Bloomberg's Breastfeeding Initiative: Let's Start With Paid Parental Leave....

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has again been the focus of criticism for promoting a “nanny state,” this time for his initiative to further breastfeeding by preventing hospitals from displaying and promoting breast milk substitutes. The many voices in the outpouring of criticism that followed the unveiling of Bloomberg’s new plan are right about one thing: most women's decision to breastfeed is not determined by where and whether hospitals display breast milk substitutes on their shelves. But most criticism has focused on a somewhat illusionary notion: choice.

And by this I don't mean that women in the United States have no choice in the matter: obviously, we do.

What I mean is that choices, everywhere, are determined by our circumstances. When a substantially larger percentage of women in Western European countries, as compared to the United States, consistently choose to breastfeed and to continue to breastfeed past 3 months, logic has it that circumstances in those countries facilitate the healthier choice (which, undisputedly, in most cases is continued and exclusive breastfeeding for at least 6 months).

And what are those circumstances?

Here's a hint: it's not that European countries hide breast milk substitutes on the back shelves far away from maternity wards. Sure, many hospitals in Europe aggressively discourage bottle-feeding, but breast milk substitutes are freely available and the shaming of non-breastfeeding mothers—which many critics of Bloomberg's initiative rightly point to as counterproductive—is no more or less strong than in the United States.

The fact that more women breastfeed in Europe is also not an indication of European women lagging behind their American sisters in terms of emancipation and modern living. If true, this might make European women more likely to live traditional homemaker lives with time to breastfeed. Women in Europe face different, not more, obstacles to equality than women in the United States. The pay gap between men and women has long been less pronounced in Europe than in the United States, whereas legal protections against sexual harassment are stronger in the United States than in most European countries.

Many of those who criticize Bloomberg's initiative refer to the fact that some women just can’t breastfeed, and they shouldn’t be made to think they are lesser or worse mothers because of it. And, yes, that is obviously an issue. Some women just do not produce milk, regardless of how long and how well they teach their newborns to suckle. But it would be facile (and, frankly, naïve) to conclude from the difference in breastfeeding statistics that substantially fewer women living in the United States are physically able to breastfeed. There is, after all, nothing in the water (one would hope) that so systematically impairs our bodily functions.

There is, however, something in our laws. The key difference between Europe and the United States when it comes to breastfeeding are legal protections of paid parental leave, paid sick leave, and, in some cases allowances for longer lunch hours to breastfeed.

Consider this: in Denmark, where I gave birth and started breastfeeding my daughter, women have a right to at least 46 weeks paid leave after birth (unless your union got you a better deal). After living seven months in Peru (where women are entitled by law to 90 days paid leave to be taken before or after birth, and an additional one-hour break for breastfeeding while at work until the new baby is six months old), I moved to the United States for a full-time job. My daughter was then eight months old and had until then been exclusively breastfed.

My conditions were comparatively good. I had an office with a lock on the door, and I could organize my meetings and other work around the regular pumping I needed to do to maintain the flow of milk. Crucially, there was a fridge where I could store the pumped milk to later bring home to my daughter. Even so, my milk production, which
had until then been copious, all but seized in a few months, largely due to the difficulties in keeping a rigorously regular pumping (and water intake) schedule and—who am I kidding—the physical discomfort the pumping caused. And I am not alone. Many women find it hard to keep up a steady breast milk supply when returning to work after time at home.

So imagine what might happen to a new mother without such discretionary protection, and with only the narrow extended (and unpaid) sick leave afforded by the law. She'd be back to work after 12 weeks (or less) of unpaid leave, often have no place to pump, no allowance for time to pump, and no place to store the milk.

Equally to the point, the oddly myopic view of what's at stake in the breastfeeding debate that was displayed in last week's criticism of Bloomberg's initiative suggests that new mothers enjoy little understanding from co-workers, employers, or even those claiming to represent women's best interests.

