Stigmatizing of women assailed

There's only been one time when Julianne Malveaux, a critic of the war in Iraq, felt compelled to defend Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

It came, she said, when Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was criticizing the Bush administration's war policy and suggested that Rice had no compassion because she had no immediate family.

Rice held her tongue. "I wish she hadn't," said Malveaux, who is a nationally known economist, author and commentator.

It's unfortunate that motherhood is so often used as a "trump card," Malveaux said, the keynote speaker Wednesday at the University of Utah for Women's Week 2007. Malveaux pointed out that roughly one in five women isn't a mother.

She said the idea that "mommyhood equals womanhood" leaves out those women who don't have children, either by choice like herself, or for other reasons.

"Instead of stigmatizing women who have made choices, the women's movement was supposed to be about the ability to have choices," she said. "It's not just women without children, it's mommy wars" between stay-at-home moms and those who work.

"What we really need to be fighting is patriarchy," said Malveaux.

While issues of women and families are important, focusing only on those concerns takes the focus from other issues critical to women, such as wages and sexism, she said.

"There seems to be no urgency about the pay gap," she said. A 2005 census survey found women earned only 77 cents for every $1 earned by men, although that gap varies by occupation and geography. Rather than focusing on motherhood, women ought to be focusing on such issues, she said. Malveaux believes it's unfortunate that Cindy Sheehan, a war protester whose son died in Iraq, emphasized her motherhood rather than the war. It's also unfortunate that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used her motherhood in campaigning, Malveaux added.

"I was a little turned off by the notion that she can handle Congress because she's a mother," Malveaux said.

A speech by author Susan Douglas is scheduled for tonight at 7 at the Olpin Union's Salt Air Room.

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com