War on Women

Just in case you need some hard facts when people ask why the march was necessary, from a report by the National Women's Law Center:

# The Department of Education, without explanation, "archived" Title IX guidance on preventing sexual harassment in schools, making it unavailable to administrators and parents trying to protect children from sexual harassment.


# The Administration ended the Equal Pay Initiative and has removed all materials on narrowing the wage gap from the Department of Labor's website. The Department of Justice has also dropped cases challenging sex discrimination in employment.


# The Labor Department repealed a rule to help employees obtain paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child.


# The Department of Education reduced Title IX enforcement while it established a Commission to weaken athletics policies that open opportunities for female students.

# The Administration's tax cuts and resulting budget cutbacks are a double whammy for women because they cut services and programs women rely on while providing little tax assistance to low- and moderate-income women.

# Medical research is being undermined and scientific information distorted to serve an anti-abortion and anti-family planning agenda. For example, the National Cancer Institute posted information on its website that falsely suggested there may be a link between abortion and breast cancer.

# The Administration limited the role of a 55-year-old advisory committee designed to promote recruitment and retention of women in the military and appointed new members to the commission who do not support opening new opportunities to women - one of whom called the Army "a vast day-care center, full of unmarried teen-age mothers using it as a welfare home."


# The Administration has selected judicial nominees opposed to critical rights for women and girls. One judicial nominee wrote that wives must "subordinate" themselves to their husbands.


# The Administration proposed funding emergency shelters, crisis hotlines and other domestic violence services at 26% below authorized levels.

The article says the report "...documents the ways both well-publicized and carefully hidden, glaring and subtle, that the Bush Administration is rolling back women's progress in every aspect of their lives."