Media Advisory

U.S. Women Speakout at the United Nations:
“We Don’t Have It All, We Do It All!”
Feminists Demand National Healthcare, Universal Childcare, Paid Parental Leave

When: International Women’s Day, March 8th, 2007 12:30-1:15
Where: Across from the UN, Ralph Bunche Park, 1st Ave. & 43rd St.

At the United Nations on International Women's Day, Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement will expose and protest the myth that U.S. women are the most liberated in the world. The group argues, women in the U.S. don’t HAVE it all, they DO it all. The lack of social wage programs in the U.S, Redstockings believes, sets women back to dependence on marriage and employers for basic necessities like health insurance.

According to the Redstockings publication, Women’s Liberation and National Healthcare: Confronting the Myth of America, “In the U.S. when feminists fought against the concept of the family wage, where the man supposedly supported the family and women’s employment was considered undesirable and ‘pin money’, we did so without the kind of ‘social wage’ that was already in place as an alternative in …European countries. The “social wage,” from public education (a form of child care, let’s not forget) to eldercare to national healthcare for everyone, are programs as important to freeing women from unpaid, unwilling service in the home, in the family and in the nation as is the right to contraception and abortion.”

In 145 other countries—both industrialized and developing countries—women have paid parental leave; many have free childcare, and most other industrialized countries have universal healthcare and shorter working hours, making women less dependent on men and employers. “I thought that the healthcare that I received through the city while I was pregnant was great,” says Jen Sunderland, Chair of the Redstockings Allies and Veterans Social Wage Committee, “but when it ended three months after giving birth, I realized I was only seen as worthy of coverage if I was pregnant. I didn't even count as a person. That's why I am fighting for universal healthcare, as a feminist and as a person.” ...

On International Women’s Day, at the United Nations, women will testify from personal experience on the true conditions they face in the U.S. and puncture the heavily hyped notion that the U.S. women have won it all. Redstockings calls on women in the U.S. and abroad to unite in solidarity and demand these crucial steps towards women's liberation and economic independence.

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Contacts:
Jen Sunderland, Coordinator, Women’s Liberation Taskforce for National Health Care  
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Allison Guttu, Co-Chair Social Wage Committee of Redstockings Allies and Veterans
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The Social Wage Committee is an initiative of Redstockings, the long lasting women's liberation group of the 1960s that brought us the first abortion speakout and the slogan Sisterhood is Powerful. The Social Wage Committee does organizing for social wage programs - programs like universal national health care, universal public childcare, paid parental leave, a shorter workweek, and more.

http://www.womensliberation.org/priorities/overthrowing-the-double-day/position-papers