Transcript
>> HINOJOSA: While the feminist
movements of the '60s and '70s
generated major victories for
women, our guest today believes
that much work remains to be
done to achieve women's
equality.
Former president of Planned
Parenthood and cofounder and
president of the Center for the
Advancement of Women Faye
Wattleton.
I'm Maria Hinojosa.
This is One on One.
Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH
access.wgbh.org
>> HINOJOSA: Faye Wattleton,
thank you for being here.
>> WATTLETON: Thank you.
It's my pleasure to be invited.
>> HINOJOSA: So people know you
because for over a decade you
ran Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.
You were the face of that
organization and of that
movement for many, many years.
And then you left and you
created the Center for the
Advancement of Women.
And you recently released this
report basically on the status
of women, what's interesting to
them, what matters to them.
And I have to say, I was just
fascinated with this statistic--
92% of the women who you asked
said that the biggest issue that
they face, that they're most
concerned with as women in
America today, is domestic
violence and sexual assault.
>> WATTLETON: We were surprised also.
We performed this study as a
benchmark to the beginning...
for the beginning of the 21st
century to measure where women
stand on a range of issues.
And the question was asked
whether women believed that a
women's movement was necessary.
And there was surprisingly
strong support for a new women's
movement.
And then we asked what should be
the priorities-- what are the
issues that need to be addressed
urgently?
And we were really quite stunned
that domestic and sexual
violence should be addressed,
basically a statistical dead
heat with equal pay for equal
work, which has been the
mainstay of women's concerns.
>> HINOJOSA: But, you know, the
interesting thing is that when
you are involved with activist
women, the issue of equal pay is
front and center.
But it's not like you're meeting
activist women and they're
saying, "We are really concerned
about the issue of sexual
violence."
>> WATTLETON: Well, this is a ver... I'm
glad that you raised that
discrepancy.
Because this is the reason why
the Center for the Advancement
of Women was formed and founded
a little more than a decade ago.
Because we realized that a lot
of the data, a lot of the
assumptions that those of us who
are activists, who have worked
on the front lines for a very
long time, and we think that we
know the truth and the Holy
Grail is not always where women
are.
And it's really important to
have accurate data to know how
to address the issues that
really matter to women.
And what we found in our survey
is that... we did follow-up
research on it.
We traveled around the country
and talked to hundreds of women
around the country, and it was
tantamount almost to being a
woman that they either lived in
an abusive relationship, had
been... had had the experience,
had been in an abusive
relationship, or knew someone
who was.
And so it was really more... it
was really endemic to the
relationship issue between men
and women than we had ever
expected it to be.
>> HINOJOSA: So if you were
talking to women in the
developing world, you know, you
could imagine them saying, "I am
afraid of being attacked all the
time, I am afraid of being a
victim of violence, I'm afraid
of being sexually assaulted."
But for American women, where we
have equality and access to
police and lawyers...
>> WATTLETON: Well, it's interesting that
this is a universal problem that
you raise, because the World
Bank did a survey a number of
years ago, and their statistics
paralleled the US statistics,
which was another surprise for
us, that women in the developing
world also found this as a major
issue.
What we found was that women
said they know a lot about the
resources in their community for
physical violence-- that if they
are beaten or if they are
physically threatened by their
partner, they know where to go
for shelter and how to seek
shelter for them and their
children if they are mothers.
But the psychological violence
is another aspect, another
dimension of the violence
against women for which there is
very little support, very little
aid that women can turn to in
order to escape the syndrome
before it becomes violent.
>> HINOJOSA: So what do you
think that's about?
What do you think is going on
there?
I mean, is it because... I mean,
because, of course, you have
studied the women's movement in
this country, you've been a part
of it.
You helped create it.
So is your thinking, well,
there's a lot of reaction from
men against women, speaking up,
speaking out, saying, you know,
"I'm here"?
Is it a reaction?
>> WATTLETON: I think it's really we should
be very circumspect about
assuming one or two reasons for
the violence that women
encounter.
It's a very complex issue.
It can be issues around women
earning and men feeling somewhat
threatened because their
traditional role is threatened.
