The exclusion of women from the recent Congressional hearings on requiring religious institutions to provide their employees with health insurance that offers some benefit for birth control reminded me of my Communications/Journalism thesis. Everything's different since 1960 and nothing's changed.
For my senior thesis, I completed an extensive analysis of the framing of the "Pill" debate by two prominent news magazines in the years leading up to its legalization in the US in 1960 by combing through all the articles they published on the subject. One magazine tended toward a conservative slant and the other a liberal slant. After my research, I concluded both magazines supported approval of the Pill, but for very different reasons. The Newsweek articles emphasized the value that reliable birth control would have on the quality of a married woman's overall health by preventing a high number of pregnancies in quick succession. The U.S. News and World Report articles took a more Malthusianian approach and supported the idea of poor married women using the Pill to prevent overpopulation by the lower classes. Both endorsed the idea of doctors only prescribing the drug to married women.
The voice of women was conspicuously absent in the conversation. The doctors interviewed were men. The government agents and members of Congress quoted were men. The religious leaders featured were men. Even when asking the opinion of lay people how they felt about legalization of the Pill, only one woman was mentioned. The lone speaker for all women was a "pretty young brunette wife" (I'm picturing Mary Tyler Moore circa The Dick Van Dyke Show) waiting in her doctor's office. Not only were men better equipped to discuss women's health, they also knew best when it came to ethics, science, metaphysics and faith.
In addition to the Newsweek and USN&WR articles, I read other periodicals. From the New York Times to Playboy, Show to the medical journals the messengers remained male.
I remember as I read all the articles written in the late 50s thinking how much the US had changed ... how different it is for women now.
And it is different. It really is. And yet, in an odd, unexpected (to me) way, nothing's changed and that realization has left me gobsmacked.
Perhaps a bigger issue is why do unemployed people not have health coverage of the employed in the first place?
ReplyDeleteNow I don’t really understand the whole “witnesses to congressional committees to make laws system” but I’m assuming in this example these first five “witnesses” were religious leaders of big groups of followers. So in this case yes it’s men again but only because women haven’t been inventing enough religions lately. And it’s really quite easy you starve yourself or take drugs while meditating on the meaning of live or for a quicker way you just make up some appealing yet foreboding stories and then start preaching and before you know it you’re the leader of a religion. There are quite a lot already running and obviously they have a head start but if that gets in your way then it’s just like unemployed people choosing to be lazy and not have health insurance.
Your observations leave me trying to not be defensive for my gender (because it is my knee-jerk reaction) and trying to understand what this has to say about humans and our social organizations. All animals have an order and for reasons beyond our intellectual grasp, they seem to be hard-pressed to alter.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how different the results would be had there been inclusion of women in those positions of power over the decades? What would our feminine voice dictate differently? Liberals & conservative women combined?
And I wonder how men feel about the power-plays women have that, despite all efforts to match feminine power, cannot be circumvented?
I have this sense that our biological imperative is more at play here than the intellectual argument of gender stratification, yet we see things on a myopic level. But then again, that could be all part of the Man's plan...
I agree with Benjamin's point that this situation also highlights the need to not expect businesses to altruistically do what is in the best interest of our citizens' health, nor should we entrust insurance companies to do so (the process of establishing UCR is akin to the process of defining Congressional districts). The US health system is broken ... we treat symptoms, not the root cause and virtually no investment is made in wellness, prevention and health promotion. However, what I was speaking to was the striking resemblance between the conversations about legalizing the pill in the late 50s and making the pill available to all women today.
ReplyDeleteWe've come a long way, baby.