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How A Feminist Vision Can Get Us Out Of This Mess
By Anne S. Kasper

I am so much in touch with that part of me that is furious, fed up, and so strongly feminist that I feel the urgency to lay out how dramatically different we feminists view the world. Now, especially now, that this world is, for the moment thanks to George Bush, ever more perilously close to doing itself in with unending hate, war, and the enormous varieties of human suffering we impose on one another, I need to state what is in my heart and head... and what I know to be true.

Among women around the world today many are feminists and it is our feminist beliefs that guide us as we go about our lives, in our families, raising our children, at work, with friends, and within our communities. Some of us don't even call ourselves feminist but, we find ourselves acting, or trying to act, on feminist beliefs, consciously or unconsciously. These beliefs make intuitive sense to us, they generally work for everyone, and they help all of us get along a bit better. What feminist beliefs don't currently do is play much of a role on the world stage of policy, economics, and the frayed comity of nations. (It may be one of the reasons so few on that stage get along with each other.) And, because of this divisiveness many feminists are angry at the destruction all around us... and daily more impatient for change.

It's Time: An Ethic of Caring to Trump Hatred

The feminist vision that I am talking about is made up of roughly equal parts compassion, collaboration, and a spirit of attention to others. Perhaps it is best explained as an ethic of caring. Caring for each other, especially for the less fortunate, is but one aspect. Caring for the environment that constitutes our physical world. Caring in order to relieve suffering, to build communities, to nurture relationships, to make friends of strangers. Caring enough to come together with people you don't know to clean up the neighborhood creek or make sandwiches at a homeless shelter. Caring enough to see someone else's child in trouble as your child too. Caring enough to see "the enemy" as someone much like you, who wants what you want: peace, opportunity, and a chance at happiness.

This feminist vision is a radical shift in the lens of how we see ourselves as social actors and how we view the ways in which the world works. For too many millennia we have behaved with people we don't know as people we don't trust, whether they lived in the neighboring village or on another continent. They are "the other" and our suspicions have run strong as to how different they are from who we are, what they might want from, or what they might do to, us. Historically, we have been driven by material assumptions that there is not enough to go around, whether these resources be land, food, power, or money. We have, over time, built a world view (weltanschaung) and ways of interacting with others based on distrust, dislike, and outright hatred. Stereotypes about groups of people are often mean-spirited and entrenched. Belief systems are the foundations of behavior, no less so for nation states than for individuals. They run deep and they are often self perpetuating. One nasty episode often begets many more. Smaller insults become larger ones over time. New generations are born who have no memory of a gentler time when people of different backgrounds got along. Look to such recent events as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the Middle East as examples.

Changing the Nature of Trade, For Example

It is time, long past time, to let go of these ruinous and homicidal patterns of behavior. It is time to try on a different lens, to shift our ways of seeing and thinking, to move towards understanding. Some will argue that one fundamental reason this shift cannot happen is that material resource differences among countries will always create tensions. No doubt. However, it behooves nations to begin to address these tensions. The U.S. is a major player in policies that foster these discords around the world, now more than ever with the tilt of the Bush Administration. One primary source of these hostilities is our current trade policies which are, sadly, often based on historical foundations of suspicion and even outright antipathy towards other countries. Our trade policy is a barely-disguised veneer of sharing resources. Its real purpose is to further position the U.S. as the major powerhouse of the global economy. The reality is that our trade policies are most often exploitative rather than a means of assuring the equitable distribution of needed goods.

NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, is a case in point. Hailed ten years ago as a key step in promoting jobs and economic prosperity in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. by lifting tariffs on goods going across these countries' borders, the treaty has been an unmitigated failure for most people in all three nations. Jorge Castaneda, who was Mexico's foreign secretary, has been quoted as saying that NAFTA is "an accord among magnates and potentates: an agreement for the rich and powerful." In the U.S., as a result of NAFTA, estimates of 500 - 900,000 jobs have been lost and our trade deficit has increased. In Mexico, already a poor country, 2.5 million farmers have lost a way of life, food has become more costly, wages have declined, maquiladora work has become even more terrifying for thousands, and social disorder has increased. In all three countries we have witnessed increases in income inequality. Even a neoliberal economist would have to agree that NAFTA didn't live up to its promises.

