Making women’s issues go away

Making women’s issues go away A damning new report reveals that the Bush administration has
quietly removed 25 reports from its Women’s Bureau Web site, deleting or distorting crucial
information on issues from pay equity to reproductive healthcare.

By Rebecca Traister

If you’d logged onto the Department
of Labor’s Women’s Bureau Web site in 1999, you would
have found a list of more than 25 fact sheets and
statistical reports on topics ranging from "Earning
Differences Between Men and Women" to "Facts About Asian
American and Pacific Islander Women" to "Women’s
Earnings as Percent of Men’s 1979-1997."

Not anymore. Those fact sheets no longer exist on the
Women’s Bureau Web site, and have instead been replaced
with a handful of peppier titles, like "Hot Jobs for the
21st Century" and "20 Leading Occupations for Women."
It’s just one example of the ways in which the Bush
administration is dismantling or distorting information
on women’s issues, from pay equity to reproductive
healthcare, according to "Missing: Information About
Women’s Lives," a new report released Wednesday by the
National Council for Research on Women.

You’ve probably heard about some of the other examples
in "Missing" — for instance, the time the Centers for
Disease Control removed an online guide to condom use
and changed the fact-sheet language to indicate that
studies on condom use were inconclusive, focusing
instead on abstinence. But the power of "Missing" comes
not from its dozens of individual examples, but from the
depth and breadth of its findings about the small ways
in which the Bush administration is draining the well of
dependable public scientific and sociological
information.

"When these instances are taken individually, perhaps we
don’t see the cumulative pattern of what’s happening,"
said Linda Basch, president of the 23-year-old NCRW, an
alliance of 100 women’s policy, research and education
centers, including the NOW Legal Defense and Education
Fund, Planned Parenthood, and the Girl Scouts. "But when
we gather the information together, and see the
distorted or disappearing information about the economic
opportunities, the situation of violence against women,
health and particularly reproductive health, it is a
very distressing pattern."

Released just three days after an estimated 1 million
people gathered in Washington for the March for Women’s
Lives, "Missing" exhaustively catalogs the ways in which
government information about women’s health, labor and
education has been altered, removed or obfuscated during
the Bush administration. "This is really undermining a
nonpartisan legacy of government," said Basch, referring
to a history of reliable dissemination of scientific
data by the federal government. Of concern to NCRW
researchers is the possibility that this morphed or
absent information will hurt future researchers,
policymakers and citizens who in the past would have
relied on federal sources of information in their
advocacy for women’s equity and access.

In an e-mailed statement to Salon, New York Rep. Carolyn
Maloney said, "I’m grateful to the National Council for
Research on Women for confirming what many of us in
Congress have insisted for years — we can’t continue to
advance as women if the cold, hard facts of our status
are unknown. We’ve seen a disturbing trend toward hiding
the information that helps us improve women’s lives. I
hope that this is the beginning of a successful effort
to uncover the missing data."

California Rep. Barbara Lee also sent a statement,
saying, "This report outlines a disturbing pattern of
decisions by federal agencies to close down, delay,
alter, or spin data about what is happening to American
women and girls. Science must not be sacrificed and
silenced like this. We must take every opportunity to
point out the Administration’s attempts to twist,
distort, and subvert science to advance its right-wing
based political agenda."

Many of the shifts in federal agency information have
been reported in the past, but, when seen together, look
even more impressive — or horrifying. Some individual
examples — like the observations about the DOL’s
Women’s Bureau — will look new.

The report notes that in 1999, the Women’s Bureau
mission statement, printed on its Web site, described
its responsibilities "to advocate and inform women
directly and the public as well, of women’s rights and
employment issues" and "to ensure that the voices of
working women are heard, and their priorities
represented in the public policy arena." Back then, the
Women’s Bureau claimed that it "Alerts women about their
rights in the workplace, proposes policies and
legislation that benefit working women, researches and
analyzes information about women and work, [and] makes
appropriate reports on its findings." The NCRW
researchers noticed that by February 2002, the Bureau’s
mission statement looked very different. Its asserted
goal was "To promote profitable employment opportunities
for women, to empower them by enhancing their skills and
improving their working conditions, and to provide
employers with more alternatives to meet their labor
needs." The 2002 "Vision Statement" reads: "We will
empower women to enhance their potential for securing
more satisfying employment as they seek to balance their
work-life needs." In other words: less information about
helpful policy and legislation, more potential-enhancing
tips on balancing "work" and "life."

