Women’s representation in the United States is under attack by the administration and the right-wing movement. They are prevented from joining the workforce, getting access to proper healthcare, and letting their voices be heard. David Ramadan and guest co-host Dr. Bonnie Stabile discuss the current state of the women’s movement with Katherine Spillar, Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine. Together, they emphasize the need to secure more women in decision-making positions of power to shape laws and policies centered on women's equality. Kathy also talks about her mission to put women’s stories and challenges into the spotlight, something which mainstream media greatly ignores.
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This episode’s conversation focuses on two questions that remain central to public life in America. Where women's rights stand nowadays and why women's representation in power still matters so much. Joining me as co-host is Dr. Bonnie Stabile, Associate Professor here at the Schar School and Founder and Director of George Mason's Gender and Policy Center. Bonnie's work focuses on gender, public policy, and women's representation, and she is the Author of Women, Power, and Rape Culture. The Politics and Policy of Underrepresentation.
Our guest is Kathy Spillar, Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine and Executive Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, which she helped found in 1987. She has long been one of the leading national voices on women's equality, abortion rights, anti-violence advocacy, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Together, we'll discuss where the women's movement is now, what's changed since Dobbs, what hasn't changed enough, and why representation is still not just symbolic but deeply consequential. Kathy, Bonnie, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Great to be with you.
Full-Scale Attack On Women’s Rights In America
All right, let's start broad. Kathy, if you had to describe the current state of women's rights in America in one minute, how would you do it?
I can probably do it in one word. Precarious. We're under full-scale attack by this administration and by the right wing at all levels of public policy, doing everything they can to turn back the clock. Of course, the Dobbs decision was a major turning point in this fight, the elimination of the federal right to access abortion. We've seen states outlawing abortion, bans that are so severe, we're now seeing women die unnecessarily in emergency rooms because of the hesitation of medical staff to treat them for miscarriages in process, because a miscarriage is an abortion.
We have seen an attack on women and gender studies like never before. We now see universities closing down their women and gender studies programs. We've seen an attack even on funding violence against women shelters across the country. The list goes on. An attack on contraception, an attack on programs that women and their children disproportionately depend on, SNAP and Medicaid. Something like 80% of births in this country are covered by Medicaid. It's a full-scale attack, and it's not going to stop until we see the result of elections and securing more women in positions of power, exactly the underlying theme of this show. We need more women in decision-making positions of power to be able to stop this attack.
Thank you. Bonnie, you want to follow up?
Yes, I think that the consequences where women's rights stand now are suffering major setbacks that most of us didn't anticipate at this level. I would say I started the Gender and Policy Center at the Schar School right after the school got its naming grant gift, and we were one of the first two Schar initiatives funded by the newly named school along with the Hayden Center for Intelligence. The argument that we made in the proposal was that something that was central to public policy was looking at disparities in outcomes across populations. That's something that we're trained as analysts to do.
What I observed at the time was that we see differences. Women are underrepresented in positions of power across the board, that women are overrepresented in adverse policy outcomes across the board, and that we can make a difference in that. That those things are of analytic importance, they're of moral importance, and that we have the tools as an academic institution and as analysts to address them. We look at two main areas. Values, such as autonomy and justice and the principle of doing no harm and beneficence of doing good. We want to make sure those values in a democracy are safeguarded.
We also very pragmatically can look at outcomes, and we can say that when there we see the setbacks of these rights, that those translate to data points in morbidity and mortality. I spent a lot of time doing health policy, editing a health policy journal for many years. Those indicators, which really are about death and suffering, when you can translate any public policy to that, even if it's if there's a traffic sign some place, because if you take it away, there might be an accident. A lot of safeguards in the law when they're removed really lead to detectable numbers in those very important things central to our lives both in values and in quantifiable outcomes.
That's why women's rights or the rights of all in the United States of America are important for us to contemplate and then, as public policy analysts, that's our job to do that. Where women's rights stand now is that we're seeing the elimination of data sets, we're seeing the retraction of scientific information, we're seeing the erasure of women and LGBTQ+ population from data that the government tracks and the elimination of studies on health, on workplace outcomes, on pretty much everything. You can't make a case for law or policy, you can't show that a bad is occurring, and you can't show progress in the good if you don't have the data.