It can be about the value that
women hold in society.
Think about it-- we have
resources for women to turn when
they are physically violated,
when they are beaten or in other
ways threatened.
It's the leading cause of
homicide among pregnant women.
But if a woman is being
psychologically abused, even her
family is very often not a
source of support for her.
So it really does speak, I
think, more broadly about the
status of women and how far we
still have to travel before we
are valued in a way that says
that at no point should our
psychological or physical being
be threatened or in any way
intimidated.
I think it's really important
not to submit to very simplistic
reasons for the violence that
women face, because we found in
our qualitative research that
women told us that the reasons
were quite vast and often very
complicated.
>> HINOJOSA: All right, so let's
go back to the issue of equal
pay, which is also... you know,
it's not like you've seen
rallies of hundreds of thousands
of women or people at the
Capitol saying, "Equal pay now."
A lot of people kind of think,
like, "Wait a second.
Things have gotten better."
But in fact the equal pay
issue...
>> WATTLETON: Is still a very important
issue.
And I wish that the days would
return when we would go to the
street again and raise
visibility about the continuing
inequity.
Because what we see in the
research that we've done to
follow up is that there's a
perception that women have made
it, we have equality.
And yet the Association of
University Women found that the
wage gap opens immediately after
college, and it never closes.
>> HINOJOSA: What's that about?
>> WATTLETON: The Catalyst also found
research that among MBA
graduates, the earning capacity
opens immediately after the MBA
is earned among men and women,
and it never closes.
Opportunities are not offered
with equanimity.
And so the value system... and
you know, it's really easy to
change laws.
Look at what it took us to get
the Lilly Ledbetter law enacted
in order to report discrepancies
in pay, when a women discovers
that her male counterpart is
earning more than she is
earning.
That took a major effort in
Congress and a new president to
expend fairly significant new
capital in order to get this
legislation passed.
So we really do have a struggle.
I think that the big part of the
reason for women not joining
together and marching in the
streets against what should be a
no-brainer is that there is a
perception that "It's just me.
Maybe it's in my mind."
>> HINOJOSA: Well, isn't it
because women are never talking
about this?
It's not like we're sitting
there and saying...
>> WATTLETON: And we don't talk about
violence against us.
It's the great... there's a
great stigma, a great secret
that women keep to themselves.
They don't acknowledge it until
often it's too late, and their
physical being is threatened or
in some cases actually killed.
>> HINOJOSA: So is it about
women who just, at that moment
when they're talking with their
boss about the raise, that they
just don't know how to...
because on the one hand, you
know, we have so many women who
are leaders.
We're supposed to be leaders,
we're supposed to be powerful if
we're in a position... we're in
a professional negotiation.
Is it that women just are
uncomfortable about saying,
"Look, I need you to pay me
more, I want you to pay me what
I'm worth, I want you to..."
what's that...
>> WATTLETON: Very perceptive once again.
We're conditioned not to value
our work in the same way that
men value their work.
Men go in and say, "Listen, if I
don't get better pay or a raise
or a better consideration I'm
going to walk, I'm going to go
on to a better opportunity."
Women tend to devalue the
importance of their work, and
don't give it the same kind of
importance that men give to
their work.
The other problem is whether a
woman putting herself out there
is going to be the sacrificial
lamb.
Very often women do not cling
together when there is strength
in numbers.
And this sense of isolation,
that, "I'm just struggling with
this alone," is one that very
often holds women back to accept
a secondary status in pay and
other career opportunities.
It's not just the compensation,
but it's the promotions, the
opportunity to have higher
status within the corporation or
within the workplace.
And that feeds all the way up to
the corporate, or the C suite,
that women are not... are even
less represented at the very
higher levels of the workplace,
where the decisions can be made
to assure that these disparities
do not consent... do not
continue, and that they're
rooted out.
And very often we see that the
claim is, "Well, we have to
train women," even though these
are the same women that sat next
to men in the MBA courses, "We
have to train them, we have to
put them in the pipeline.
We have to get them ready."
>> HINOJOSA: So are you feeling
like maybe we need to have a
business school, a masters and
Ph.D. level business school just
for women?