At best, we are encouraged to feel empowered in rejecting breastfeeding and Mayor Bloomberg's blame politics. At worst, we are told bottle-feeding is the price we pay for equality. The former is a limited read of reality, while the latter is just plain wrong. There are more effective ways than blame and coercion to encourage healthy breastfeeding for women who want to lactate and are physically able to do so, starting with paid parental leave.

Who is a "Criminal?" Exclusion of Vulnerable Groups from International AIDS Conference Nothing to Celebrate

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As the International AIDS Conference ended in Washington D.C. last week, rumor has it that the lead organizer invited participants to celebrate the fact that “criminals” had been kept out of the conference. This with reference to the fact that sex workers and those convicted for drug crimes were prevented by current law from obtaining visas for the gathering.

Setting aside for a moment the insanity of excluding the voices of two groups very much affected by the HIV epidemic in general and by misdirected prevention policies in particular, and regardless of whether the rumors are true, we can use this opportunity to reflect on the definition, use, and potentially manipulative power of criminal laws and policies.

For starters, our concept of what is criminal is relative and fluid at best. When I did research on access to abortion for rape victims in Mexico in 2006 and 2007, I was shocked to learn that child victims of incest were considered criminals in many jurisdictions. Meanwhile, rapists could escape the label by marrying their victim, a relatively common provision in several other countries too, including Cameroon and Brazil. This notion of incest victims as criminals and rapists as... not criminals, illustrates the fluidity of the concept.

Sex workers too are not always breaking the law. In some jurisdictions, such as Canada until very recently, sex workers can avoid criminal sanctions by doing only out-calls or by working alone—conditions that tend to render their work more dangerous. In other jurisdictions, such as for example Nevada and New Zealand, sex work is generally legal, subject to regulation.

Punitive measures attached to drug use also depend on the jurisdiction, down to quite substantial differences on what constitutes an illegal substance in the first place. Considering the uncontested and severe health consequences of tobacco and alcohol overuse, it is amazing that these drugs are in legal circulation in the United States while other drugs with equal or lesser negative health implications are not. Moreover, there is now an overwhelming consensus that drug addiction is an illness rather than a malicious choice, and that treating it as an illness renders better (and cheaper) results than treating it as a crime.

But even if we believe existing criminal provisions in whichever jurisdiction we live in are just, the use of the criminal law to target specific populations for punishment should cause pause.

In the United States, Michelle Alexander has documented the highly selective application of the criminal law, in particular as it relates to drug-related infractions. For example, while whites and blacks use drugs at similar rates (and whites are slightly more likely to deal illegal drugs), blacks are overwhelmingly more likely to be targeted for arrest, prosecution, and punishment. Likewise, ambiguous criminal law provisions on sex work in Louisiana up until very recently allowed the police to apply the provisions with the most severe punishments to trans sex workers of color.

Such police discretion in the use of criminal law—even if one agrees with the provisions as they stand—converts the penal code into a very effective tool for repression and discrimination.

In fact, those who believe in the fairness of existing criminal laws should be particularly worried about the selective application of them. If you think that everyone who smokes pot belongs in jail (and that the threat of jail sentences is a good way to bring down pot use), shouldn't you be worried that individuals who are neither resource-poor nor of color hardly ever are punished (and therefore will not benefit from the dissuasive powers of the law)?

More to the point, the selective implementation of criminal sanctions creates the illusion that white, upper-middle class people can't be violent repeat offenders, something the exposure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sexually aggressive nature—whether considered criminal or not—should by now have been dis-proven.

In other words, the definition of criminal offenses, the selective implementation of the law, and the resulting stereotypes generate a self-enforcing loop of discrimination and exclusion to the detriment of all. The exclusion of so many legitimate voices from this year’s AIDS conference is just one example. The incarceration of 10 percent of the adult black population in the United States is another.