It's interesting that the evisceration is beyond just law and policy, it's at academic centers that can speak to the veracity of and investigate the veracity of claims. Why do we need this law or policy? Whenever we propose a policy, we postulate that it can do good. I teach policy analysis and I teach program evaluation. Policy analysis is the "what should we do" question and "how can we substantiate the existence of problems," and program evaluation is the "how did we do" question.
We've done this policy, and how did it work out? We need the data tools to do all of that. We see this assault on rights coming at us from all directions, and it's very concerning. I would argue that we started years ago with this work, it's paradoxically needed now more than ever. One of the reasons that gender and policy centers, gender studies across the country are being eliminated is it disables us from being able to answer those questions while we're in the midst of an unprecedented, unforeseen retraction of rights.
So precarious indeed.
Yeah, and I would just add to what Bonnie was discussing. There's no question that the attack on women and gender studies programs is not only to dismantle this very critical analysis and research that's being done, but it's also the field of women and gender studies really began in the early '70s and just exploded in popularity. It's been one of the most popular academic programs at the undergraduate level on university campuses all across the country. It has raised two generations looking at the world very differently and understanding the world differently than they would get in just regular academic courses of either history or political science or even research.
Tweet: Without full access to reproductive health care, your economic ability to participate in the workforce equally is also compromised.
The attack is to dismember this incredible network of research that has shown a light on not only discrimination and the harm that it causes but also on policy perspectives that would improve lives for women and girls here, all over the world, and frankly for everyone. One point I'd like to emphasize is that it is absolutely part of gutting the development of this academic field. In addition, when you look at the practical real-world impacts of underrepresentation of women in policymaking, it's no more clear than in the states that are passing these virtually total bans if not total ban on access to abortion.
Increasingly, they now want to limit access even to contraceptives. It's throughout the South, where women's representation in those state legislatures is the smallest. Where you've got equal representation and there's only three states that have ever achieved that, Nevada, New Mexico, and I think Washington state. They have the most robust policies guaranteeing access to reproductive health care services across the board.
It's the fact that women are in those rooms in equal numbers, being part of the conversation about fundamental issues that impact all women and girls, that you have this stark difference in the outcome of those policies. These policies have real-world impacts. As I said, women are dying now in emergency rooms where these policies are in force. It does make a huge difference, and it's not only supported by the research, but you can just look at the results and see the impact.
Kathy, for readers who don't follow these issues every day, what are the specific rights or protections that are most at risk? Give me one and two.
It's access to health care and not only including direct access, but now some states want to even change and the federal law and the federal law is always shaky in terms of how it's interpreted, and this administration's tried to weaken that, requiring hospitals to treat you if you show up in an emergency room, no questions asked. They must treat you to not only save your life but to ensure that your health is not permanently compromised as a result of whatever emergency medical condition you are experiencing. That's one area, but also the area of employment and economic prosperity.
We've seen the attack on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We've seen the attack on the Labor Department, getting rid of the Women's Bureau, on the Education Department, gutting the enforcement of Title IX, which has been so critical in ensuring that women and girls have access equally to educational opportunities. Those are the kinds of things that will have longer-term impact on women's economic opportunity and status. Those are two broad areas that are very interlinked, by the way, because without access to reproductive health care, full access, your economic ability to participate in the workforce equally is also compromised.
Women Are Everywhere – But There Is Still Work To Be Done
A lot of people would say we've made progress. Women are everywhere now. The numbers you're telling me and the lived reality tell a more complicated story. Elaborate.
No question. You've got to look beneath just "women are everywhere." Frankly, it's also just a feeling that women are everywhere. We're only about 27% of the United States Congress, but if you ask people what their concept of representation is, the number they give you will be much higher simply because that's who they're seeing in the media from time to time or in business. We give such visibility to the few women who have made it to the top ranks, and that leads you to believe that women are doing just fine, when in reality the representation numbers are very bad and have hardly improved, really, over the last two decades.
There has been progress, there's no question, but all of this is being threatened now by this right-wing agenda that is playing out in multiple ways and on multiple fronts that is being resisted, by the way, but still, the power of the federal budget is huge, the power of federal law and state law is significant. We are seeing the result of that, there's no question about that.
I'd say further that there are clearly coordinated efforts to prevent women from being in the workforce to the same extent they were. I'd like to talk a little bit about why that matters. If you read Forbes or Harvard Business Review, you understand that having a diverse workforce and leadership team leads to better outcomes. Most of the research tells us that. That you can see around corners. It's a values question for a democracy to have proportional representation of the people that are in that democracy, but it also leads to better outcomes. The business community seems to know that, and a lot of people in public service know that too.
