Three Steps Forward, a Few Steps Back

Written by Heather Burke Tuesday, November 08 2011

Nobel Peace Prize/women’s global rights and security – The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was a celebration of women’s vital role in building peace and catalyzing social transformation through nonviolent action. Three women – two Liberians and one Yemeni –share the prize. This is the first time that a woman has received the Peace Prize since Wangari Muta Maathai of Kenya, who passed away in September, was awarded for her contributions to sustainable development, democracy, and peace in 2004.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 72, emerged in 2005 as the first democratically elected president after more than 14 years of civil war in Liberia. She is the first and the only female to be elected head of state in Africa. Sirleaf, who is currently locked in a heated November re-election campaign, is regarded for her work promoting peace, reconciliation, and development following the turmoil of Liberia’s 1989-2003 civil wars.

Peace activist Leymah Gbowee, 39, began her journey to rebuild her country of Liberia as a trauma counselor rehabilitating former child soldiers of Charles Taylor’s regime. She gained notoriety in 2003 for mobilizing Christian and Muslim women in an antiwar protest that pressured Taylor to attend peace talks in Ghana. Gbowee’s delegation’s persistent call for a cease-fire agreement led to the signing of The Comprehensive Peace Agreement, officially marking an end to Liberia’s civil wars. Her book, Mighty be our Powers, and the award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, capture Gbowee’s courageous journey to secure a peaceful end to Liberia’s gruesome war. She is executive director of the Women in Peace and Security Network and has served on Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission since 2004.

Human rights activist and journalist Tawakkul Karman, 32, is the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. She founded Women Journalists Without Chains in 2005 and calls upon Martin Luther King’s model of nonviolent action to promote pro-democracy regime change in Yemen. Karman is seen as a champion among youth and anti-government protestors for demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a stand that landed her in jail. Karman, the “Mother of the Revolution,” received news that she won the Nobel Peace Prize from inside the protest camp she has called home for past nine months. Karman’s prize has rallied other Yemeni women to action in protest of Saleh’s continued brutal treatment of protesters and is further proof of the crucial role that women across the Arab world have played in recent uprisings.

The focus on women during the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize comes at a time when violence against women and the violation of women’s rights are growing worse in hot spots around the world. Nov. 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a valuable platform to build momentum around the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) introduced during the 111th Congress, but never passed into law. Passage of the IVAWA would place women’s priorities at the center of U.S. foreign assistance and offer a comprehensive, integrated strategy to address violence against women. Join the campaign spearheaded by World Pulse and Women Thrive Worldwide to pass IVAWA by contacting your Representative.

Women and the economy/women in business and leadership positions – With the U.S. economy continuing to struggle and national unemployment hovering around 9 percent, a report issued last month reveals that women have faced the greatest economic strain during and after the Great Recession of 2007 – 2009. Published by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) and the Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security, the study captures women and men’s perceptions of their economic security and underscores the influence and impact that gender-based gaps in income, roles, and responsibilities have on women’s economic security. Among women, married and single mothers faced considerable economic hardships and cited difficulty paying for personal or family medical care over the past year (38 percent of single and 34 percent of married women), in addition to either reducing or eliminating retirement savings to meet current expenses (38 percent of single and 42 of percent married women).

Impending state budget cuts are certain to exacerbate the economic distress felt by women who are largely employed in the shrinking public sector and who also rely on subsidized public services, like child care, to enter or remain productive in the work force. This study was also the first of its kind to examine pay secrecy policies and penalties for workers who take advantage of time off in the public and the private sectors since the Lilly Ledbetter case brought pay secrecy and gender-based wage discrimination to national attention in 2007. The study shows that the private sector enforces stricter pay secrecy policies than the public sector – a practice that many believe perpetuates unjust pay gaps between men and women for the same work.

Gender-based wage discrimination and pay gaps hit the national news again in late October with the filing of a new lawsuit against Wal-Mart by the same women whose class-action lawsuit was overturned in June by a 5-to-4 decision in the Supreme Court. The new lawsuit covers some 90,000 current and former employees of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club in the California region who claim that they were discriminated against in decisions of pay and promotion. The lawsuit finds its roots in plaintiff Stephanie Odle’s discovery in 1999 that a male employee with the same job and less experience was earning $23,000 more a year than she was.

While many women in the United States express pessimism about the health of their economic futures, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit 2011 offered up some reasons to celebrate under this year’s theme “The Start of Something Big.”

Honored among lead businesswomen in Fortune’s anticipated ranking, 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, is IBM veteran Virginia M. Rometty, who will take over as the company’s first women CEO Jan. 1. Rometty’s recent appointment at IBM sheds light on the vital importance sponsorship, also known as the Sponsorship Effect, and self-promotion play in a woman’s advancement up the corporate ladder and into an executive role. Catalyst, a research and advocacy organization for women in the workplace, reveals that men benefit from proactive advancement strategies, whereas women witnessed slower pay growth and rewards for the same advancement tactics used by men in its October report The Myth of the Ideal Worker: Does Doing All the Right Things Really Get Women Ahead?. Catalyst’s study can be used to target advancement disparities and launch strategies for change within an organization or one’s own career.

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Heather Burke has more than eight years experience working with partners in the public and private sectors to promote women’s empowerment and develop innovative investment strategies for community development. She has worked in 12 countries on initiatives spanning women's and girls’ leadership, education, income generation, social entrepreneurship, public health, food security, political participation, and environmental conservation. She is a social venture consultant based outside of Washington, D.C.