“Criminal” is not an objective term, and the application of criminal sanctions has consequences that go way beyond jail sentences or fines. Policy makers would do well to remember that when they seek to devise solutions to the many human rights violations suffered by sex workers, injection drug users, and others vilified by the law.

A Human Rights Perspective on Headscarf and Veil Bans

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On July 5th, the international soccer association, FIFA, overturned its 2007 ban on players wearing headscarves. The association announced it will allow headscarves on a trial basis only. Soccer rules forbid equipment that makes a religious statement or is dangerous. 

On the latter issue, new headscarf designs held together by Velcro and other non-pin options have eliminated the potential health concern, and in any case there is no evidence that headscarves have ever caused injuries in the first place. On the former, one can only assume the association ultimately saw the absurdity in banning headscarves when crucifixes are often worn and kissed by players during games.

The news comes in the middle of celebration that several gulf countries for the first time are sending female athletes (wearing headscarves) to the Olympics. However, it also comes as more and more European countries are restricting the wearing of headscarves or face-veils in public.

In some cases, these restrictive laws are written so as to apply to the conspicuous wearing of all religious symbols and dress in specific public spaces—such as public schools—or by specific persons—for example, teachers. Regardless of the general way these laws are written, often they are almost exclusively applied to Muslim women who wish to cover their hair or face or both.

France is the first European country to have passed a blanket ban on covering up one’s face in public, effective April 2011. While the law is written in a neutral manner—it prohibits all persons from covering up their faces in public unless for purposes of safety, such as wearing a helmet—the debate and stated motivation for the law was, at least in part, to “liberate” women from the “imposition of the veil.”

Headscarf and veil bans—however they are expressed in law—raise numerous red flags for those who care about human rights.

First of all, clothing is a matter of freedom of expression. For a state to impose its view of how everyone must dress arbitrarily interferes with our ability to express ourselves freely, whether expressed as a clothing ban (“you can’t wear a headscarf”) or a requirement (“you must”). 

Secondly, when the imposed or banned piece of clothing is predominantly linked to a particular religion, it also affects our human right to express our faith freely. United Nations experts on freedom of religion repeatedly tell states that, while state religions are permissible, majority religions or the religion of government officials cannot be imposed on those who do not share that faith. To ban clothing that has particular meaning in one particular religion, while seemingly neutral, is a poor veil—excuse the pun—on blatant discriminatory intent. It may be that everyone in France is prohibited from covering their face in public, but only those for whom covering their face is an expression of their faith suffer as a result.

The purported “liberation” intention behind the French law is particularly problematic from the perspective of overcoming harmful stereotypes and discrimination. When the French government says or implies through its policies and actions that all or most Muslim women who wear facial veils do so because they are “oppressed,” each and every Muslim woman in France, far from being liberated, is deprived of any autonomy with regard to her freedom of expression and religion. Moreover, for the government to perpetuate the stereotype that all Muslim women are submissive and oppressed does little to further integration and understanding in society generally.

This is not to say that the French government should take a laissez-faire attitude towards discriminatory social norms—in fact, quite the contrary. France has a duty to combat inequality between men and women across the board. Where gender inequality is reinforced by the imposition of social norms and religious arguments—whether based on Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion—the state must ensure access to information and resources so as to prevent discrimination and provide recourse in cases of abuse.

In fact, the most disturbing aspect of the French ban on face-veils is that misplaced “liberation” policies can render very real problems invisible. It is noticeable that recent French police figures show that every two and a half days a woman is beaten to death by her partner, and that an estimated 75,000 women are subject to sexual violence every year in France. These women are not all Muslim and certainly do not all cover their faces. Yet they are in need of urgent government protection that so far has been demonstrably inadequate.

It is tremendously positive that FIFA has recognized the rights of women and girls to play sports and to express their religious beliefs at the same time. It is also positive that Saudi Arabia,Qatar, and Brunei are opening the doors for women’s self-expression through physical activity and sportive achievement. It is less positive that so many countries in Europe are choosing to perpetuate discriminatory stereotypes against Muslim women while ignoring many of the very real gender issues at their door.

