Women's Equality

On today's (Monday's) radio show, I'll be joined by Lis Wiehl, author of "The 51% Minority: How Women Are Still Not Equal And What You Can Do About It," and Ruth Rosen, author of "The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America."

Check out Ruth Rosen's latestly article, "The Care Crisis," in the latest issue of the Nation.

Here are a few sobering stats about women:

*For every 10 men in executive positions in this country, there is only one woman.

*In the history of our country, 98 percent of our senators have been men.

*76 percent of the federal judges in the U.S. are male.

*During his years as a legal adviser to President Reagan, chief justice John Roberts opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women’s rights, questioning “whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good” and disparaging “the purported gender gap.

*Despite the growing number of discrimination complaints, the administration chopped the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s budget by $9 million and demanded it reduce its caseload.

*According to the International Labor Organization, more than 120 countries currently have laws providing paid maternity leave, and a 2004 Harvard Univ report showed that, out of 168 countries studied, the U.S. is one of just five that does not offer some form of paid maternity leave.

*Age discrimination claims by women increased 39% in the last decade, while claims by men dropped 24 percent.

*Domestic violence is the single biggest threat of injury to women in America, more than heart attacks, cancer, strokes, car wrecks, muggings, and rapes combined. Every day in the U.S., an average of four women die as a result of domestic violence

*According to the DOJ, an estimated 2 million wives are beaten by their husbands each year, an average of one every 16 seconds.

*1 million teenage girls become pregnant every year. 78% of those pregnancies are unintended.

*80 percent of schools that currently teach sexuality education are promoting abstinence as the preferred or only option for adolescents.

*Only 15 percent of large group plans cover all five of the most common methods of birth control. In 1998, two months after Viagra entered the market, a Business and Health report found that insurers were paying for Viagra three times a often as they paid for oral contraceptives. This lack of coverage results in women of reproductive age spending approximately 68 percent more than men in out of pocket health care costs.

*26 states have introduced bills allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. Eight are considering the implement “conscience clauses” to protect pharmacists to refuse.