I was thinking about you have a lot of reproductive-related policy and women's health policy being made by a Congress that is 70%-plus men. I was reminded of we're all old enough to remember Senator Ted Stevens saying that the internet was a series of tubes. I don't know if you remember that in 2006, that famous statement. I thought, "This is analogous to reproductive rights." there's a bunch of men in Congress who think it's a system of tubes, and they really don't know what they're talking about.
Tweet: You have a lot of reproductive-related and women’s health policies being made by a Congress made up of 70% men.
We have a Virginia representative, Holly Seibold, who went and gave like a menstruation talk to all the sheriffs in Virginia. She was like, "Okay, this is why it's important to have understanding of women's bodily functioning in prison systems, for instance, so that we can provide menstrual supplies in the appropriate number and respond appropriately to this."
There's a lot of different things. I wrote my dissertation on human cloning policy. Legislators can't know everything about science and the human body. Certainly, men are capable of understanding this, but they're not as interested. They're more interested in controlling it than they are understanding it and advancing it. I would say representation matters for those reasons.
Why We Need More People Fighting For Women’s Equality
Let me challenge you just a little bit there. I'm a former legislator. I certainly didn't know much about agriculture either, I didn't know much about brain science either, and I'm admitting I didn't know much about women's issues either. However, that didn't make me an ineffective legislator, and gender was not necessarily a requirement in order for me to understand any of those issues. There is that argument, and the question to you is, is there really a difference between having more women in office or having more leaders, regardless of gender, who are willing to fight explicitly for women's equality?
I would say yes to both. I would say the first is, given the extent to which women are underrepresented and we see related outcomes that research shows us are demonstrated by that lack of women's representation, I do think we have many champions who are men, many allies, many people as you say who are earnest and well-meaning. I'm thinking of Don Beyer who I know you interviewed about AI.
Great friend, great Congressman, and a fellow George Mason student now.
Right, absolutely. He has a women's leadership conference every year that I’ve had the pleasure of introducing the George Mason community for him. I bring my new leadership group every summer to his office. He's a great example of a strong ally. The research does tell us that when women are in office in more closely approaching proportional numbers, that we have more family-friendly, woman-friendly, health-friendly outcomes and that their presence does make a difference in outcomes.
I would say one example of that is, for instance, paid family leave. This is a great example of a policy mechanism that leads to downstream efficiencies. If you did a cost-benefit analysis and if you do it over a long enough time period, if you have paid family leave, wherever that policy exists, you have better educational outcomes for children, you have better mental health, physical health outcomes for every member of the family, but very importantly to children who will either help us or hurt us over the course of their lifetime.
Having paid family leave makes a difference for the rest of the life of that child, it's demonstrably true by research. That's just a well-informed decision. People see it, and it is often politically haggled over as an unfair benefit to women. Some of the things that are said to be unfair benefits to women, like time and place to breastfeed and paid family leave, are really of benefit to the whole society. Aren't we raising a future generation of citizens who we want to be give the best possible start in life?
Tweet: Having paid family leave makes a difference for the rest of the life of a child.
Research supports that. What I would say is what we would like to do as academics is to continue investigating that. No research question is ever settled. We will continuously study policies to make sure we get the best outcomes. If we're being kneecapped by an inability to fund those studies and studies that are said to be unfair, which really just demonstrably benefit society at large.
It's not about creating an adversarial relationship, but if the rescission of rights is so egregious, we really have to speak back to that and forthrightly. I know that you're an ally, Don Beyer's an ally, so many people that I can't even think off the top of my head right now but to name, to say like, "Yes, absolutely, we want to enlist you and stand by you and know that you are there for us."
Do you prefer a woman than a man?
No, I prefer the outcomes. As a matter of fairness and justice in democracy, I think that women should not be so underrepresented. It's not going well for us, David. Let me just say that, for instance, I wrote this book which I wasn't hoping to write a book with rape culture in the title, but what the research shows is that that is a systematically under addressed problem. Violence against women, harassment of women is a systematic problem that goes under addressed.
To quote President Washington of our own great university, who as an engineer said, "Systems are designed to get the results they get." the results that our system gets is that three women die every day at the hands of intimate partners in the United States of America. We now have an administration that is saying to us, "We want to protect women." The President said, "I'm going to protect women whether they want it or not." honestly, what he's trying to protect me from is a trans person attacking me in the bathroom, which the data for that is it's just ridiculous.