To be sure, women enjoy more autonomy in France than in Saudi Arabia—no one is disputing that. What is at stake when it comes to dress-codes, however, is the very same principle of self-expression and individual right to dress according to our faith and beliefs: it is equally oppressive for the latter government to require all women to cover their faces in public as it is for the former to require that we don’t.

How Governments and Individuals - Meaning Each of Us - Deny the Persistence of Racism and Abuse

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When you work on human rights issues, you notice a certain pattern in government denial of abuse. First line of defense: it didn’t happen. Or if it happened, they did it to themselves. Or if they didn’t, we certainly had nothing to do with it. Or if we did, we didn’t mean to. It doesn’t matter if the issue is torture, forced evictions, or garden-variety employment discrimination. The response from those in charge is often, if not always, the same.

Though this pattern is annoying, to say the least, I have lately become acutely aware of a much more depressing trend: the denial of abuse among those of us who should know better. Of course, we don’t call it denial. We call it "realism." But the mechanism is the same.

1. “It didn’t happen.”

For decades, commentators and a large proportion of the US public have posited that racism no longer exists. Despite the fact that skin color and ethnicity matters with regard to just about any social indicator you care to look at — health, education, employment, housing, law enforcement — most white people believe the system we live in is racially just.

The writer Touré has described this situation as a “fog of racism:” a situation so subtle, it is blurred. “With this form of racism,” he says, “there is no smoking gun. There is no one calling you a nigger to your face. There's no sign saying you can't enter this building. ... But … it’s there.”  

This is not much different from the many people who are genuinely puzzled at the need for continued attention to women’s issues in the United States now that “the genders are equal.” I hear this argument almost daily, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including the continued pay gap and the vicious attack on reproductive rights for women and not men.   

2. “They did it to themselves.”

Blaming the victim is par for the course in rape cases, a context in which it (rightfully) is denounced by women’s groups as sexist, discriminatory, and just plain wrong. But it is also common for individuals who identify sexual or racial discrimination to be called silly, overly sensitive, or even vindictive. 

When I firmly told off a male colleague at a former employer for caressing my waist, a female colleague immediately and loudly concluded that I “must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.” 

And I can’t count the times I have been told that “black people are racist too,” as a manner to excuse racial discrimination. In sociology and social psychology, this phenomenon is called internalized oppression, that is the manner in which an oppressed group comes to use against itself the methods of the oppressor. More commonly, it is expressed as a desire to maintain the dignity of the group: we may suffer, but we don’t complain or sulk. 

3. “We had nothing to do with it.”

Most people don’t like to think of themselves or the people they know as bigots. This is natural and reasonable. It is hard to remain sane if you believe your actions are consistently insensitive or morally wrong. This, however, is not the same as noticing and addressing injustice — especially injustice that we, ourselves, are benefitting from. 

For example, I cannot in good conscience say that I have nothing to do with racism (or sexism, or hetero-centrism, or…) when I know that I benefit daily from a system that overwhelmingly recognizes my humanity and rights because of my Northern passport, fair skin, perceived heterosexuality, motherhood, and Judeo-Christian background (I could go on). Unlike my Peruvian ex-husband, I don’t have to think about what I wear when I travel in order to avoid additional hassles at airport security. And unlike those of my female friends who are non-gender-conforming and childless, I don’t have to defend my worth as a woman.  

4. “We didn’t mean to.”

When all other justifications have failed, the usual fall-back for governments who violate human rights is lack of intent: we may indeed have tortured a couple of prisoners, but it was unknowingly done and therefore, it is implied, of limited importance. 

This excuse is hardly ever used as a denial strategy for continued and entrenched racial, sexual, and other discrimination in the United States. And not because we recognize our responsibility in the stereotypes we perpetuate. But rather because we don’t. In fact, as shown above, we routinely deny the very existence of discrimination.

