by Tom Ahern

Just so you know, Rhode Island is not the worst place in America to live if you're a woman and don't want to be poor, abused, sick, neglected, disenfranchised or generally treated as a second-class citizen. That would be Mississippi, says the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), an independent DC-based nonprofit that measures these things.

Don't break out the champagne, though.

According to the IWPR, the best states for American women seeking fair and enlightened treatment are Vermont and Connecticut (tied). Also up there: New Hampshire, Maine (for women in statewide office), Massachusetts (for women's economic independence of men). Really, quite a solid performance for the New England region, except for a small fly in the ointment: us.

In the New England region, Rhode Island's overall record on women's issues can be summed up in one, sad word: "Loser." And what's the cost of our less-than-stellar statistics and inadequate state policies? Many crushed lives.

There is growing fear among women's rights activists that complacency is robbing the feminist movement of momentum. Many, especially younger women, assume that the battle for gender equality is pretty much won.

"In the 20th century, in the U.S., women had to fight pretty hard," says Dr. Cynthia Garcia Coll, a Brown University professor and psychologist specializing in race and gender. "Now we're among the most progressive nations in the world. We have all these laws. Gender is not seen as something that matters anymore." She compares attitudes toward women's equality with attitudes toward race. "It's the same when people look into other 'isms,' like another one I know very well, which is racism." Dr. Coll grew up in Puerto Rico. "We have all the laws. Therefore, racism must be gone."
On November 21, Rhode Island got a wake-up call.

That evening, at the Providence Marriott, with some noise and fanfare, the IWPR and the Women's Fund of Rhode Island released a study, titled The Status of Women in Rhode Island. The study analyzes data from dozens of official sources, mostly federal, and compares the Ocean State to the rest of the country in terms of women's health, reproductive rights, pay, political clout, etc. The study assigns a letter grade in each area, to make it easy to follow along.

The Women's Fund of Rhode Island is a new player in the state's advocacy arena. The fund was launched last year with a $2.5 million challenge grant from the Rhode Island Foundation. Its advisory council includes an impressive number of influential, reform-minded women (and, at this time, no men): among them, Myrth York; state superior court judge, O. Rogeriee Thompson; Planned Parenthood President and CEO, Miriam Inocencio; Cynthia Garcia Coll, holder of an endowed chair at Brown.

The Women Fund's mission: to "level the playing field for women and girls in Rhode Island," mostly by making grants and by drawing attention to women's issues.

The Status of Women study is the fund's opening salvo. Like Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, a child advocacy organization also supported by the Rhode Island Foundation, the Women's Fund aims to supply policymakers (and their watchdogs) with up-to-date research and benchmarks.

The Status of Women study reveals where Rhode Island's women are now. It also makes policy recommendations about women's most pressing needs. Many of the current recommendations seek to counter the so-called "feminization of poverty." Translation: "A disproportionate share of those in poverty are women," according to Women's Fund of Rhode Island founder Simone P. Joyaux, "and many of them are single women with kids." High on the list of IWPR's recommendations for Rhode Island: more educational opportunities for the poor, affordable child care, and higher minimum wages. The latter proposal will certainly draw fire from the state's chambers of commerce. Rhode Island's minimum wage is already among the highest in the nation, a dollar more than the Federal requirement of $5.15 an hour.

"Women in Rhode Island," the report summarizes, "would benefit from stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws, better political representation, adequate and affordable child care, stronger poverty reduction programs...."

To be fair, no state in the U.S. is bringing home straight A's when it comes to the status of women. What is worrying (not to mention embarrassing) are Rhode Island's miserable rankings compared to its New England neighbors. In the region, says the report, "Rhode Island ranks low."
Surprisingly, despite the state's mostly Roman Catholic population (somewhere around 65%), women's reproductive rights have fared fairly well here, the report concludes, awarding the state a B. (Planned Parenthood begs to differ. See below.)

But Rhode Island is next to last in several crucial areas. Two examples that hurt: "Regionally...Rhode Island women have the second lowest rates of educational attainment and the second highest rates of poverty." Consequences? A workforce that can't compete in the new economy. More strain on taxpayer pockets. A social services safety net that's never far from ripping.