I was hoping not to bring the President in on this but because you know I can't control myself here, I'm going to go off on the President.
I don't even want to do that, but I just want to say that this is a false flag. Women are not at risk from trans people. Like, that is just ridiculous. We are at risk from 80% of rapes are not reported. A quarter of all undergraduates are sexually assaulted. Violence against women is a perennial, historic, under addressed problem, and it insults the intelligence of women and threatens our very lives to leave it unaddressed and to tell us, "I'm going to protect your intimate spaces," which is a very icky characterization. Any women I know I’ve been in public bathrooms where a man was there who was unwanted, and it wasn't a trans person. I'd be happy to have a trans person in the bathroom. It’s creepy guys who are coming in the bathroom.
Ad also, that is not our biggest problem. If we had better trained law enforcement, better understanding of the research by medical doctors and judges and law enforcement, we could save lives. We choose not to do it. Now the policies of this administration say that anything that focuses on women or a special group is an unfair advantage and must be eliminated, which includes, by the way, sickle cell research because it only affects one group.
It affects violence against women and black maternal mortality. We've been told we can't say these words. Underrepresentation, intersectionality, woman, Black. We can't have government grants that say these words. These words explain the truth of history and of our current state of affairs. A lot of people see that regardless of what their gender is.
You're not alone. The sentiments are not alone, absolutely. Let's let Kathy just jump in, and then I want to ask you about Ms. Magazine.
Let me come back to your question, David. It begs the question. If we've known this about the research, as Bonnie was just going through, on the diversity of the workforce and paid family medical leave and publicly funded child care availability, affordable child care availability, it begs the question why it hasn't happened. It hasn't happened because the strongest advocates are underrepresented in the decision-making bodies that could make that a reality.
Where we get close to our real representation, 50%, 40%, you see things change. It's not so much that someone might intellectually understand the importance of a diverse workforce or paid family medical leave, but who's willing to fight the hardest and who's willing to prioritize it and not be told again and again, "There's more important things to take care of right now. We're going to have to wait on that because that's not the most important thing in front of us." yet for half the population or over half the population, some of these are the most important things.
Without those voices in the room, we end up with what we've got. Yes, for how many decades has business known that it is profitable to be diverse and to have representation on their boards of directors? Yet where are the results of that? Why haven't they done it? That's the real question, is why haven't they done it?
As a follow-up thought, though, on the same provocative question that I asked you to provoke you here. Not all women are going to be fighters for the cause.
No, but it's interesting. Some of the research has shown that even among Republican women who get elected to state legislatures and to Congress, you get a stronger support for these kinds of policies and programs than their male counterparts. Among Democratic women elected to Congress, the same thing. They're more passionate about these issues. They're more likely to step out and lead on these issues than their male counterparts who are Democrats.
There's a gender gap on that going both ways. Sometimes you see Republican women and Democratic women coming together to fight for all women. You saw it in South Carolina when there was an effort to stop that terrible abortion ban. You had Republican and Democratic women standing up, and by the way, the Republican men then turn and attack those Republican women. It takes real courage if you're a Republican woman to stand up on some of these issues.
I will just say Republican women are in the decline as well. One example is a Republican Congresswoman from Florida working with a Democratic Congresswoman from Colorado that I wrote about for Ms. Who were trying to get the right for our representatives to vote by proxy when they were on a parental leave, and Mike Johnson shut the place down so they couldn't vote on it, and it had bipartisan support. It really begs the question it seems like there's an overt desire to keep women out in that case because it was shown that that proxy vote worked just fine during the pandemic.
I would say that we know that all women are women are not monolithic. Women have a multiplicity of views just as men do, just as all human beings do. Often people will bring that up, but that's not like, yeah, we know. Women also have a shared experience of some who choose to have children, breastfeed. Or what it's like to give birth, what you need afterwards. They're just more in tune with things, they're more informed about things than others.
How Ms. Magazine Analyzes Current Issues Through A Feminist Lens
Kathy, Ms. Magazine has been one of the defining feminist publications in American public life for decades. What role does Ms. Play nowadays that mainstream media still doesn't fill?