I am not advocating a collective guilt complex, or, worse, some sort of warped paternalistic pity-fest in which those of privileged background pound our chests in earnest distress and bemoan the supposedly pathetic lives of those considered beneath us. I am, however, advocating a reckoning that allows us to confront those stereotypes that result in the abuse of human rights. Even, and especially, when this means that some of us must give up our special privileges.

And here’s why: I know I am benefiting from many of the stereotypes that prevail in the country I have chosen to live in. I also know I am complicit in the resulting discrimination to the extent that I don’t challenge it.

Street Harassment: A Means of Control That We Need to Get Under Control

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Street harassment—sexual harassment of women in public—has gained notoriety in Western media since the start of the Arab spring. Most recently, a harrowing first-person narrative of a mob sexual assault of a Western woman on Cairo streets had an editor from The Atlantic conclude that he would do anything to stop his daughters from going to Egypt and being exposed to that kind of abuse.

Unfortunately, research suggests that if you want to prevent your daughters from experiencing street harassment, you would need to keep them off the streets pretty much anywhere. The vast majority of women from Indianapolis to Beijing have experienced street harassment at some point, including leering, whistling, and sexual grabbing or touching.

And though most street harassment definitely is less physically aggressive than the story from Egypt, it is anything but benign. Enough scholars have examined the socio-political context and psycho-social consequences of street harassment to conclude that men harassing women in public is a symptom of the sentiment it perpetuates: women as inferior objects of prey.

I know what I am talking about, as does just about every women and post-pubescent girl. The worst case of street harassment I have suffered made me throw up and had me tank a job interview. Even now, 18 years after, I remember the smell of the guy who slid up behind me on a Paris metro escalator to hold me still while he whispered into my ear just what he was planning on doing to me. I froze, somehow unable to move. When the interminable escalator-ride was over, the guy was gone and I was retching. I did keep my interview afterwards, but lost the job.

But even the other, less horrible, cases of harassment took their toll. There was the adolescent boy who purposefully ran into me on a street in downtown Guatemala City some time in early 1997 and grabbed my crotch, hard, for precisely 3 seconds (I counted). Or the grown man who did the same on the F-train in New York City this very year. Both had me shaking and slightly disoriented for hours.

I could go on.

What I remember most clearly from each incident is the feeling of powerlessness and humiliation. The knowledge that this man, whoever he is, sees me as something (or rather: some thing) to crush and control. And the absolutely certainty—born out in fact—that no one around me was going to help.

I know, of course, that this is precisely what I am meant to feel.

I also know that the power imbalance and contempt of women’s autonomy and sexuality that is acted out in sexual harassment of any kind is what makes it hard to talk about. That and the fact that bystanders often acquiesce or contribute to the abuse.

Take sexual harassment in college. Despite the fact that two thirds of American college students say they have been sexually harassed, it is incredibly hard to get anyone to speak out about it on the record. Consider what Rush Limbaugh said about Sandra Fluke for defending access to contraception for college-students for non-sexual reasons. Imagine what would be said of someone who acknowledged that a professor or other student had made an unwelcome pass at them. I certainly understand not wanting to expose oneself to that.

(I have been sexually harassed at university twice. One of those times, a professor asked me to sleep with him the night before he was to grade my final paper. I declined. A fellow student, who had witnessed the exchange, promptly and not without glee informed me that now I was certain to flunk.)

The mob attack in Egypt highlighted this week in The Atlantic is, of course, closer to sexual assault than sexual harassment. Such assault is also not particular to far-off places like Egypt or South Africa. Statistics from the United States indicate a rape rate that is 13 times higher than that of Germany, and 20 times that of Japan.  

Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and any other form of violence and abuse directed at those the perpetrator wishes to control all come from a place that will continue to exist as long as we let it. Whether in Egypt, in Paris, in Cape Town, or in Brooklyn, the least we can do is speak up.