Then there are the missing fact sheets, and the popular
handbook on the rights of women in the workplace, called
"Don’t Work in the Dark — Know Your Rights," that’s not
to be found. The "1993 Handbook on Women Workers," which
was available in 1999, is no longer. Though it is
scheduled for rerelease sometime in the future, NCRW
researchers who contacted the Women’s Bureau learned
that no publication date is set.

Irasema Garza, the director of the women’s rights
department for the American Federation of State County
and Municipal Employees, and the former director of the
Women’s Bureau from 1999-2000, had seen parts of the
"Missing" report that pertained to her former
department. "As soon as I saw the report, I went to my
old Web site and found that the majority of all of our
fact sheets were gone," she said. "In my old job, I
traveled all around the country giving speeches — but
all the women wanted were these fact sheets. Women
really used this information to protect themselves in
the workplace."

Contacted by Salon for a response to the report, a
spokeswoman for the Department of Labor said that the
Women’s Bureau director was traveling, but e-mailed a
response to the queries about the changing mission
statement and publication list. That e-mail said, in
part, "Congress created the Women’s Bureau in 1920 to
’formulate standards and policies which shall promote
the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working
conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their
opportunities for profitable employment.’ Under that
mandate, the Women’s Bureau’s focus, programs,
publications and website are changed and updated
periodically to reflect the priorities of the current
Administration, the Secretary of Labor and the Director
of the Women’s Bureau. The Bureau continues to work with
internal and external partners and stakeholders to
develop programs to address the needs of 21st Century
working women." The White House press office, contacted
for comment, did not respond by press time.

"The fact that 25 reports on issues of equality and
access have been removed from this website is enormously
distressing," said Basch of the findings about the
changes at the Women’s Bureau. She pointed out that the
public, as well as researchers, journalists and
policymakers, turns to agency Web sites for information
about rights and government policies. Basch claimed that
last year there were over 250 million hits to government
Web sites.

Those 250 million hits will have also turned up some
changes in language at the Census Bureau, which reported
on its Web site’s "Facts for Features" page for 2003
Women’s History Month that the earnings gap between
women and men — about 76 female cents to every male
dollar — means that women’s salary are "at an all-time
high." That’s a considerably more cheerful outlook than
the 2000 Census Bureau posting about an earnings gap
figure that was only about 1 percent different than
2003’s. According to "Missing," in 2000 the Web site
told visitors that "Women have almost achieved parity in
educational attainment ... but not earnings equality,"
and that "Men working fulltime, year round, consistently
earned more than comparable women in each of the
educational levels." According to researchers, the
newer, more positive spin on issues like earnings
figures is dangerous because it diminishes the notion
that there are massive strides to be made before
earnings parity is possible.

"Basically, the administration seems to have the
assumption that there is a level playing field and that
paying attention to a particular subgroup is divisive,"
said Martha Farnsworth Riche, a demographer in private
practice and the Bill Clinton-appointed director of the
Census Bureau from 1994-98. Basch noted the effect that
changing information and modified spin could have on the
future of advocacy for women. "When the information
doesn’t exist, when no one is there watching out for the
interests of certain categories of populations, it’s
bad," she said. "There are still far too many gender-
based inequalities for us to take our eyes off of what
is happening to women."

Census Bureau Public Affairs specialist Robert Bernstein
was unable to find the language quoted by "Missing" in
the 2000 "Facts for Features" edition, though the page
contains a link to a press release that is no longer
available. Bernstein, who has been with the Census
Bureau for 14 years, said that he doesn’t believe there
is any new spin on earnings information. "What we try to
do is present data in a positive light about different
groups. It was a fact that that ratio at the time did
represent an all-time high." Bernstein also noted that
the "all-time high" language would have come straight
from the news release about the Bureau’s annual Income
and Poverty Report. And though he doesn’t think that
there’s been a noticeable upturn in the language of the
Bureau, Bernstein did confirm one of the fears of the
NCRW. "The point of ’Facts for Features’ is to give
information to reporters, allowing them to do a
particular feature story [pegged to] a particular
holiday or observance," said Bernstein. "They’re trying
to do upbeat stories."

