The World Split Open (5 page)

NOW sponsors a Young Feminist Conference in Akron, Ohio, which draws eight hundred young women, who also rally against the Gulf War.

The Senate overturns the “gag rule” that bars federally financed family planning clinics from discussing abortion with women.

Susan Faludi publishes
Backlash
, which documents how and who helped create a backlash against the women's movement in the 1980s.

The film
Thelma and Louise
strikes a nerve among women viewers that baffles film critics.

1992  
In
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert P. Casey
, the Supreme Court affirms a woman's right to abortion but allows certain restrictions based on a state's “compelling” interest in potential human life.

Colorado and Oregon pass antigay ordinances, which are overthrown by the Supreme Court in 1996.

Some 750,000 women, men, and children turn out for the Pro-Choice March in Washington, D.C., with the slogan “We Won't Go Back! We Will Fight Back.” The march attracts labor unions, celebrities, and students from six hundred campuses. A similar march is held in Los Angeles the next week.

EMILY's List, the Women's Campaign Fund, and other groups raise money for a record number of women running for electoral office.

Barbara Bush and Marilyn Quayle try to promote “family values” at Republican National Convention.

Five major women's clinics in Buffalo become the target of Operation Rescue.

Vice President Dan Quayle attacks the fictional television character Murphy Brown for having a child with no husband.

The State Farm Insurance Company agrees to pay $157 million to 814 women who were denied jobs as agents in the largest sex
discrimination settlement in U.S. history under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“The Year of the Woman” in politics results in more women elected than in any prior year.

1993  Congress passes the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives men and women protected unpaid leave to respond to family emergencies.

Bill Clinton appoints a record number of women to his cabinet and as heads of agencies, but withdraws the candidacies of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood for attorney general because of the “Nannygate” issue.

The Tailhook scandal, in which naval aviators are accused of sexual harassment and lewd behavior, is exposed.

The United Nations World Conference on Human Rights meets in Vienna and, after hearing the testimony of women from all over the world, accepts the “Vienna Declaration,” stating that violence against women or girls is a violation of their human rights. The General Assembly accepts the resolution.

1994  The Supreme Court rules that obstructing the entrance to an abortion clinic is illegal.

Congress passes the Violence Against Women Act, which provides funds for services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, and trains police and judiciary.

The United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo passes a resolution that education for women (instead of industrial development) is a precondition for population control.

1995  Beijing, China, hosts the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women. The conference calls for women's rights as human rights, and endorses a far-reaching and radical plan for peace and equality for women.

The Glass Ceiling Commission reports that white men hold 95 percent of senior management positions.

The O. J. Simpson trial, in which he is accused of killing his estranged wife and her friend, results in his acquittal, but the lengthy drama also teaches the nation about domestic violence.

The University of California Board of Regents ends affirmative action in admissions, hiring, and contracting on all campuses.

At the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks out against abuse against women. “It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.”

1996  Rape as an instrument of war is defined as a war crime as Serbian military and police officers are indicted on rape charges.

President Clinton is elected for a second term, partly due to women's expectations that he will improve their working and family lives.

President Clinton signs a bill that does away with the national entitlement to welfare for mothers with dependent children, without providing for training or child care. States receive block grants for whatever programs they want to keep or begin.

1998  Independent counsel Kenneth Starr and the far right-wing keep up relentless attacks against Democratic president Bill Clinton. Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky provides them with ammunition and ignites a national debate that ends up in the impeachment of the president in 1999, but the Senate acquits him. The vast majority of Americans try to return personal behavior to private life, and support the president. Pundits notice that Americans now seem to be able to distinguish between sexual harassment and a sexual affair. The political Right denounces feminists as hypocrites for their perceived support of Clinton.

1999  The UN reports that women and children still constitute the overwhelming majority of the world's poor and that women are two-thirds of the world's illiterate.

The newest users of the Internet are middle-aged women.

The U.S. women's soccer team battles an evenly matched Chinese team and wins the World Cup trophy by one point in overtime penalty kicks. The nation is suddenly mesmerized by women's soccer.

Boys Don't Cry
, a film about a teenager, born a girl, who lives as a young man, with lethal consequences, introduces Americans to a growing transgender civil rights movement.

2000  The Beijing Plus Five meetings at the United Nations assess the progress that each nation has made in implementing the 1995
Platform for Action.
Activists successfully defend against a well-organized backlash launched by various nations and
orthodox religions. Evidence of a global backlash is clearly present.

Violence against clinics that provide abortions continues unabated.

Bangladesh reports that in one year there have been 177 cases of men throwing sulfuric acid in women's faces to express their feelings of anger or rejection. Only a handful of men are jailed. Some women's rights advocates regard it as violation of women's human rights. Others think their society has become too permissive and advocate the return of veiled faces. Twenty-two million single, divorced, and widowed women, who mostly voted for Democrats due to their relative economic insecurity, do not vote. George W. Bush becomes president.

New Yorkers elect Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. Senator.

