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Women's legal rights forum an eye-opener

By Julie Muhlstein
Herald Columnist

If you're in a mood for light reading, don't look here.

Stick with today's weighty topic -- women's legal rights here and around the world -- and you may learn some things you ought to know. I did.

The invitation to a forum on women's legal rights came with an order: "Ignore No More." I paid attention.

Wednesday's event, presented by the Zonta Club of Everett, was the first of what the service and advocacy group promises will be annual Ignore No More forums. The legal-rights topic went hand-in-hand with the organization's mission.

Started in 1929 and part of Zonta International, the Everett club works to boost women's opportunities close to home while supporting efforts to improve the status of women globally.

"We're not just a service and charity group," said Judith Strand, a member of the club's advocacy committee.

More than 100 people, representing local, state and federal elected officials, businesses and social services, came to the Everett Golf and Country Club on Wednesday to hear two speakers approach women's legal rights from different directions.

I'm embarrassed to say I previously knew next to nothing about what Nuket Kardam had to say. Kardam is a political science professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and a native of Turkey.

"CEDAW," she told her audience, "was accepted by the United Nations in 1979." Kardam went on to explain that 185 countries had signed on to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- "but the U.S. has not."

We should hardly be surprised that the United States doesn't support what's been called an international bill of rights for women. Our own country's Equal Rights Amendment, so far ratified by 35 of a needed 38 states, has yet to become part of the U.S. Constitution.

The international convention, Kardam said, compels countries that sign on to bring gender equality to their legal systems. It calls for equal rights to education and employment, access to family planning resources, and equal opportunities in political life.

Kardam said U.S. reluctance to accept the convention is largely due to monitoring of compliance by an outside committee. While that's an understandable concern, I was amazed I'd heard so little about the issue. Considering how often we hear about the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, ratified by more than 100 countries but not the United States, the women's issue seems well under our awareness radar.

By the way, among other countries refusing to sign the women's convention are North Korea and Iran. In practical terms, Kardam said, it's meant a change in Turkish civil code that once recognized men as the head of households. "It now says both men and women together are responsible for families," she said.

Kardam shared many examples of positive change, including police agencies in South America that no longer send battered women back home to their abusers.

Lisa Stone, executive director of the Northwest Women's Law Center, also spoke at the forum, which was moderated by Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Janice Ellis. The nonprofit public interest law organization pushes legal rights for women through the courts and the state Legislature. The law center also offers legal rights education and referral.

Some of what Stone shared are statistics we've heard often: Women earn less than 75 cents for every dollar that men make, she said. For black women, it's 63 cents, and for Hispanic women, 59 cents.

She also said that while about one-third of American women are raped sometime in their lives, only 15 percent ever report it.

Here's something I didn't know.

Until a change signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire in April, landlords could refuse to rent to someone because a protection order against an abuser shows up on a credit report.

Stone also said that refusing medical services is a growing issue. She told a wrenching story of a 14-year-old rape victim who, accompanied by her mother, was refused emergency contraception at a Wenatchee hospital. It took a nurse's call to the home of the hospital director to get the teen medication she was entitled to by law, Stone said.

"We need to educate ourselves about all the laws that protect us, or they're meaningless," Stone added.

Knowledge is power, we've all heard that before. We have another kind of power, too.

"We can vote for people who uphold women's rights," Stone said.



Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.