A consistent analysis of all the current issues of interest to people generally, a consistent analysis through a gender lens, through a feminist lens. When a new bill is being debated in Congress, for example, making sure that we analyze the impact of that bill on women and their children and that that perspective comes through in our reporting. That it's accurate reporting and that we're constantly looking at how are women being adversely impacted but also what's the good news where are women making gains? A lot of that never appears in the mainstream media. Even in newsrooms, women are still underrepresented in the publishing sector, making those decisions about what gets covered and what doesn't get covered. At the editors' desks, still underrepresenting things.
Again, the importance that women play across the board in our culture, in our society, and in our public policy, and our underrepresentation is reflected in the end result constantly. Ms. Has also been cutting edge in terms of its continuing focus on some of these key issues. We warned early on that we were going to have a decision in Dobbs, the way that turned out. What the impact would be.
Ms. Has been ahead of the curve on so many of these issues because we do have this focus on the impact of policy and law on women that a lot of the mainstream media misses as a result. Now the constant coverage post-Dobbs on what's happening. You'll see an article here and there in The New York Times or The Washington Post or other publications, but we stay on the story.
Another example of that is anti-abortion extremist violence. It's up under this administration this is the law-and-order administration, and yet extremism is up. Why? This administration not only pardoned anti-abortion extremists who were in prison, felons, pardoned them. That sent a signal to the extremists, and then on top of it, this administration's Department of Justice is not enforcing the federal law that we got passed to address extremist violence.
As a result, we've seen this increase. What other publication stays on that, following that? It's a network of domestic terrorists who are committing this violence and these threats of violence. What impact does that have on access to abortion services? Without Ms., that reporting would disappear, there's just no question about it.
I actually have a follow-up comment, which is we were thinking about what's the difference of women's voices in these spheres in the feminist media or but the market economy assumes that we're all self-interested rational actors and in order to be that, we have to be informed. We're informed by our own life experience, and our interest in these articles both writing them and having access to that information is critical to our own well-being, not only for reproductive health.
Tweet: Even in newsrooms, women are still underrepresented in the publishing sector.
I'm thinking about two areas that I’ve focused on with the Gender and Policy Center in events we've done and also written about for Ms. Have to do with we did this centennial of women's suffrage and celebrated that, and we also talked about financial protections for women and celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act where women in my lifetime, still in 1972, women got the right to have their own credit card and get their own bank loan, which is not that long ago in history.
We see both of these things are threatened currently. The SAVE Act, if you're not a woman who's going to potentially not be able to vote because of the SAVE Act, to have to get more documents, to have an impediment put in front of you, it's not going to be on your radar screen as much. If you are, if you've changed your name once or twice because of marriage or anything else, you're going to want to know about this.
Now we know that millions of women, millions of citizens are going to be not having access to the vote, not just women, but because of that act which is supposed to protect voting but actually restrict it. We also see that this these were little celebratory moments that I thought as like puff pieces in a way, like, "Good, we vote, great." right now, who would have ever thought that they'd seriously say out loud that some people are saying they want that result?
Similarly, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act is being threatened by restrictions, by things that have been scuttled at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Therefore, there are setbacks to be suffered there. Things that we thought were long-secured rights are being cut away at. Not just the things that you think of as reproductive rights, and sometimes people get tired of hearing about. Bodily autonomy is certainly central to anybody's existence, so they ought not get tired of that.
Even if you say, "It's not just that,” and that's a harbinger of something very important. Here's these other things. Explain that to me. I’ve looked for lots of articles on both of these issues, and they're not really highlighted in the mainstream media, and everybody I know tells me a lot about a lot of things, "Don't worry about it, they don't mean that," or "That can't be happening." even Dobbs. People said under oath, "We're not going to change that when we get on the court," but they did. We have the 19th News, we have Ms. Magazine. There are very few outlets that do stay on those stories. How can I be a rational self-interested fully informed citizen or consumer without the critical information I need to conduct my life in a way that I can self-actualize and survive?
We are getting towards the last segment that I want to chat with you a little bit about to inform our students and the next generation. Just make comments before I do so. The SAVE Act is problematic for many reasons. I support photo ID for voting because I want to secure voting everywhere as long as it's accessible for people to do so.
However, the SAVE Act is not doing that. The SAVE Act is really taking it away. In Virginia, we were the first state in the nation to have online voter registration. It is quick, it is secure, it is safe. I know that because I wrote that law. The SAVE Act will cancel our online voter registration. There are a lot of problems with the SAVE Act, but we'll keep that for a different podcast for a different day.