The Federal Drug Administration approves mifepristone (RU-486) for use in medical abortions, twelve years after its first use in France. At the same time, the number of abortion providers shrinks to a historical low.

On Mother's Day, a “Million Mom March” gathers in Washington, D.C., and in other cities, to end gun violence.

A UNICEF study reports that half of the world's female population has experienced violence or abuse during their lifetimes, and describes it as a “global epidemic.”

During a Puerto Rican day parade in New York City, young men grope, strip, and molest at least fifty female bystanders.

2001  
President Bush reinstates the Reagan-era global gag rule that prevents any international agency from receiving U.S. funds if it mentions or provides abortions; strips contraceptive coverage from federal employees (which Congress restores); prevents taxpayer funding for additional stem-cell research; and closes the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach.

For the first time in world history, an international criminal court successfully indicts three Bosnian soldiers for the war crime of raping women during wartime.

Barbara Ehrenreich's
Nickel and Dimed
exposes the poverty of low-wage female workers and remains on the best-seller list for the next five years.

A class-action sex discrimination suit,
Duke v. Wal-Mart Stores
, is
filed in the ninth U.S. District Court and eventually represents 1.6 million former and current female Wal-Mart workers.

Terrorists fly planes into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. President Bush declares a “war on terror,” and invades and overthrows the Taliban government in Afghanistan, citing the Taliban's brutal treatment of women as one justification. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) casts the only vote against giving the president authority to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against suspected terrorists.

2002  
The Bush administration withholds $34 million appropriated by Congress to the U.N. Population Fund for birth control, arguing (incorrectly) that the money will be used for “coercive abortions.” The U.N. agency estimates that this withdrawl will result in 800,000 more abortions and 2 million more unwanted pregnancies. The U.S. State Department freezes $3 million in funding for the World Health Organization because it conducts research on mifepristone.

HBO broadcasts Eve Ensler's play
The Vagina Monologues
and 800 events promote V-Day around the world to fund shelters for abused women, anti-rape campaigns, and women's centers.

Women who work as painters, steamfitters, plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, and other trades form the first nationwide female trade union—Tradeswomen Now and Tomorrow (TNT).

Halle Berry becomes the first women of color to win an Academy Award for best actress.

A new international study reveals that hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women does not decrease the danger of heart disease, prevent Alzheimer's disease, urinary incontinence, major depression, or osteoporosis.

The National Organization for Women names Wal-Mart a “Merchant of Shame” for its exploitative working conditions, sex discrimination, low wages, and unaffordable health benefits.

California becomes the first state to require employers to provide half pay for six weeks of parental leave. It also obliges accredited medical schools to offer abortion training, permit nurses, physicians assistants, and midwives to prescribe mifepristone, and protect abortion rights if
Roe v. Wade
is overturned.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) becomes the first female House Democratic Whip.

The New York Times
begins including same-sex unions among its wedding announcements.

The National Cancer Institute Web site posts an unproven link between abortion and breast cancer and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site casts doubt on whether condoms effectively protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Critics argue the Bush administration is politicizing science.

Time
magazine names three women—Enron accountant Sherron Watkins, World Com internal auditor Cynthia Cooper, and FBI agent Coleen Rowley—as “persons of the year” because, as whistleblowers on corporate corruption, they upheld “American values.”

President Bush withdraws his support for the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 (and signed by 180 nations by the end of 2005).

The U.S. Health and Human Services department announces new rules that make unborn fetuses, but not pregnant women, eligible for prenatal care.

2003  
A UNICEF report reveals that the United States still has the highest teen birth rate among the twenty-eight most developed nations. The Bush administration increases spending by $60 million on abstinence-only programs that do not permit discussion of birth control.

Hans Blix, head of the U.N. weapons inspection team, finds no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. For the first time in history, some 10 million people on five continents, with many women in leadership positions, march against a war that has not yet begun.

The United States invades Iraq on March 20 after arguing that Saddam Hussein's regime possesses weapons of mass destruction, which are never found.

Joe Wilson, former ambassador to Niger, writes an op-ed publicly critizing the Bush administration for inaccurately stating that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger. Through leaks to the media, unknown top White House officials expose that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is an undercover CIA agent, which endangers national security.

U.S. propaganda casts Private Jessica Lynch as a heroine who fought off Iraqis and was beaten and raped. But she tells the public she did not engage in combat and was well-cared for by Iraqis. Dr. Sally Ride, who became the first female astronaut in 1983 in space on the shuttle Challenger, is inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.

The Supreme Court strikes down as unconstitutional a Texas law banning sodomy.

A feminist worldwide campaign, which includes many American activists, influences Nigerian courts to overturn a stoning sentence against Amina Lawal for a conviction of adultery.

President Bush signs the so-called “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban” act, banning many late-term terminations.

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian defender of women's and human rights, is the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

The U.S. Census' “American Time-Use Survey” finds that the average working woman spends more than twice as much time on household chores than the average working man.

A study of female cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy reveals that 70 percent reported sexual harassment and nearly 20 percent were sexually assaulted.