In Bangladesh where she was born, Anika Rahman’s father decided he wanted a divorce. So he approached her mother and said: “I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.” He followed up with a letter and cut all financial ties.
This and her subsequent raising by three strong-willed women instilled in Rahman an activist’s fervor for women’s equality from the beginning. At age 18, she came to America to attend Princeton University and then Columbia Law School. She worked for four years at a Wall Street law firm before deciding to follow her passion for social justice and joined the Center for Reproductive Rights.
In February, Rahman became the new president and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a non-profit women’s rights organization that was co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1973. I spoke with her to find out what will shape its agenda in the years to come.
Forbes: Did the injustice of your parent’s divorce motivate you to pursue women’s issues and equality? Rahman: It’s shaped my entire life and view of things. At a certain time and place it was very easy for women to get divorced. Even women in the U.S. many years ago did not have equal rights in this area. Women were ostracized. Something like that effects a person’s life forever. My commitment to women’s rights comes from my personal life and seeing the world through the eyes of the women who raised me—my grandmother, my mother and my aunt. They taught me to be strong.
I imagine working at the Center for Reproductive Rights in the ‘90s was an eye-opening experience. I went to the Center in 1994, when here was a lot of interest in global issues and America connecting. The largest women’s conference in history was held in Beijing in 1995, the United Nations was much more central, and abortion rights were under attack.
I joined the Center because I believe that reproduction is at the core of so many of our problems. Reproduction is the fundamental difference between men and women. Without having children, society cannot replicate itself. For thousands of years women’s bodies have been the terrain of that battle. When nations feel they have too many people, they liberalize abortion laws. When you don’t have enough, you try to control women’s individual decision making. Asserting control over that by women is one of the most radical and revolutionary things that we can do.
How did you end up at the Ms. Foundation? When we look around at the national political landscape in our country, women’s issues are not being heard properly. We don’t have adequate political representation. Where we do have popular female politicians, they are more against the women’s agenda than any guy. This is a time when we need to assert progressive values. We need to assert the centrality of women to our nation and how we as women are affected by every decision that is made because we are 50% of the population.
Are you suggesting that female politicians are elected because they aren’t focused on the women’s agenda? It’s much easier. Margaret Thatcher is a prime example. She was very conservative and took more conservative positions than most men. She was a ‘safe’ woman because she wasn’t going to challenge those fundamental precepts.
How are women faring in today’s economy? This has become a womancession. The National Women’s Law Center, a grantee of ours, has been analyzing the data on women’s employment. Their research shows that ever since the recession officially ended women have been losing jobs while, at the same time, men’s employment has been growing. Since July 2009 when the recovery officially started through May 2011, men gained 959,000 jobs while women lost 109,000. As a result, right now women’s unemployment is higher than at the start of the recovery.
Women of color have been disproportionately affected. A staggering 80% of low-income women report that the recession has impacted their families. It’s mostly Latinas, African Americans and Asian-Pacific islanders. They are living paycheck to paycheck.
Why has it shifted from a ‘mancession’ to a ‘womancession’? In the early days job loss was in manufacturing, but today the cuts are in education, health care and social services, where the majority of jobs are held by women. The recent battle has been over collective bargaining rights in unions. Women make up the majority of public sector workers at the state and local level. They stand to lose the most. Finally, in this economy, the cuts are to social service programs. Guess who the beneficiaries of those are? Women and children living in poverty.
I get this question a lot, so will throw it to you. Is it time to take the scorecard down? Oh, no. We are underrepresented from the White House to corporations. We are overrepresented among low-income communities because women are poorer.
We are 50% or more of the population, but when has the White House had a female president? And when has 50% of that staff been women? We earn 77 cents on the dollar as compared to men. Equality would mean dollar-for-dollar salaries. It would mean entering the science fields in equal numbers. It would mean not being raped in the numbers that we are.
We’re not there. Why are we contesting something like family planning and abortion rights? Why? It is the spin of the right to say we don’t need a scorecard.
What do you hope to accomplish at the Ms. Foundation? Our goal is to build up the foundation to be a stronger and more powerful voice on national progressive women’s issues. [We want to] make them part of the discussion and have people and politicians understand that, wow, we have come a long way, but we sure have a long way to go.
We have made enormous strides in our country with women in the workforce. In the 1970s women were earning 55 cents on the dollar. Today we’re at 77 cents. That’s huge progress. Women are equally represented in higher education in terms of student body. We are starting to make some strides in corporate America, but we are not where we need to be. Among discussions of sexuality and body, that is where it’s all breaking down. With the support of institutions like the Ms. Foundation, we have diversified the basis of support for reproductive rights to the low-income communities. They are always disproportionately affected.
[Source:
Forbes.com]
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