Rhode Island women currently earn just 71.5% of what men earn for full time, year-round work, the Status of Women study found. This is slightly lower than the national average and fifth of six regionally. Over a lifetime of work, pay inequities will short the average Rhode Island working woman hundreds of thousands of dollars in income she would have earned had she born a male.
In the U.S., we labor under a 1963 law called the Equal Pay Act, which guarantees equal pay for equal work. "But for women," Susan Bianchi-Sand wrote in 1998, "it is still far from reality." Ms. Bianchi-Sand was then executive director of the National Committee on Pay Equity, heavily supported by every union from the AFL-CIO to the American Association of University Professors.
Who suffers most from pay inequities? Children, maybe. "Today," Bianchi-Sand notes, "two out of five working women are the sole economic support of their families." Furthermore, she says, "for women trying to leave an abusive relationship the need for fair-paying jobs is critical." Dependence on men to make ends meet keeps many women battered and bruised.

"In addition," says the Status of Women study, "only 18 percent of older women, as opposed to 30 percent of men, are receiving pensions and other retirement income." And even when Rhode Island women do receive retirement income, they receive considerably less than men.

Pay equity is an indicator of value. The right question you should ask is this: Does our culture truly value the work that women do?

No. Not as highly as it values the work that men do. Here's the bottomline behind the 71.5% statistic, according to one highly placed Rhode Island human resources executive who prefers to remain anonymous: "If a woman can do the job, it can't be that important. That's the way companies think and act. Companies devalue jobs that women do." As a result, women disproportionately hold down lower-paying jobs. Don't believe me? Look at the income-by-gender at any large bank, as a good example.

The not-so-depressing news: nationally, women's incomes are rising, albeit slowly. In 1960, women earned 60.7% of what men earned. At that rate of improvement, women should reach full pay equity in, oh, about 59 years.

That should be quite a celebration in 2061.

And now for the Status of Women study's really bad news.
Rhode Island is rock-bottom in the region in two important areas: "health and well-being" and "political participation."

The death rate from heart disease and breast cancer in Rhode Island is the worst in New England - and among the worst in the country. Not for lack of coverage, incidentally. "Women in Rhode Island have the highest levels of health insurance in the country," the study found. "These poor rankings," it speculates, "might be related to the fact that women in Rhode Island engage in relatively poor health habits: the percentages of women who smoke, binge drink, and do not engage in leisure-time physical activity are all higher than in most states."

Wonkier, but ultimately maybe more critical to the future of women and girls, is Rhode Island's shortfall of women elected to statewide and national office.

It's fair to say that, in the Ocean State, the rights of women are now largely in the hands of men.
In 2002, before redistricting, there were 151 state legislators. Just 34 were women, a measly 23% (about the same as the national average). In addition, women now hold just 30% of the judgeships in the state's Supreme, Superior, District and Family courts. Since judges play a key role in dispensing justice, they can have a big-time influence on how laws that relate to women's issues are interpreted and applied.

Less-than-equal percentages like these are why the IWPR ended up giving the state no better than a D in political participation. "Greater female political participation can result in more women-friendly policies," the report insists, citing research published in 2002. It warns, "Rhode Island women are far from achieving political representation in proportion to their share of the population."
"Yes, the political participation one is pretty dramatic," Dr. Coll agrees. She chairs the advisory committee at the Women's Fund of Rhode Island that oversaw the Status of Women study. "The interesting thing is, people don't see [gender] as an issue. It's invisible." Equal opportunity is the law of land. But the law is not the entire problem.

"In society, there's a place for men, and there's a place for women," says Dr. Coll. "It permeates the way we make daily decisions -- in the classroom, in coaching, in who gets promoted. Things are very subtle. It's not transparent the way it was before."

In her own case, she feels stigmatized by the things she's chosen to research. "I've made choices to pose questions that are gender-based or racial-based, and they are devalued in academia." But the problem goes way beyond the discrimination Dr. Coll, 49, a Harvard Ph.D., has encountered in her career.

"It matters as a principle of democracy," she says. "It matters because 50% of our population, just because of their gender, is, on a daily basis, treated in a different manner. It's our daughters, our sisters, our wives, our lovers who are conceptualized on a daily basis in a different humanity track."
She's lucky. In academia, "I have tremendous control on my time." Which means she can raise a family and still continue the research and teaching that has won her an endowed chair at Brown and attracts calls from magazines like Newsweek looking for expert opinion.

But for most women who want a career it's different. "Women have adapted to a workplace that was based on a family structure that doesn't exist any more," she says. Then, dad worked and mom stayed home to rear the kids. Now both mom and dad work to all hours; they have to, to stay afloat.