It's kind of silly, but...
>> WATTLETON: No, I don't think that we
need to have a masters just for
women, because that continues to
perpetuate that somehow women
are inadequate, we are deficient
in a way that men do not suffer,
and therefore we need something
special done for us, as opposed
to the system needing to change
to recognize that there is
gender disparity, women are not
represented in the proportion to
our presence in society, and
that we must continue to
acknowledge it and set goals to
assure that women have a fairer
representation and a fairer
opportunity to achieve and
accomplish at the same rate that
men do.
>> HINOJOSA: So I'm wondering,
you know, you in your book, Life
on the Line, a wonderful,
wonderful book that is about
your life, but also within the
context of the American women's
movement, you quote often from
Sojourner Truth, because
Sojourner Truth basically said,
"Take those rights."
>> WATTLETON: Exactly.
>> HINOJOSA: "Take them."
>> WATTLETON: "If they want more rights
than what they got, why don't
they just take them and not be
talking about it," she said.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, so what do
you think about that in this
moment in history?
Are we... where are we in terms
of the talking and the taking of
women's rights and...
>> WATTLETON: Well, I think that a lot of
the legal barriers have been
broken, and there is a
perception even among women that
"All I have to do is find a way
personally to make that
journey."
That's really a misperception of
the reality, because an
individual struggle is far less
powerful, far less successful,
than a collective.
And I think that's the message
that Sojourner Truth was trying
to offer the people of that...
or the women of that day, white
women primarily.
And she was an ex-slave, and she
just simply could not understand
why they continued to talk about
it, because in their numbers
they had the power to make
change.
And that's also where we are
today.
In women's numbers, we have the
power to make change.
We have the power to change the
political landscape.
There's no reason why Congress
should only consist of 17% women
when we account for 51% of the
electorate.
There is no reason why there are
only 15% women on public company
boards when we make up the
majority of the marketplace and
the consumer decisions in this
country.
We have to make a decision
within ourselves as women that
change has to continue to be
made until there is true
equality and equanimity and fair
treatment.
But that isn't to say that it is
hostile to men.
It is a better balance of
women's participation than we
have had in the past.
>> HINOJOSA: So what do you
think... and I'm thinking as I
ask this question about your
great grandmother, who you talk
about, who was born a slave.
>> WATTLETON: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: She said,
basically, "I am not going to
let you take my son and work him
as a slave."
Speaking up to a white
slaveowner.
>> WATTLETON: I knew my great grandmother
who was born a slave.
She died in 1957.
And so I knew her not as some,
you know, mythical figure, but
really I was... I mean, I was
about to go into my teens.
And she was really quite known
as a woman with tremendous
gumption.
She had a certain sense of
herself.
But don't forget that she was
born a slave.
She came of age during
Reconstruction, when blacks were
entering civic life, when there
was a great desire to achieve
equality and respectability in
this new society, in this new
order in which they were being
thrust.
She actually lived and died...
was born and lived and died
within a 20-mile radius in
Mississippi.
So these were times in which
blacks were challenging the old
order, before the Jim Crow laws.
I suspect that those years
influenced her attitude about
herself and her sense of self
possession that women sometimes
do not demonstrate and do not
evoke today.
>> HINOJOSA: So you have a
fascinating life story.
And one of the things that I
found so interesting was the
fact that your mom, who is a
preacher... because when I would
look at you and I'd see you, you
know, representing Planned
Parenthood, and you were just
always just owning your power
and owning your dynamism and
your voice, and it was so
revealing to find out that your
mom basically had a lot of
problems about the fact that you
were doing this, that you were
talking about reproductive
rights.
>> WATTLETON: My mother was a
fundamentalist minister.
She sought the ministry, or she
felt the calling to the
ministry, at the age of 17.
So the bulk of her life, 70
years... she retired from the
ministry at 87.
And she believed literally in
the teaching of the Bible to be
fruitful and multiply.
>> HINOJOSA: So how had was that
for you to negotiate, to
basically say, "Mom... I love my
mom, I love everything she
represents, she's part of this
history of powerful African
American women, but Mom is not
liking what I'm doing"?