David, since that's your baby, that law, you particularly care about it. It's very personal.
Making The Youth More Aware About Women Representation
That's my baby. That's my bragging right forever. Hundreds of thousands of people registered to vote online and it is safer, more secure than registering on a piece of paper. We're the first in the nation to do so. Let's talk a little bit about students and the next generation. We have a lot of students and young professionals hopefully reading. Our students Bonnie, you're going to make sure your students are reading. What do you hear from students, Bonnie, about gender, politics, and power that encourages you and what concerns you?
I would say I get a lot of hope and inspiration from my students. I learn something from them every day. They are not having it. You can't tell them you're protecting them when you're not. They're smart and they also are very motivated by justice, by principled democracy. As some would say, the kids are all right.
I do find that inspiration from my students and that they are passionate about pursuing public service careers even in the face of the things that we see happening that I would think would be quite dissuasive about that. The things that concern me are that the things that I thought would just die off with the dinosaurs thing, antiquated ideas about gender roles or things like that, unfortunately have become like a contagion.
There's the manosphere. There's an intentional promulgation of these ideas among the young that really about a few months ago, I want to say, maybe I was late to get it, but all of a sudden because I was like, “We'll just all die off and it'll be fine,” and then I started hearing out of the mouths of intelligent young people, ostensibly, some horrific things that really are human rights violations, injustices, anti-democratic, all kinds of bad things. Racism, sexism, things are spiking in a dangerous way. That's what concerns me that we have to battle some of these things anew that we thought that we had vanquished. That is very troubling.
Yeah, but Bonnie, never has there been a generation more prepared to fight. Never has there been a generation so feminist in its perspective, especially among young women. Just look at the results of your most recent gubernatorial election and what happened. Young women came off those campuses in record numbers, 82% voting for the Democrats, 58% of young men. There is a gender gap even at that age category under 30, with young women being far more determined to preserve rights and to fight back.
Tweet: Never has there been a generation so feminist in its perspective as today, especially among young women.
A very important differentiator there, Kathy. They were not voting for the Democrat. Yes they were Democrats, but they were voting for the first woman governor candidate who became the first woman governor and a woman lieutenant governor.
I know and strong feminists both. They absolutely were. The fact that you got an 82% vote among those young people, 65% of all women voted for Spanberger. It shows you that young people can swing elections, can be part of the swinging of elections very much because if only men had been allowed to vote in that Virginia governor's race, you would have a Republican governor right now.
It was women collectively, young women especially, who drove the results of that election. We see it all across the country. Even in states that had a reputation for being Republican, when the voters got a chance to vote on whether or not access to abortion or reproductive healthcare was going to be protected, you saw huge numbers come out.
The result of that was to protect reproductive rights. If you look at public opinion polls, the generation that's in college now is the most feminist of any generation, the most progressive. Which means we're growing a movement. I'm not concerned. What I'm concerned about obviously is efforts to suppress their vote. Efforts to dismantle the opportunities that they are seeking in the workplace.
Look at this new Heritage Foundation proposals that have come out. They want to pay women to marry at younger ages and to have more children and all of that is because they have lost this generation. Our work is to make sure that we empower them with the information they need to make the decisions for themselves in their own lives and to guarantee that they get to exercise their right to participate in this society equally.
Securing Fundamental Rights For Women And Girls
Kathy, I am a former Republican member of the House, and I remain to be a conservative. Everybody knows me that I'm no longer a Republican but remain to be a conservative. I was proud and honored to support this governor and lieutenant governor in this election, and I proudly served on both of their transition teams. I think I was the only Virginian who was on both transition teams in the entire state. Your cause is safe with this administration in Virginia. Let me ask you two quick questions, Kathy. In 1 or 2 words, what is the one thing the next generation must not take for granted?
Their fundamental rights. The only way we're going to secure fundamental rights for women and girls in this country is that we finally have recognition that the Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified. As you know, Virginia was the 38th state to vote to ratify. Now we need Congress to vote to recognize that the Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified and to do that by getting rid of this controversial time limit. That is key.
By the way, do you know who was the leading activist in the state of Virginia on the ERA? The mother of our current governor.
I know her well. Absolutely.