Ambitious women have a harder time than ambitious men, Dr. Coll feels, because society still expects women to absorb most of the responsibility for child rearing. "If anything goes wrong in your family," she argues, "the first thing to point out is this woman was working. Where is the husband in all this? Why wasn't the husband at home? Why do we celebrate so much when a husband stays home?" For seriously career-minded women, a full family life is tough. Dr. Coll: "You look at the statistics: a lot of women in powerful positions are either single or divorced." A study published in the April 2002 Harvard Business Review confirms she's right. "If we really want women to be part of the power structure," she says, "we have to make it so daycare on site is a good idea." A better daycare center at Brown wouldn't be a bad start, she grumbles in passing.
All this has a bearing on the number of women running for political office.

Dr. Coll would like to run. "I've thought a lot about it. I think I would be terrific, to tell you the truth." But you won't see her name on a ballot any time soon, not until her three teenagers are out of the house. "The society is not organized so you can raise a good family and keep up with the demands of [a legislator's job]." It's not just those midnight sessions at the statehouse, either. It's also all that running around in the evenings, raising money for campaigns.

If women run for office, there's a 50-50 chance they'll get elected, everyone seems to agree. But the state's political establishment is in no special hurry to field more female candidates, Dr. Coll believes. "Institutional change is very hard. First, because we don't consider [gender] a problem. It's invisible. And second, because we're very comfortable where we are, some of us, people in powerful positions." She's been to meetings of the state Democratic party. "You go into that room, it's mostly white guys. In Rhode Island, there's a very ingrained political tradition."

The Essence Rare Lounge on Eddy St. in Providence is a windowless bunker painted dollskin pink. Weeds grow to the size of trees around the bumpy tar parking lot. A little ways down the street is a Haitian church. On a payphone outside the bar a sticker advertises "Call the Caribbean. $1.00."
The Essence Rare Lounge is owned by one of the state legislature's leading feminists, ex-Providence policeman Joseph Almeida. "I have four daughters," Joe laughs. "I tell people I'm sexually prejudiced. I don't deny it." It's Joe's voice on the answering machine saying, "You have reached Essence Rare Lounge. The quote for the week is, we must turn to each other, and not on each other."

He's a Democrat who represents the city's Southside and Washington Park in the legislature. He is also the author of House Bill 7378, the so-called bubble zone law, which didn't pass in the last session but has a shot in 2003.

The bubble zone law states that a protester cannot block a woman's access to a medical facility. More than once, as a cop, Joe was called in to clear a path through anti-abortion demonstrators, so that patients could enter a clinic. "It's not that I'm for or against abortion," he says. "But people have a right to do what they want to do." The bubble zone law also establishes an 8-foot zone around every patient, inside which protesters cannot physically trespass. This prevents screaming protesters from getting what Joe calls "breath close," as they are wont to do.

The front line of reproductive rights is located in Providence at the corner of Point and Chestnut streets, where Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island makes its home. If you want to see religious fanaticism at its most extreme, this is the place to go. Any Thursday or Saturday, any month, for years there have been protesters here. They lug 6-foot placards depicting dismembered fetuses. They confront every visitor.

Less than 20% of Planned Parenthood's patients come in for an abortion, according to the the agency. Four out of five are there for something else like gynecological exams or HIV screening. Almost 30% are there for contraception, to avoid unwanted pregnancies. These distinctions don't matter to the protesters. They yell the same messages at anyone entering or leaving the facility. "That baby is alive! That baby has brain waves! That baby looks like you! When you come back out, that baby will be dead!"

Which is one of the reasons these particular protesters upset Joe Almeida so much. "You're picking on my poor constituents," he bristles. "[Anti-abortion protesters] seem to forget and don't understand that poor women, especially women of color, go there for various health reasons. They think every woman is going in to commit this awful sin."

It's Thursday, about 2 p.m. A Planned Parenthood staffer turns on a tape machine in the clinic's vestibule. Soothing classical music plays, to help drown out the protesters. Two security guards have just come on-duty. Kathy Kushnir is talking to them about the day's developments. Someone has broken the gate to the parking lot again. Vandalism is common at Planned Parenthood. Harassing phone calls come in a few times a month. A favorite trick is to pour glue into the locks, making them inoperable. "It's a medical facility. But it feels like a war zone," Kathy remarks. She is a lawyer, Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island's chief lobbyist.

She is standing on the steps, watching the twice-a-week vigil. Outside are two middle-aged men bearing fetus placards with huge, bloody images, waiting for the game to begin. Waiting for a woman -- any woman -- to arrive or leave. Kathy Kushnir desperately wants the bubble zone law.
"At least you could retain a little of your privacy," she says.

To obtain a copy of the Status of Women in Rhode Island study, click here.