Imagine, instead, trade policies among nations based on equity and fairness rather than on a policy of how my country can get from yours what it wants at the lowest price, with the environment and poverty be damned. Rich countries would pay more for goods they want and can afford, while poor countries would have greater revenues with which to support education, health care, clean water resources, and an assortment of social goods. In addition, workers in impoverished nations would be better paid so as to be able to take better care of their families, climb out of poverty, and themselves become the consumers of goods produced locally and traded internationally. Sounds like a win-win doesn't it? And, as an added bonus, our enormous trade deficit would be reduced because we would be able to sell more of our goods abroad. In such a scenario the enmity of old is replaced with a spirit of cooperation... and even a bit of caring for impoverished populations, something we claim to be concerned about.

When Is a Shower Like the Common Good?

American society has long had complicated, even contradictory, views of individual autonomy and the common good. Whereas many Western European social democracies see the two views as hand in glove, with the one balancing the other, the U.S. does not. I remember seeing this clearly while in the shower one summer morning in Norway's fjord country. The shower's water pressure and temperature were both pre-set at moderate, which made it convenient for the individual but also served the common good by reducing the amount of water and heat consumed (and protecting the environment). Preserving the right of the outlier who wanted a stronger, hotter shower, the settings could be changed. It seemed to me like a good balance was struck. But, I was sure it wouldn't work in the U.S. where we prize individual choice at all cost. Back home, I thought, we would probably call that Norwegian shower a socialist plot!

Funny as it seemed at the time, that Norwegian shower made plain to me that we in the U.S. have lost our way as a democracy. A not-so-funny thought then recurred to me: we have allowed our rapacious market economy to overwhelm and displace the democratic spirit that is the foundation of our republic. I began to wonder what our founding mothers and fathers would think if they paid us a visit and saw blighted inner cities, polluted rivers and poisoned wetlands, prisons overflowing, schools falling apart, the homeless and drug addicted on our streets, and some 20% of our children living in poverty. Would they wonder how we had gone from being a refuge of hope for millions of ordinary people to a place of privilege and comfort for a few? Would they, like me, make the connection between CEOs who make fortunes while their workers can't care for their families; between billions spent on war while 15% of Americans have no health care; and, between politicians supported by monied interests and the laws that entitle the rich? Would they wonder why we had failed to share equitably the bounty of our land, our economy, and our human potential among all our people? I wonder if they would ask why we didn't see that being fair and generous partners with the rest of the world would serve us as well. I suspect that they would remind us, loudly and clearly, that reaching for the common good is the essential generosity of democracy that benefits all people and assures human progress.

A Far Kinder, Gentler Welfare Reform

Our domestic policies of welfare provision and its ersatz reform have been less about compassion and caring than about the continuing struggle over women's roles, individual families, and benefits to society. I'll explain. On the one hand, our society knows that children are our future and that they should be raised by families who have the resources to care for them. On the other hand, we also believe that families ought to be able to take care of themselves without "handouts" from the state. As a culture we are also ambivalent about who should daily care for young children. On the one hand, we nostalgically yearn for the stay-at-home mom with kids, cookies, and milk. On the other, we acknowledge the importance of women at work, both for a "productive" economy and to benefit the individual family.

Our multiple layers of ambivalence about women's roles and the care of children reinforce our contradictory beliefs about the individual and the common good, with deep consequences for policies and programs. We make the assumption that women care more about their children than their work, and are really caretakers at heart. Because caring is assumed to be of less monetary value than emotional value, we pay caretakers of children, including their mothers (and occasionally fathers), very little or nothing. And, parent-caretakers don't even get social security credits for their efforts. We have no national child care program with government standards and subsidies, as do many Western European countries. In fact, we have less government support for child care than any other industrialized nation. We have meager family leave, tax credits, and other policies that would support the common goal of caring for the nation's children and families. Head Start is always fighting for its life, as is WIC, the women and infant food program, despite years of documented successes with both programs. Families are left to fend for themselves. Even well-off families with working moms and dads struggle to hold it all together with so little in the way of social supports. Welfare once provided a floor under poor families so that disadvantaged single mothers could adequately raise their children and the country could be assured that their kids would grow up to be valued members of society. With "welfare reform" came the end of any pretense that we cared about poor women and children, either individually or as part of our collective future.

