False “Progress” At Augusta National”: Three-Quarters Of The Way Through The 20th Century
The London Olympics, as I wrote two weeks ago, turned out to be a great showcase of female athletic talent and the progress American women — and women in general — have made in sports, particularly in the 40 years since Title IX became law and guaranteed them equal access. Today’s announcement that Augusta National Golf Club — the Georgia country club that plays host to men’s professional golf’s biggest tournament — is admitting its first female memberswould seem, then, another sign of progress for female athletes just a week after the Olympics ended.
Not hardly.
Chairman Billy Payne certainly deserves a little credit for taking a step the men before him would not and admitting the club’s first two female members — former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and business executive Darla Moore — both of whom immediately accepted. A little praise, however, is all Augusta deserves for progressing roughly (no pun intended) three quarters of the way through the 20th century.
Augusta, full of green-clad white men who for years denied women and blacks the opportunity to join and play its fabled course, has long epitomized the worst stereotypes of golf, a sport that has made genuine efforts to increase opportunities for women and minorites in recent years, as a game for the white, male one-percent. It didn’t admit its first black member until 1990, 15 years after Lee Elder became the first African-American to play in the Masters. Now, it is admitting its first female members a full 63 years after the foundation of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
The club didn’t relent on its membership policy when it faced widespread criticism and a mass protest led by Dr. Martha Burk in 2003; instead, it dug in deeper. And it didn’t relent earlier this year when it didn’t extend membership to Virginia Rometty, the chief executive of IBM, one of the Masters three chief sponsors (the CEOs of the other two sponsors, as well as Rometty’s predecessor at IBM, are members). In 2011, it banned a female journalist from the locker room, drawing protests from news organizations and other reporters.
Augusta, make no mistake, is still the bastion of inequality and elitism it has always been. It’s just a little less so now. As far as credit for the “progress” Augusta National has supposedly made, I’ll reserve that for the day the club hosts a women’s tournament and finally joins the rest of us in the 21st century.
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, August 20, 2012
“Gender Pay Gap Is Alive And Well”: Facts About the Health Insurance Compensation Gap
Unfortunately the gender pay gap is alive and well: Women in the United States earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men in 2011—an average of $10,622 in lost wages every year. Yet that earnings ratio actually understates the extent of women’s disparate treatment in the workforce because they also experience a health insurance compensation gap. Below are the answers to some key questions about this gap, as well as how the Affordable Care Act—the new health reform law—works to close it.
Q: What is the health insurance compensation gap?
A: Women are less likely than men to receive health care coverage through their employer and are more likely to have higher out-of-pocket medical costs. This results in a health insurance compensation gap on top of the wage gap.
Q: What is the difference between men’s and women’s access to job-based coverage?
A: Women are significantly less likely than men to have access to their own employer-based coverage. Less than half of women (48 percent) are eligible to get health insurance through their jobs, compared with 57 percent of men, in part because women are more likely to work for small businesses and in low-wage jobs. Although two-thirds of women between the ages of 18 and 64 have employer-based insurance coverage, only 38 percent of women are enrolled in an insurance plan they receive through their own employer,1 while 24 percent receive employer-based coverage as a dependent on their spouse’s or partner’s plan. In contrast, 50 percent of men receive insurance coverage through their own employer, and only 13 percent of men receive dependent coverage.
Q: What is the financial impact of the compensation gap?
A: The gap in health insurance compensation translates into women losing an average of $4,508 for single coverage and $10,944 for family coverage in employer contributions to health benefits each year. Given that two-thirds of mothers are either primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families, the compensation gap is a significant burden on the budgets of many American families.
Q: Where do women turn when they don’t have access to job-based coverage?
A: When working women cannot obtain employer-based coverage and earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, they must turn to the individual health insurance market. Yet women often face discrimination in the individual market—they are charged more for coverage, denied coverage for gender-specific conditions, and sold plans that inadequately cover their health needs.
Q: How much more do women spend out of pocket on health care?
A: Even with employer-based coverage, women have higher out-of-pocket medical costs than men. Overall, women of reproductive age spend 68 percent more out of pocket than men on health care, in part because their reproductive health care needs require more frequent health care visits and are not always adequately covered by their insurance. Among women insured by employer-based plans, oral contraceptives alone account for one-third of their total out-of-pocket health care spending.
Q: How are women affected by the compensation gap?
A: The combination of being paid less than their male counterparts and having higher out-of-pocket medical expenses leaves many women struggling to pay their medical bills or trading off other necessities such as food, heat, and electricity to cover their medical costs. Fifty-two percent of women report delaying or going without needed care because of cost (not filling prescriptions or skipping tests, treatments, or follow-up visits), compared with 39 percent of men. Women also report higher rates of medical debt than their male counterparts. And one study showed that more than half of low-income women are underinsured, meaning they spend 10 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket health care costs and premiums.
