[T]he fact is that women have very little power under Iranian law. They cannot run for president. If they ask for a divorce, they are highly unlikely to win any subsequent custody battle. Polygamy is legal and was even encouraged by the Ahmadinejad regime as an antidote to female unemployment! Only 13 percent of women participate in the paid work force, compared to over 25 percent in Turkey and over 38 percent in Indonesia. With the permission of a court, fathers can even arrange marriages for daughters under age 13. And in the past year, feminist movement leaders have been arrested and jailed by the regime.

And:

[T]he photos show, quite clearly, that women are chafing against the limitations of the veil. Look how far back they push the scarves; under an “equal” system, is there any doubt these women would be ripping the veils from their heads? That’s not to deny that many women do wear the hijab gladly, even in Iran. But by hailing the supposed “choice” involved, we provide cover for authoritarian regimes, like Iran’s, that really don’t want to provide women with any choice at all in the matter. If anything, the focus on the hijab has often served as a distraction from the underlying oppression the veil represents. As Iranian sociologist Fatemeh Sadeghi wrote in a widely circulated 2008 essay, “Why We Say No to Forced Hijab,” the veil has “nothing to do with morality and religion. It is all about power.”

After two nights of “jokes” at the expense of Palin and her family, Letterman tried to explain himself and offer something of an apology. On his June 10 show, Letterman said he was referring to Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, Bristol — not the 14-year-old daughter who actually accompanied Palin on her New York trip. Letterman said “I recognize that these are ugly” jokes. NOW agrees. Comedians in search of a laugh should really know better than to snicker about men having sex with teenage girls (or young women) less than half their age.

The organization appends a request that “all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives,” but curiously it dredges up the old example of Rush Limbaugh mocking Chelsea Clinton instead of the very fresh and nearly omnipresent sexist jokes about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and first lady Michelle Obama. If nothing else, this negates Roger Pilon’s atypically fatuous question about Palin and Letterman: “Where is the outrage from the Left? Where are the feminists?”

The Palin moment … exposed the vulnerability of the Left to a challenge to its most cherished claims—as the sole representative of the interests of the working class and the only legitimate path to political power for an ambitious woman.

Yes, of course. Four months before he chose Palin as his running mate, Sen. John McCain voted against extending the statute of limitations for pay discrimination complaints. Two months after the election, McCain voted against it again. But McCain elevated a rather mediocre politician that most women will never meet onto a losing presidential ticket. I don’t know how the Left can compete with this.

The loss of the birth control provision came as a blow to Planned Parenthood, which had lobbied forcefully for it.

Despite the news, as I reported today, there is still plenty of reason for the feminist lobby to be pleased — billions and billions of them, in fact.

The bill allocates billions of dollars for education, health care, direct aid to needy families and support for state governments to maintain social programs — all items on the feminist wish list. Stimulus money will create or preserve jobs for teachers, librarians, nurses, and childcare workers around the country.

The outcome of the House bill contrast with feminist fears from just a few weeks ago, when it seemed that stimulus job creation would be confined to the male-dominated construction and energy industries. But the bill allocates only five percent of the stimulus for infrastructure, according to The Boston Globe, a figure that shrank progressively as the details of the stimulus were hashed out:

“Priorities changed,” [Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.)] said. “Someone says, ‘How about food stamps, how about early childhood education?’”

We also haven’t seen the last of the Medicaid family planning expansion. The Senate is expected to take up a stand alone version of the family planning expansion next week.

Nearly 70 years after this poster encouraged women to join the workforce, feminist organizations want to ensure that the stimulus package includes enough jobs for women. (Wikimedia Commons)

National women’s rights advocacy groups are using their newfound political clout with the Obama administration to shape the $825 billion economic stimulus package.

In late 2008, when the debate over the stimulus bill was in full swing, many feminists feared that the package would shortchange women by focusing job creation on the male-dominated construction industry. Feminist author and activist Linda Hirshman was among the first to wave a red flag in an influential New York Times op-ed. “Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group,” Hirshman wrote. “By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.”

Meanwhile several national women’s groups began a quiet but concerted pressure campaign on Obama and members of Congress to keep women’s economic security on the stimulus agenda.

In the bill, which passed in the house Wednesday, feminist organizations appear to have gotten much of what they wanted, including notably sizable investments in health care, education, and job training as well as billions of dollars to stabilize state budgets. For example, the bill includes $88 billion for Medicaid and $79 billion to help states continue to provide public services, according to an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. An estimated $150 billion is allocated for various educational programs from kindergarten to post-graduate education, the New York Times reported, Wednesday. These big ticket expenditures are expected to create or sustain significant numbers of jobs in female-dominated sectors of the economy, like teaching, nursing, and social work. More broadly, these figures may be an indication that feminist groups have more political clout and access with the Obama administration than they did under President Bush.

