Green Party

Congress Should Ensure Equal Rights for Women on International Women's Day.

Thursday, March 07, 2002

The Green Party urges ratification of the U.N. Convention on women's rights and passage of the Fair Pay Act.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party candidates and leaders, marking International Women's Day, March 8, called on the Senate to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the U.N. more than two decades ago.  

"The situation of women in places like Afghanistan proves how urgent it is for the U.S. to endorse the Convention," said Starlene Rankin, a member of Chicago Women In Black and Green candidate for the Chicago School Council. "It's the only comprehensive international treaty guaranteeing women's human rights and the prevention of discrimination against women. Women worldwide believe that only when they are full and equal participants in governance will we be able to truly manage the problems of the world." 

In late 2001, Greens pushed for involvement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in the formation of a post-Taliban democratic government; several Green activists, including International Committee co-chair Annie Goeke, are members of the international peace network Women in Black. Medea Benjamin of the California Greens led a delegation of women from Global Exchange on a fact-finding trip, meeting women in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in late November, 2001. 

Greens also urge Congress to recognize equal rights for women in the U.S. by passing the Fair Pay Act. 

"Full-time women workers earn 73% of what full-time working men earn," said Anne-Bernadette Weiner, a member of the Illinois Green Party Executive Committee, Campus Greens organizer, and women's rights activist. "It's time to enact Federal Fair Pay legislation." 

"The U.S. pay gap exists because women and people of color are still segregated into a few low-paying occupations," said Weiner, noting that more than half of all women workers hold sales, clerical, and service jobs. "The more an occupation is dominated by women or minorities, the greater the wage gap; the less it pays, the lower Social Security benefits are reckoned. That's why so many older women retire impoverished." 

The Green Party of the United States also supports the establishment of a living wage, making child care universal, and enacting universal health care through a national health insurance plan. 60% of minimum wage workers are women; millions of working and poor women and their families have been denied health coverage and reproductive choice because of insurance company and HMO bureaucracy.  

"Greens support affirmative action for women," added Gloria Mattera, Green candidate for New York City Council in District 39 (Brooklyn) in 2001. "We favor family-friendly work policies such as flex time, job sharing, on-site child care, provision of benefits to domestic partners, including same-sex couples, passage of the national Employee Non-Discrimination Act outlawing job bias based on sexuality, and measures against sexual harassment and other workplace abuses. Unlike Democrats and Republicans, the Green Party endorses all of these policies in its platform."  

"Feminism -- the notion that women deserve full civil rights, equality, and freedom -- is one of the key values of the Green Party," noted Dr. Jonathan Farley, Green candidate for U.S. Congress in Tennessee.  

Green political leaders around the world include Wangari Maathai (Kenya), Ingrid Betancourt (Colombia), Dominque Voynet (former Environmental Minister of France ), Satoko Watanabe (Japan), Jeanette Fitzsimons (New Zealand), Natalia Escudero (Mexico), Lotta Hedstrom (Member of the Swedish Parliament); Medea Benjamin, Carol Miller, and 2000 Vice Presidential candidate Winona LaDuke in the U.S.; and the late Petra Kelly, founder of the first Green Party, in Germany. Three of the six members of the Steering Committee of the Green Party of the United States (Anita Rios, Nathalie Paravicini, and Jo Chamberlain) are women, and the annual slates of U.S. Green candidates include a large percentage of women. 

More Information:
The Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org 
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan http://www.rawa.org 
Women in Black http://www.igc.org/balkans/wib/ 
Global Exchange http://www.globalexchange.org 

Contacts:
Nancy Allen, Media Coordinator, 207-326-4576, nallen@acadia.net 
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, scottmclarty@yahoo.com
Dean Myerson, Political Coordinator, 202-319-7191, GPHQ--at--gp.org 

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News Release - Thursday, March 07, 2002

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