Do Not Be Fooled By Banter In The “Manosphere”
The next quick question for you, what would you say to young women, but more so to young men, who care about equality but feel overwhelmed, cynical, or unsure where to plug in? Your final thought to them.
For young men, it's not to be fooled or distracted by this banter in the "manosphere" that it's young women or women who are taking away your opportunities. Women are not taking away opportunities. They've got to stay focused on what the real problems are and not fall for that. We're all in this together, and we know that if women have their fundamental rights, it helps families, it helps society. Feminism is good for men too. It gives them more opportunities and more options for their own lives, and that's very critical.
Final thought, Kathy.
I just think that we need to fight back. I can tell you this, and Bonnie said it earlier. This generation's not taking this. We are fighting back. Young women are fighting back especially. There's no support to turn back the clock.
Final thought, Bonnie.
I would say that there is tremendous hope for the future. Half of my gender and policy class is male. It's a small seminar, but they're there and they're participating and they're contributing. I would say that no right is ever guaranteed forever and that we have to be vigilant and safeguard those. Celebrate them, but also continuously and that's what law is for. Law and policy is to continuously change in response to changing circumstances and to remain vigilant and remain studious about what's happening around us.
Kathy, Bonnie, thank you both for a thoughtful, timely, and important conversation. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and remember, rights unprotected are rights at risk.
Important Links
- Dr. Bonnie Stabile
- George Mason's Gender and Policy Center
- Women, Power, and Rape Culture. The Politics and Policy of Underrepresentation
- Ms. Magazine
- Feminist Majority Foundation
- Feminist Campus
- Bonnie Stabile on Ms. Magazine
About Dr. Bonnie Stabile
Bonnie Stabile is associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where she founded and directs the Gender and Policy (GAP) Center. Professor Stabile teaches courses on policy analysis, program evaluation, ethics, and gender at master’s and undergraduate levels. She was the 2019 recipient of the Schar School's Teaching Award and in 2024 received the Dean’s Service Award. Professor Stabile served as Associate Dean for student and academic affairs between 2021 and 2024 and, during her 17-year tenure at the Schar School, also served as MPP and MPA program director.
Her book, Women, Power and Rape Culture: The Politics and Policy of Underrepresentation, co-authored by now Dr. Aubrey Grant was published by Praeger in 2022 and in paperback by Bloomsbury Academic Publishing in 2024. Other publications include articles in peer-reviewed journals including Public Integrity; the Journal of Public Affairs Education; Sexuality, Gender and Policy; Rhetoric Review; and Politics and the Life Sciences. She writes for Ms. magazine and serves on the Ms. Committee of Scholars.
Professor Stabile was Editor-in-Chief of World Medical & Health Policy, an academic journal published by Wiley, from 2019-20, and served in deputy and co-editor roles since 2011. Her government work experience includes acting as installation coordinator of a U.S. Army post in Amberg, Germany, and as a Program Analyst for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. From 1989-93 she was Program Coordinator of the Senior Managers in Government Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Education
- PhD, Public Policy, School of Public Policy, George Mason University (2006)
- MPA, George Mason University (2000)
- CAS, Certificate of Advanced Studies in Management (eight-course graduate program), Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (1991)
- BA, Art History, Mount Holyoke College (1985)
About Katherine Spillar
Katherine (Kathy) Spillar is the Executive Director of Feminist Majority Foundation and Feminist Majority, national organizations working for women’s equality, empowerment, and non- violence. One of the founders, Spillar has been a driving force in executing the organizations’ diverse programs securing women’s rights both domestically and globally since its inception in 1987, including its efforts to counter extremist violence and threats against abortion providers, grassroots organizing and political engagement programs focused on young women on college campuses, and the organization’s drive to secure the Constitutional equality for women and girls.
Spillar is the Executive Editor of Ms. which the Feminist Majority Foundation acquired In December 2001, becoming the sole non-profit publisher of the iconic magazine co-founded in 1972 by Gloria Steinem. Under her oversight, Ms. has increased its investigative reporting and in-depth analysis and today is the largest print and online feminist news site reaching readers from across the globe via the quarterly print magazine, a vibrant and popular website, Ms. Studios podcasts and live events, a robust e-newsletter mailing list and a social media following of more than half a million. Spillar is the chief editor of Fifty Years of Ms: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine that Ignited a Revolution, published in the Spring 2023 by Alfred A. Knopf, featuring a half century of the very best of Ms. with commentary by Spillar and the editors of Ms.