When it comes to issues of women’s health, agencies like
the CDC, FDA and the Health and Human Services
Administration don’t fare much better than the DOL or
the Census Bureau with the NCRW researchers. One of
their chief battle cries — and arguments about why a
study like "Missing" can be valuable in the future — is
over the changed language on a National Cancer Institute
Web site. "Missing" cites the case of the 1997 New
England Journal of Medicine study that conclusively
proved that there was no link between breast cancer and
abortion, a favorite claim of anti-abortion advocates.
The NCI had a fact sheet with reference to the study
posted on its Web site until November 2002, when the Web
site was changed to indicate that studies about the link
had been "inconclusive," an assertion that lent implied
credence to the claims of the anti-abortion advocates.
According to "Missing," members of Congress forced the
convention of a panel of experts who reinforced the New
England Journal’s findings, and the NCI again posted
information that there is no link between breast cancer
and abortion.

Over at the Centers for Disease Control, the NCRW
researchers claim, posted fact sheets were revised to
suggest studies on the effectiveness of using condoms to
prevent the spread of HIV and other STDs were
"inconclusive." Instead, the revised fact sheet focused
on abstinence — a favorite of the family values crowd
— as the only effective path to sexual health. As was
reported at the time, the CDC also removed an online
guide to proper condom use (replacing it later with a
revised edition) as well as a list of successful sex
education programs and studies that showed no rise in
sexual activity among teens taught about condoms. "These
are debates that scientific research has closed," said
Riche. "The people who provide the information are now
reopening those debates, taking away the scientific
certainty. It’s more subtle than putting out wrong
information or simply removing all the information —
and, frankly, more effective."

According to the researchers behind "Missing," the
pressure of right-wing ideology has also led scientists
to stop using words like "gay," "sex worker," and
"transgender" in their grant applications. This comes in
the wake of the Traditional Values Coalition’s very long
and damning list of 150 researchers and 200 grants in
the field of high-risk sexual behavior. Then there’s the
case of the morning-after pill, which has yet to appear
as an over-the-counter medication, despite the two
scientific advisory committees that urged the FDA to
make it one. According to "Missing," it was pressure
from conservative groups that led FDA commissioner Mark
McClellan to postpone his expected February 2004
decision on the matter by 90 days.

"Missing" doesn’t concern itself only with absent online
information. It also lists some of the actual
governmental bodies that have disappeared or been
threatened during the Bush administration. In 2001,
George Bush disbanded the President’s Interagency
Council on Women, a group appointed in 1995 by Bill
Clinton to implement strategies developed at the U.N.
Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, as part of
the U.N. Platform for Action. The council was chaired by
Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and
then by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "One of
the things the office did was make sure the president’s
policies reflected women’s issues," said Garza. "That
office is gone. It was one of the first things that was
done away with under this administration."

Reversals are possible. When the Department of Health
and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality changed the wording in a mandated report on the
disparities in healthcare along racial and socioeconomic
lines, suggesting that "disparites" in the diagnosing
and treatment of HIV, diabetes and hypertension among
women of color were actually "differences," people
noticed and complained. A spin like that could be very
detrimental to attitudes and eventual action on behalf
of women of color who are at a disadvantage. The
document was restored to its original wording in
February. "Missing" cites this example, and hopes that
by getting people to pay attention to so many others,
information will be restored.

"In my experience, I would say we are probably just
seeing the tip of the iceberg with this report," said
Riche. "If we know about all these examples, that means
there are many, many more." To that end, the NCRW is
establishing a Misinformation Clearinghouse Web site
through which people can submit examples of information
that is no longer available to them. The Clearinghouse
will also collect and publish a list of sources for
dependable information.

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About the writer Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for
Salon Life.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/04/28/womens_report/index.html