50 Ways to Improve Women's Lives

The Essential Women's Guide for Achieving Equality, Health, and Success

National Council of Women's Organizations

• Publisher: New World Library
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781577317012
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A powerful new call-to-action series was launched with the New York Times bestselling MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country. The second book in the series, 50 Ways to Improve Women's Lives, written by nationally recognized women, is poised to again become an instrument for change and reinvigorate a movement. 50 Ways to Improve Women's Lives parlays the collective expertise of the National Council of Women's Organizations' 200 member organizations — which include Planned Parenthood, NOW, League of Women Voters, Code Pink, the AAUW, the National Council of Negro Women, and the YWCA — and features 50 personal, inspiring essays with "Helping Ourselves" and "Call-to-Action" sidebars. Covering subjects as diverse as pay equity, reproductive health, child care, racism, and women in leadership, the book addresses topics that affect women (and all of us!) on a personal and political level, and provides readers with ways to move beyond old arguments and turn inspiration into action. Contributors include Madeline Albright, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Eleanor Smeal, Hillary Clinton, Congresswomen Maloney, Slaughter, and Pelosi, and many others.

s e c t i o n

1

Do It for
Your Health

Preserve a Healthy Environment

Jan Schakowsky, U.S. Representative

If you’ve ever inhaled the fumes of a passing bus or a nearby factory or been unable to drink water straight from your own sink, you understand how much environmental issues affect your daily life. Yet the impact of pollution on the body lasts beyond a momentary gasp for fresh air or a bad-tasting sip of water. In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act to protect the public from the known risks of air pollution, such as increased rates of asthma and premature death from lung cancer and heart disease. Yet 30 years later, more than half of the American population – approximately 160 million people – are still breathing unhealthy air.¹

The toll of air pollution on a woman’s body is particularly high. Environmental factors have a major impact on women’s general and reproductive health; they contribute to cancer, respiratory problems, and autoimmune diseases, to name a few consequences. And for those of us who become pregnant, all the toxins in our bodies are directly transferred to our developing fetuses.

Numerous pollutants in our water and air supplies bombard our bodies every day. Mercury, for example, is a particularly toxic pollutant that causes brain damage and interferes with the development of fetuses, babies, and small children. One child in six born in the United States could be at risk for developmental disorders because of mercury exposure in their mothers’ wombs – that adds up to 630,000 children each year.²

Power plants, the primary uncontrolled source of mercury pollution, contribute about 48 tons of mercury to our air every year. Once mercury is released into the air, it settles into our lakes, streams, and rivers. To date, federal, state, and local officials have found mercury pollution in 12 million acres of lakes, estuaries, and wetlands – 30 percent of the national total – and 473,000 miles of streams, rivers, and coastlines. After mercury enters our water, it travels up the food chain, contaminating tuna, lobster, halibut, sea bass, trout, and crab, among other marine life. It’s estimated that as many as 60,000 babies born each year in the United States suffer from neurological damage caused by their mothers’ consumption of mercury-contaminated fish.³

In 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the huge threat that mercury poses to women and to the general public health. The EPA ruled that power plants must use the best available technology to remove that hazardous substance from our environment. Under the EPA’s 2000 ruling, power plants would have reduced their mercury emissions 90 percent by 2008.

Under new leadership, however, the EPA reversed its position in 2004, proposing new power-plant regulations that would require only a 50 to 70 percent reduction by 2018. The EPA’s new proposal essentially ignored the agency’s own expert analysis and disregarded the recommendations of the panel of stakeholders that the agency appointed to work on this issue. Instead, the new proposal catered to the powerful energy industry lobby, placing a higher value on the industry’s profits than on the health of women, children, and our communities.

Environmentalists and public health advocates worked with outraged public officials, including myself, to get citizens to speak out against the proposed regulations. The public outcry succeeded in delaying the final regulations and in convincing the EPA to commit to doing additional analysis on the issue before making any final decisions, extending the deadline for the final rule to March 15, 2005.

We have a right to clean air and water, to good health for ourselves and our families. Our challenge is to fight for strong regulations, force the EPA to enforce these regulations, and require the energy industry to adhere to meaningful and rapid reductions in mercury pollution. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations – for the health and well-being of us all.

CALL TO ACTION

Learn more about environmental health and its relation to women’s lives (www.niehs.nih.gov/external/facts.htm).

Contact one of the many organizations committed to environmental health and justice (see Resources).

Go to the EPA’s website and register your opinions and comments at http://docket.epa.gov/edkpub/index.jsp.

Learn where candidates stand on environmental issues. The League of Conservation Voters (www.lcv.org) provides a scorecard on how your elected officials voted on environmental issues.

Make your views known when environmental legislation or regulations are being considered.

Commit to meaningful action in your daily life by recycling, using energy-efficient transportation and power, consuming wisely, and preserving a healthy environment.

Get Health Care for Everyone

Dixie Horning, Executive Director,
UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health

Several years ago, I gathered with a group of friends. My dear friend Yolanda, a 35-year-old Latina, was upset that night, having just lost her mother on the heels of giving birth to her second child. Bereft, she went off to lie down and have some private moments of reflection.

A few minutes later, I went to check on her and was shocked to find her in a cold sweat. She complained of feeling dizzy and having pain in her neck and jaw. Even though she wasn’t experiencing chest pain, it seemed like a heart attack: I called 911 and rushed back to our friends, some of whom were doctors and nurses. Everyone denied the possibility that Yolanda could be having a heart attack. “She’s too young,” they said, as well as, “Hispanic women don’t have heart conditions” and, “It must be stress or a panic attack.” But I couldn’t let go of my fears. When the EMTs arrived, they too said it wasn’t possible for her to be having a heart attack. After she arrived at the hospital and went through several inconclusive tests, the doctors performed an EKG. Later that night, Yolanda had a quadruple bypass. She almost died, due to an incorrect assumption that a woman of her age and ethnic background couldn’t have heart disease. As this story illustrates, the medical community still knows little about the health of women, particularly women of color, largely because the vast...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction. Martha Burk, Chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations
• Section 1 Do It for Your Health
• Section 2 Practice Real Family Values
• Section 3 Grow Your Money, Grow Your Mind
• Section 4 Lead the Way
• Section 5 Forge a Path for the Next Generation
• Section 6 Build the Community You Want to Live In
• Section 7 Reach for the World
• Afterword Women at the Global Decision-Making Table Madeleine K. Albright
• Endnotes
• Resources
• Contributors