And this is your life.
>> WATTLETON: Well, I did not have to
negotiate it any more than she
had to negotiate her life with
her parents.
She felt her calling.
I was trained as a nurse.
I think my mother hoped that I
would become a missionary nurse.
But along the process of
becoming a professional nurse
and receiving my bachelor's in
nursing from Ohio State, I
learned a lot about a world that
was much broader than the one
that I had been taught and
raised in.
I learned that people do make
decisions that are not religious
based, and that my care needed
to be nonjudgmental of their
lives and their values and their
decisions.
It was... that was the journey
that I traveled that ultimately
led me to the head of Planned
Parenthood.
I did not need to feel that I
wanted to convert or that I
should convert my mother to my
point of view.
If I truly believed that I was
working for a society in which
each of us needs to come to that
position for our personal lives,
framed by our personal values,
then I had to walk the walk in
my own life and in my own
family.
My mother prayed for me a lot,
and I think that she was in
faith assuming that someday I
would no longer do that work.
It took a long time, because I
spent 22 years all totaled in
the Planned Parenthood
organization.
But we did not negotiate.
It was not a matter of
negotiation.
I was doing my work, and she was
doing hers.
I respected her.
She was certainly the mother who
had taught me the values of
respecting others' points of
view, the power of persuasion...
because she was a preacher, she
persuaded people to a different
point of view.
The hope that I believe is in
the legacy that I left Planned
Parenthood is that I persuaded a
lot of people that the
circumstances of women's lives
should not be the business of
government, should be the
personal circumstances that
women make decisions about which
none of us can fully judge, nor
should we judge, but that women
be given the widest possible
opportunity through knowledge
and through access to services
to make the best
decisions for themselves.
>> HINOJOSA: So when the
election, the primary election
for President was rolling
around... and you've written in
several places, you've said,
look, you never imagined that
you would have to face this
reality of voting either for a
woman who actually had a shot,
Hillary Clinton, or voting for
an African American man with a
wife who's a powerful African
American woman, what happened in
that voting booth?
>> WATTLETON: Well, it's very interesting,
because I went to the voting
booth not really knowing whom I
would vote for.
And I really just thought, this
is really such a historic
moment.
I mean, I was sort of taken
aback by the power of the moment
in history.
Because whom of us thought... or
who of us thought that we would
ever encounter a black man at
the same time that we were
looking, in the primary, for the
possibility of a white woman
earning the nomination?
I finally made the decision that
I knew that I was a girl before
I knew my racial classification,
and I voted for Hillary.
>> HINOJOSA: Which is so
wonderful for people to just
kind of see that there is so
much complexity.
And another child may have seen
herself as black before she saw
herself as a girl.
You don't know.
But let's talk, just in the last
few minutes that we have, about
the state of reproductive rights
in this country.
What is your biggest concern?
>> WATTLETON: My biggest concern is that we
have slipped back in a very
tragic way, and that there is
enormous complacency about the
certainty of reproductive
rights.
We have, as women, stood quietly
as activist organizations not
called loudly for the
restoration or Roe V. Wade.
>> HINOJOSA: Do you really feel
that they're... because a lot of
people would say, "Look, there
has been..." you know, "There is
a call, there are
demonstrations."
Do you feel like it has just not
been strong enough, or...
>> WATTLETON: When was the last
demonstration decrying the
Supreme Court's decision to
allow states to ignore a woman's
health in criminalizing a method
of pregnancy termination later
in pregnancy?
>> HINOJOSA: Which is happening
right now.
>> WATTLETON: Which has happened.
>> HINOJOSA: What states now?
>> WATTLETON: It has happened.
I'm not sure about the number of
states, because I now am not
involved directly in a day to
day concern with these issues.
>> HINOJOSA: But several.
>> WATTLETON: But about 30 states at the
last time I looked at it had
some form of legislation in
process to criminalize late term
abortion procedures without
consideration for a woman's
health.
In 1973, the Supreme Court said
that states could outlaw late
term abortions, but never if a
woman's health or life were
jeopardized.