Imagine, then, an ethic of caring as the foundation for our public policies for women, children, and families. True welfare reform would provide each needy family with a monthly income adequate to the family's needs until parents could get on their feet. (Welfare, combined with disability payments, would continue for those who are unable to work.) Child care subsidies would enable parents to leave young children in quality day care to attend federally-supported job training or continued education, including college and professional school, in preparation for paid work. Welfare offices would have social workers whose jobs would be to provide each family with as many (rather than begrudging them too few) of the social supports necessary to a successful route out of poverty, including Medicaid or health insurance, housing vouchers, food, clothing and other subsidies. Northwestern European countries pay family allowances to support each child, with the result that poverty has been reduced in families with kids, including those headed by single parents. Job placement services would be available to assure each welfare recipient that she or he does not have to go it alone to find a job. And, perhaps most importantly, welfare would end only when each person ready for work outside the home was able to find work at wages that would raise the family beyond the dead-end confines of poverty. Among other parts of this up-from-welfare strategy, for those taking low-end jobs, the minimum wage must become a living wage, a national standard assuring no working family need live in poverty.

Caring and the Workplace: An Oxymoron?

For all of us, family-friendly workplace policies should be more than the lip service they currently are. Evidence from Western Europe shows that when workers have greater flexibility over hours worked and more options for paid and unpaid leave, they are better able to care for themselves and their families. In Norway and Sweden, employers have found that long intervals of paid maternity leave actually encourage new mothers to return to work at the end of their time at home. In Germany, non-work activities, such as time with family and vacations, are regarded by employers and managers as assets because they enable workers to be more productive when they return to work. Here in the US we know that long hours and endless work days are the causes of increased burnout, absenteeism, and employee turnover. Never mind what they do to family life, old-fashioned summer vacations, and the chance to just listen to music!

If we had an ethic of caring in the workplace, we could devise policies that offer a better balance between work and home. Real flexibility options in hours of work allow workers in some countries to set their work hours within an agreed-to time period, usually a month. Another option permits groups of employees to set shift work hours in concert with each other over a specified period of time. Working time accounts enable workers to bank hours above the standard work week so as to have more time off later on.

But let's not kid ourselves. No matter how hours are arranged, most Americans work too long and too hard to achieve the balance individuals, families, communities, and the country could benefit from. A shorter work week resulting in fewer hours of work is the only real answer to our culture of overwork. High quality, permanent part-time work with decent pay scales and benefits is sorely needed. Part-time work could become a much more viable option than its now marginalized status if policies were instituted to promote them and protect workers. For instance, proportional rates of salary, benefits, and promotion, as well as opportunities to move between full time and part time without penalty, would be a good place to start. In Holland and Italy, part-time work for new mothers comes with a guarantee of return to full-time work and the accrual of pension, vacation, and other benefits at full-time rates.

Although we haven't been paying much attention, social scientists have shown that innovative workplaces (those willing to re-design how work gets done) are able to retain valued employees, have more satisfied and committed workers, and actually increase productivity. These workplaces have used work options that include reduced work hours, job sharing, valued part-time positions, flexible hours, more paid and unpaid leave, and longer vacations. In the 1990s, Xerox Corporation was part of a study of innovative workplaces, daring to care enough about its employees to re-design work, and see what resulted. Its CEO proclaimed that when employees had more satisfying personal lives, Xerox had greater productivity and better business results. Researchers have shown that workers who work less hours have the time and the capacity to work smarter. Just putting in "face time" until its time to go home doesn't make for an efficient or productive workplace. And, it keeps individuals away from a life beyond work, which fewer Americans have today.

It is urgent that the American workforce begin to apply the brakes to hours on the job and workplace policies that support the company's bottom line but not American employees. The momentum that encourages more work for less pay, seen most recently in the move to eliminate overtime pay, not only further consolidates the control of employers over employees but, makes work more onerous as well as destructive of family and community life for all workers, no collar to white collar. A democracy thrives on the participation of its citizenry. Our democracy is in peril in part because so few of us have the time to sustain it by participating in its institutions, whether we run for a seat on the school board or simply go to the polls to vote. For too many of us, simply reading a newspaper to stay informed of world events or going to a town council meeting to voice an opinion about traffic congestion takes time we don't have.

Health Care for All

Compassion doesn't lend itself easily to capitalism. It's one thing to find yourself making disinterested calculations about the best refrigerator you can afford and perusing the ads of competing fridge manufacturers. It's another to know that your health is in the hands of insurance companies who compete with one another for market share and who may be more interested in stockholder earnings than making sure you get medical attention when you need it. And, sadly, this focus on costs and profits rather than patient care affects the entire health care delivery system. Are you surprised that thousands of Americans die each year from medical mistakes, that there aren't enough nurses in the hospital to properly care for your elderly aunt, and that everyone in your doctor's office is too busy to help you? You shouldn't be, because as one description of managed care says... it isn't managed, and they don't care.