Q: How will the Affordable Care Act help reduce the health insurance compensation gap?
A: The Affordable Care Act institutes a series of reforms designed to drastically expand coverage and contain health insurance costs for all Americans. Many of the reforms enacted by the new health law have been and will continue to be especially beneficial for women, as they help resolve many of the problems outlined above. The health care bill:
- Provides insurance premium assistance through income-based tax credits on a sliding scale beginning in 2014
- Expands Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level—about $31,809 for a family of four in 2011
- Allows young people to remain on their parents’ health plans until the age of 26
- Ends discrimination that has left women paying up to 150 percent more for the same coverage purely because of their gender
- Bans insurance companies from denying coverage to women through pre-existing condition exclusions Ensures that women receive vital preventive care at no additional cost—significantly including contraceptive coverage, which will eliminate one of the primary sources of women’s out-of-pocket health care spending
- Mandates that maternity benefits be covered as an essential part of women’s health care
- Caps co-pays and deductibles, which will help reduce the amount women pay in out-of-pocket expenses
Through these reforms that level the playing field for women in the health care market, the Affordable Care Act will help reduce the compensation gap that exacerbates the disparity between men and women’s earnings.
BY: Jessica Arons and Lindsay Rosenthal, Center For American Progress, June 1, 2012
“Creating A Whole New Meaning” In Utah: The Difference Between Contraception And Mainlining Heroin
Utah Governor Gary Herbert vetoed an abstinence-only sex ed bill, prompting the measure’s co-sponsor to go on the offensive.
Last week, I mentioned two state legislatures had passed abstinence-only sex education bills. While Wisconsin’s governor was already supportive of the measure, in Utah, Governor Gary Herbert was less certain. The measure would have banned any discussion of contraception, or for that matter, homosexuality. The current law in Utah already requires parents to “opt-in” if the course includes discussion of contraceptives, but this measure would have actually removed even the option for students to learn about more than simply abstinence. It had passed overwhelmingly in both chambers, despite protests and opposition from the state PTA and teachers’ groups.
Late Friday, after protests, phone calls, and significant pressure from both sides, Herbert announced he had vetoed the measure. In his statement, he said he was unwilling to say “the State knows better than Utah’s parents,” noting a majority of parents choose to have their children learn about contraception. Herbert described himself as pushing “the reset button” on the conversation around sex-ed in the state.
But given the national rhetoric around sex right now, I’m not so sure a simply flourish of his pen will put the genie back in the bottle. Senate co-sponsor Margaret Dayton told the Salt Lake Tribune that “teaching children about contraception is comparable to telling kids not to do drugs, then showing them how to ‘mainline’ heroin.”
The national conversation around sex has shifted radically. Dayton is not alone in seeing sex as akin to one of the most dangerous street drugs around. A dangerous and corrupting activity that puts our youth at risk. Meanwhile, non-radical conservatives generally see sex as a healthy and normal activity, at least among adults, and teaching teenagers to use contraception means teaching them to be responsible. There’s such a major rift between the two sides right now, it’s hard to see what kind of conversation can be had.
Of course, a poll in Utah showed 58 percent of residents favored sex-ed that included contraceptives. So maybe they don’t need to have a conversation in the first place.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, March 19, 2012
Defying “A Throwback To 40 Years Ago”: Americans Still Support The Birth-Control Mandate
To go back to The Washington Post poll for a moment, there is a little good news if the Obama administration is still fretting over its handling of the contraception mandate.
By a margin of 61 percent to 35 percent, Americans believe that health insurers should be required to cover the full cost of birth control for women. This even extends to religious-affiliated employers—like hospitals—which were the focal point of the controversy. According to the poll, 79 percent of those who support the birth-control mandate also support it for religious-affiliated employers.
Now that the controversy is over, for the most part, it’s obvious that this is good territory for the administration, and they should continue to press their advantage. Already, as The New York Times reports, Republican missteps have created an opening for Obama to improve his standing with moderate and Republican-leaning women. Indeed, as the year goes on, I expect that this view will become a little more prevalent:
“We all agreed that this seemed like a throwback to 40 years ago,” said Ms. Russell, 57, a retired teacher from Iowa City who describes herself as an evangelical Christian and “old school” Republican of the moderate mold. Until the baby shower, just two weeks ago, she had favored Mitt Romney for president.
Not anymore. She said she might vote for President Obama now. “I didn’t realize I had a strong viewpoint on this until these conversations,” Ms. Russell said. As for the Republican presidential candidates, she added: “If they’re going to decide on women’s reproductive issues, I’m not going to vote for any of them. Women’s reproduction is our own business.”
In the same way that Democrats should avoid preemptive celebration, Republicans should proceed with caution. It’s one thing to alienate single women, who lean Democratic anyway. It’s something else entirely to scare suburban white women from the GOP coalition. In a world where that happens, it’s hard to imagine Republican control of anything, much less the White House.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, March 12, 2012
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