The Supreme Court now says that
states do not have to consider a
woman's health.
Now, there should be an uprising
about that very critical part of
Roe v. Wade now being
overturned.
And so I say Roe v. Wade has
been overturned.
Women do not enjoy the same
reproductive rights that they
enjoyed in the days in which we
were worried about whether the
government would interfere
because we didn't think at the
time that Roe v. Wade was strong
enough.
But over the 30 years of its
enactment we have seen it
chipped away and chipped away.
And in the last decade or so the
assault on Roe v. Wade has been
pretty phenomenal.
Not only do we see waiting
periods being enacted all over
the country, legal prohibitions
for minors giving their consent,
which is a great complexity to
me, that a minor does not have
to gain their parents' consent
to continue a pregnancy, but
consent to terminate a
pregnancy.
Given the relative balance of
those decisions, what can we
make of that, other than to say
they're political decisions?
>> HINOJOSA: So one of the
things that I've heard which is
quite disturbing is that when
you have women who are finding
it more difficult to have access
to reproductive rights clinics,
and these are younger women who
are, you know, not in major
urban populated areas, and what
they're turning to if they can't
get a legal abor... if they
can't get an abortion, access,
that they are now buying stuff
online.
They're creating their...
they're basically creating their
own forms of trying to induce an
abortion, which is making... I
remember this, because you
talked so much about being a
nurse and seeing women who were
coming in with botched illegal
abortions.
>> WATTLETON: Well, I'm old enough to
remember the days before Roe v.
Wade when the court did not
invent the attempt of women to
terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
It legalized it, and recognized
that it was a private decision,
and that no woman should be
injured or killed in an attempt
to terminate a reproductive
function.
And so I do remember in the
years in which I trained to
become a nurse/midwife, which I
ultimately used in my career as
a reproductive rights advocate,
those women who did not have
that choice, the women of the
'60s, who did not have the
choice to a safe pregnancy
termination.
And yes, they did turn to means
that would kill them.
Yes, they did turn to potions
and shadowy figures that
promised them a safe pregnancy
termination that often resulted
in their sterilization, if not
the death of the woman involved.
Why anyone could devalue women
in such a way that would allow
us to return that day to any
woman, why any woman in this
country should encounter the
prospect of having an unintended
pregnancy, an unwanted
pregnancy, and not have the
capability of turning to a safe,
legal health provider and seeing
that pregnancy terminated... 90%
of them terminated in this
country now in the first 12
weeks of pregnancy.
Why we as advocates are allowing
these conditions to develop as
they did before 1973 is just
absolutely baffling.
>> HINOJOSA: So what does the
new modern women's movement need
to look like?
Is it about going out onto the
street?
Is it about, you know, Internet
activity?
What does it look like?
Paint a picture for us.
>> WATTLETON: It looks like marshalling and
mobilizing the political
strength that we have.
Maybe it does look like going to
the street, because that is a
visible, physical presence that
people understand.
It does connote that "I care
deeply, physically about this
issue."
But it also recognizes that we
cannot elect politicians to
office to give them a pass on
these issues.
Just as we would not elect a
person to office that ran on a
platform of press censorship,
there ought to be a dividing
line about women's rights and
women's reproductive rights.
It's really as fundamental as
our right to be, and not to be
controlled and dictated in our
decisions about our most
personal and intimate lives by a
government that cannot make that
decision that is often very
complicated.
And so I would call upon women,
and I would call upon activist
organizations that have the
power, the collective power to
press politicians, to hold their
feet to the fire, to hold our
president to the fire when he
says that we're going to advance
prevention.
Mr. Clinton used to say that
abortion should be safe, legal,
and rare.
I say that unintended pregnancy
should be rare, abortion should
be safe and legal.
And that's the country that we
ought to work toward-- more
education, more prevention, and
then leave it to the physician
and the woman involved to make
the best decision for the
circumstances in her life.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, thanks for
sharing your thoughts with us,
Faye Wattleton.
It's good to see you.
>> WATTLETON: Thank you for having me.
Continue the conversation at
wgbh.org/oneonone.
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