Being without health insurance often means going without needed medical attention. The now familiar figure of 43 million Americans without health coverage belies the many millions more who are under-insured and do without preventive care, primary care, needed prescription drugs, and who may be forced to pay out of pocket costs they can't afford. In a study of poor and low income women with breast cancer I found that women without health insurance, and even those with public insurance such as Medicaid, faced lengthy delays before being diagnosed and treated. Several women didn't know where to go when they found a lump, others were denied care because they were uninsured, some received care below the accepted medical standard, and several encountered overt discrimination because of their low income, ethnicity, or lack of health insurance. Is there caring or compassion in this picture? Not when the collection agency is repeatedly calling you late at night or the hospital threatens to put a lien on your house for your radiation treatments.

The U.S. has, time and again, looked at the possibilities of providing health care coverage to all. Yet, we still remain the only industrialized country that does not have a universal health system, one that provides health care to everyone as a right. Now, once more, there is much talk about our many uninsured, most of whom are working, many who can't afford the premiums if health insurance is a job benefit, and others who are ineligible for Medicaid even though they are poor.

Feminists have been pushing for health care reform since the 1970s. While these efforts have not had the visibility or massive organization of the abortion rights movement, they have nevertheless been a concern of the U.S. women's health movement precisely because so much is at stake for women. Although Medicaid continues to be a very important source of health access for women, the program is under siege from the effects of diminished state budgets and the Bush administration. A single mother with two children who works full time at minimum wage earns too much to be eligible for Medicaid in over half the states. Women who go without health insurance have higher rates of death from heart disease and cancer as well as a greater risk of dying during a hospital stay. Uninsured women with breast cancer have a 40-60% greater risk of dying from the disease.

Women are again poised to argue for health care reform based on the feminist and progressive belief that health care should be a guarantee, not the privilege of only those who can afford it. Health care is not like buying a refrigerator. Even though every house and apartment comes with a fridge, your health comes with no service contract, warranty, or maintenance instructions. In keeping with the American ideal of private responsibility, you are on your own out there in the health care delivery system. Unless, of course, you are one of the lucky ones who can get high quality, comprehensive health insurance and you have figured out how to navigate the system.

In the past, and again in the future, women have and will be arguing for health care reform that provides health care to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, their employment, and existing health problems. Women will also argue for comprehensive coverage; that is, all services related to preventive, primary, in-hospital and outpatient care including long term care. Care should be available in a variety of settings, such as school-based clinics or birthing centers, and from a variety of health practitioners, such as midwives and acupuncturists. Costs to each individual must be affordable and cost-sharing kept to a minimum so that no one is discouraged from seeking needed care. Women will argue that getting rid of the market and administrative inefficiencies of the current private system will lower costs, as will negotiated pricing for drugs and services, prospective budgeting, and the equity of a pluralistic system where costs and risks are shared widely. They will also argue that a healthier population will be less costly in the long run, and not just in dollars, but in countless assets such as feelings of well being and prospects for our children's futures.

This is a vision of caring for and attention to every person's good health, without which, as the saying goes, each of us doesn't have much to go on. It is a moral stance that places people over profit-making, that challenges our society to do better because we can... and should. Other countries, like those in Western Europe, consider health care a public good to be promoted, shared, and distributed fairly among everyone. It is time we did too.

Let's Throw Away the Keys

Today's feminist peace group Code Pink tells us that Julia Ward Howe, a mother of six, proclaimed the following on Mother's Day, 1870: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

Howe's words ring true for many women in 2004. Many of us are ready to jettison the systems, policies, beliefs, and behaviors that continue to hurt people rather than protect them, destroy the world's physical plant rather than sustain it, make enemies of our neighbors on the planet, conduct war instead of waging peace, buy and sell assets that should be accessible to all, and fail to support our universal desires for happiness, wholeness, and love. I have described here just a few examples of alternatives to the approaches that we currently have in place. Human beings can be tirelessly imaginative and creative. We don't have to stay stuck on the shadowy side. A feminist vision can help us get to the other side.

Anne S. Kasper, Ph.D. is a sociologist as well as a founding and current member of the U.S. Women's Health Movement. She was the first chair of the National Women's Health Network in 1976 and the director of the Campaign for Women\'s Health during the health care reform efforts of the early 1990s. She is the senior editor and author of Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic, 2000. Anne is a community activist in Montgomery Country, Maryland where she has worked on a living wage campaign, health care reform, and electoral politics. Anne also counsels women with breast cancer.