. In a Senate hearing, Boxer tried to say that many of the Iraq War policymakers do not have as much as stake as the military families whose sons and daughters face death and injury in battle. Secretary Rice's supporters later complained that Boxer seemed to be criticizing Rice for not having children.

This conflict between two women policymakers illustrates a challenge for matrocracy: How can we devise social policies that improve the outcomes of the seemingly impossible choices currently facing many working parents, while at the same time acknowledging the right not to procreate? Should people of either gender who choose not to procreate have the priorities of their workplaces set my those who do, or vice versa? My answer is that we already work too hard in the U.S., with not enough time spent on the activities that constitute the rest of our lives. We’re stressed out and overweight. If creating a more manageable work/life balance for parents will help create a more sane life for the rest of society, that’s a step forward.

Another lesson from the Boxer-Rice exchange is how quickly policy conversations can turn into partisan political fights that distract from the real issues. One of Rice’s supporters, Rush Limbaugh, rolled out the Clarence Thomas lynching metaphor to describe Boxer’s treatment of Rice.

Matrocracy proposes a model that will accelerate the attainment of political power by women. Matrocracy may, on its face, appear partisan, because the political party that is furthest along with this effort – the Democratic party – seems most likely to benefit from matrocracy's model. The Republican Party, though, with further to go, stands to gain standing by being the most improved.

Numbers illustrate the parties' progress. The Republican Party dropped support for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1980. Of the sixteen women U.S. Senators, eleven are Democrats and five are Republicans. Of seventy-one women in the House of Representatives, fifty are Democrats and twenty-one are Republicans. Of nine women state governors, six are Democrats. Women are just over sixteen percent of Republican state legislators and nearly thirty percent of Democratic state legislators. (Two sets of data used.) In 2005, women held 12.5 percent of all leadership positions in state legislatures – 20 percent of Democratic positions, but only 4.5 percent of Republican positions.

Matrocracy proposes to significantly increase the percentage of women officeholders across the board. Because the parties are starting from different positions, that would create higher numbers of Democratic women officeholders than Republican. For example, increasing the number of Democratic women in the House of Representatives by fifty percent would add more than twenty-five more female Members of Congress. Doing the same for the Republicans would only add ten. By working harder to catch up, the Republican Party may benefit more in the long run.

However, creating mechanisms by which many women are more likely to attain power does not necessarily mean that Democrats will attain the positions of the greatest influence. Right now, for example, the most powerful woman in American politics may be Condi Rice, not Nancy Pelosi.

Finally, the Boxer-Rice exchange also demonstrates how procreation and children are still regarded as women's issues. If the exchange had been between two men, it would have generated much less attention and criticism. It shows how far we still have to go to achieve gender equality.
Link to second post in the series.

Children of Men

If you like or can tolerate great war and spy films, but worry they encourage the nationalsim and paranoia that encourages support for some of the more disturbing aspects of the present War on Terror, see Children of Men, currently in theaters. Set in 2027, it’s a pity this film was not made before the Iraq war began, given how much of the film feels like the mess we're in now. The dystopian P.D. James book on which the film was based was published in 1992. As usual, Michael Caine is charming and Julianne Moore is radiant. The sound track is great.

What follows is plot spoiler, so if you have not seen the film, but plan to, read the rest of this later. The premise of the film is that humans can no longer reproduce, and though never explained, it is presumably due to some environmental catastrophe. A scene in which hundreds of people, including soldiers in mid-battle, show sheer joy and utter admiration for a baby girl is not to be missed. It serves in stark contrast to the fate that awaits some female fetuses in cultures inhabited by a majority of the world's people in the present day.

Iraq war created world's largest refugee exodus in over fifty years.

Just one day's interest on the U.S. debt for this war would relieve the refugees' suffering.

One of the consequences of the Iraq War that has been under reported in the United States is the plight of refugees from the violence that has been raging for nearly four years since our invasion. One in eight Iraqis have now left their homes, with up to 50,000 people leaving each month. The United Nations' refugee agency, known as the UNHCR, recently announced that this is the largest long-term refugee movement in the world since the displacement of the Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948.

If you haven’t seen the brilliant David O. Russell film, Three Kings, starring George Clooney, or your haven’t seen it in while, now would be a good time. This action/adventure builds to a moral dilemma for the protagonists. Should they spend a fortune they’ve worked very hard to acquire to rescue a group of refugees?

This is the moral imperative we now face in Iraq, except that, relatively speaking, it won’t take a fortune to rescue the refugees. Just one day’s interest on the U.S.’s borrowing to finance the Iraq War would relieve much of the immediate suffering of the refugees created by that war.

I’ll explain the math in a minute, but first, some more about the refugees. The UNHCR has issued an urgent appeal for 60 million dollars in emergency aid for those fleeing the violence in Iraq. Many of these refugees, often including entire families and children, live in deplorable conditions. Two million Iraqi refugees live outside the country, while nearly that same number remain inside Iraq, politely referred to "displaced people." The total number refugees may grow to almost five million by the end of the year. Human rights and women’s organizations are alarmed over growing evidence that desperation is forcing some young women to turn to prostitution so that they and their families can survive.

Now for the details on the interest on the debt: U.S. expenditures for the Iraq War so far are estimated to be more than $356 billion. The entire national debt actually has increased six times that much during the war, so every penny spent on the war is being borrowed. The interest on the debt is just under five percent per year. That means we are paying interest on the war debt of nearly 18 billion dollars a year, or more precisely 50 million dollars in war debt interest each and every day.

50 million dollars, or one day’s worth of interest on what we’ve spent so far on the war, is nearly the amount the UNHCR says is needed to relieve the suffering of the millions of souls displaced by that war. A donation of that amount in America’s national interest.

Whether you think it is a just or unjust war, millions of people have been forced to flee their homes because of our invasion. If we truly want to show the world that we are worthy of the leadership role we claim in trying to make the world a better place, shouldn’t we make this small gesture to relieve some of the suffering this war has caused?

Please let your elected officials know how you feel about the plight of Iraqi refugees, and make a donation to any one of a number of international refugee organizations that are working to help Iraq’s refugees. Whether you favor surge or withdrawal, this should be a cause that transcends political divisiveness over the war. The amount that’s needed is equivalent to every person in the U.S. donating 17 cents each.

Click to donate. Click to send a message to Speaker Pelosi.

Republicans tell Pelosi how to lead: Don't be like us.

As Nancy Pelosi prepares to take over as the first woman Speaker of the House, an NPR story reported on advice Republicans offered. One request was not to shut Republicans out of the planning process for new legislation - the way that Republicans shut out Democrats during their twelve years in power such as by "not letting them see bills until they were to be voted on." That request is going to be ignored during the first 100 hours the new Congress is in session - Republicans will not be allowed to amend any bills.

Another request came from President Bush in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: don't "pass bills that are simply political statements." Let's see, how much time did Congress spend in the past six years on legislation that was intended primarily to make political statements that Republicans could use to paint Democrats as being soft on taxes, abortion, terrorism, war, gay marriage, etc.?

Will Pelosi simply turn all the Republicans' tactics against them in the name of "justice," or will she set a new example? The question, "What would Jesus do?" comes to mind, but does not seem particularly apt here because the religious right is so deeply embedded with the substance and style of the Republican leadership. Pelosi will probably have political effectiveness as her primary goal, but how will that translate?