As the stimulus began to take shape, women’s groups moved quickly to cash in political capital they earned during the 2008 election. Last year, women’s organizations threw themselves into Democratic politics with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. The National Organization for Women, the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States took the unusual step of endorsing Obama for president. NOW’s main political action committee spent $239,364 to elect Democrats to Congress in 2008, compared to just $38,419 in 2004.

Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of Obama was only the second presidential endorsement in the group’s 93-year history, the first being John Kerry in 2004.

The main Planned Parenthood-allied PAC spent $556,870 on Congressional races in 2008, with 98 percent of the money going to Democrats. Other feminist groups like EMILY’S List and the National Abortion Rights Action League also rolled up their sleeves and backed the Obama ticket. As a result, Obama came to power in the debt of feminist groups for helping him get elected and expanding Democratic majority in Congress, which will be key to passing his ambitious agenda.

From Planned Parenthood’s perspective, that investment appears to have paid off, not only in the form of a pro-choice president, but also in terms of access to power.

“It’s hard to overstate the difference from having a government where there literally was no conversation to have a government reaching out on on a whole range of issues,” said Laurie Rubiner, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public policy.

So, what’s in the package for women? “Expanding health for them, childcare, unemployment insurance, direct help in higher food stamps, and energy assistance,” said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic stability at the National Women’s Law Center, a non-profit, nonpartisan advocacy group that has worked closely with the Obama transition team and key members of Congress. “It also protects a lot of jobs for women in education, early education, and social work services,” she added.

“You don’t get everything you ask for,” said Entmacher, “[But] we’re pleased with the funding specifically targeted to childcare and Head Start and other investment for children with disabilities.”

Other feminist leaders are also guardedly positive about the stimulus.

“We’re pretty happy with what we’re seeing so far,” said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, “But we’re waiting to see details.”

Asked whether the Obama administration was more friendly to feminist advocacy groups than the last administration, Gandy laughed and replied, “Are you kidding? The difference is like night and day.”

Gandy says that NOW and other women’s groups have met with Obama’s economic policy director Jason Furman and his senior aides to discuss the needs of women in the stimulus. NOW even set up a special page on its website to document their interactions with the transition team.

Having won a seat at the table, Gandy said her organization made the case for “investing in social infrastructure, like education and health.” Gandy is gratified to see a “very, very sizable investment in education,” including money set aside to train nurses and other health care professionals.

However, feminist leaders also agree that whether the stimulus package is fair to women will depend in large part on how the program is implemented. The current stimulus package includes a $79 billion Fiscal Stabilization Fund to help cash-strapped states maintain their current public services in the face of massive revenue shortfalls and increased demands on social welfare programs. Over half of the stabilization money, $39 billion, will go directly to educational institutions through existing federal formulas, according the latest summary of the bill posted on the House Appropriations Committee website; but over $25 billion is to be used for “flexible fiscal relief,” meaning that the states would have broad discretion over how to spend the money.

There will be some structural safeguards. “States won’t be able to just say we’re going to pour concrete across the entire state,” Entmacher says. But states will still have to make tough choices that will dramatically effect how women fare under the stimulus. Will governors go along with powerful local construction interests and spend money building new schools and libraries, or will they use the money to hire more teachers and librarians?

“If there’s any life in the feminist movement, every chapter of NOW would be writing to the governor,” says feminist writer Linda Hirshman.

NOW president Kim Gandy says that state and local chapters will make their voices heard. “NOW is primarily a grassroots organization,” Gandy says, “Our national operation is small compared to our state and local chapters.” She expects that local NOW chapters will start pressuring state and local politicians as soon as the plan is finalized.

The access to the new president and his top advisers feminist groups have enjoyed so far is a change from the last eight years, but only time will tell the extent of their influence. The relationship between the Obama administration and feminist groups is sure to be tested in the days ahead as the fight over the details of the stimulus heats up.

Speaking this morning to conservative scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, author of  “Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women” and “The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men,” she maintained that Luce and Palin were a lot more alike than different. But Sommers did acknowledge — with a degree of glee — the new power Palin represents.

“This is something different,” Sommers said, “Even the way she combines her career and children. She’s merged that. If there’s a bill to sign, she takes the babies along. Some women have done this but we just haven’t seen this from a woman leader and it does represent a fundamental social change. Palin can reach women in a way Gloria Steinem could never do.

‘Palin just offers a way,” she continued, “a view of life, family-and faith-based, that is credible and can change the hearts and minds of women. It’s not something that’s recognized during Women’s History Month. I’m not certain about her qualifications. But as a role model for women — she’s superb.”

Palin could use friends like Sommers going forward. She’s truly taken some deep shots in the press as of late — particularly in a scathing, superbly reported New York Times piece about her governorship; and, of course, in TWI’s own meticulous reportage by Laura McGann, from the day Palin was chosen as Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

Now we will learn whether her new model can lead her to the White House and if she and her other pit bulls are ready to stay on the national stage.