TNA Press Release on Sebelius and DeParle
March 2, 2009
by The New Agenda
|The following press release will be issued for the morning news cycle. TNA celebrates that both Sebelius and DeParle were on our list of recommended candidates for Secretary of HHS.
For Immediate Release
March 2, 2009
Smart Choices to Lead America’s Healthcare Reform Efforts
The New Agenda, a non-partisan national women’s rights group, commends President Obama on his appointments of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to fill the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services and Nancy-Ann DeParle to run the White House Office for Health Reform.
The New Agenda promoted both Sebelius and DeParle for positions in HHS. Co-founder Amy Siskind said: “Healthcare is an incredibly important issue in our country. Sebelius and DeParle both have excellent track records crafting effective healthcare policies. We applaud these appointments.”
If confirmed, Sebelius will become the fourth woman to hold the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The New Agenda noted that in total, President Obama has picked 24 cabinet positions. Of those 24 picks, only 6 have been women.
Co-founder Amy Siskind said: “We implore President Obama to continue to pick from the pool of qualified women in our country to fill spots in his administration. We need President Obama to move our country forward and bring the type of positive change that our country so surely needs.”
Gender is irrelevant, lets hope they have been appointed for the skills they bring to the American people and Obama government, not for the advancing cause of blind feminism. Follow that line of thinking and your as bad as the male patriarchal chauvinists you condemn. In the latter environment, women face glass ceilings, men face concrete. Would you be so blinded by your crusade that you can’t understand what I’m saying?
boz,
If gender were irrelevant more than 6 out of 21 women would hold cabinet level positions. Men holding 15 of 21 suggest that they are proportionately more qualified than women, which is not true. Seeking out and hiring women does not equate to hiring less qualified women.
Amy,
On the press release, I think identifying the number of picks is a bit confusing. While I understand you are emphasizing the low number of women candidates, such a criteria makes it nearly impossible to make comparisons to the past. The bottom line is that women will hold only 6 of 21 cabinet positions.
“Gender is irrelevant, lets hope they have been appointed for the skills they bring to the American people and Obama government, not for the advancing cause of blind feminism.”
If you think gender is irrelevant, I assume you believe race is irrelevant as well. In other words, you’d think there would be nothing even remotely wrong if a country as diverse as ours had a federal government made up exclusively of white men. You really don’t see the problem here?
Apart from the wacky notion that in a representative democracy, government ought to actually, you know, be representative of the people, there exists a body of evidence suggesting that increasing the percentage of women in a country’s political leadership (particularly increasing it to above 30%) correlates with improvements in the rights and status of women in said country. So yes, gender matters. Of course the woman appointed to this or any other position needs to be qualified but considering that slightly more than half of the US population is female and that women have made up fifty percent or more of college graduates for several decades now, why is there any reason to believe that a given woman would somehow be less likely to possess the necessary qualifications for the position than a man?
Gender does matter, a lot. I hope that Sebelius and DeParle will work hard on the issue of HEALTHCARE PARITY FOR WOMEN. Yes, there is an issue of parity in healthcare for women.
Several of the issues:
The individual healthcare insurance market fails women.
1. It is difficult for women to get approved for coverage. Insurance companies can deny women for coverage for a variety of reasons that are particularly relevant to women, such as having had a Caesarean section or being a survivor of domestic violence.
?2. If they do get coverage – women often face higher premiums than men for the same coverage. In 40 states and the District of Columbia, insurance companies are permitted to charge women higher insurance premiums than men under a common insurance industry practice known as “gender rating.”
?3. And if a woman does find coverage she can afford it may not be comprehensive enough to meet her needs. The vast majority of the more than 3500 individual market health insurance policies examined do not cover maternity care at all. ?
Many healthcare reform proposals would expand the individual insurance market. Leaving women to fend for themselves in the individual insurance market would be disastrous for women’s health.
For more information, see the National Women’s Law Center website: http://action.nwlc.org/site/Pa.....urn_Report
As a pro-life feminist, I’m not entirely excited about Sebelius. Part of me loves the fact that a woman was appointed (and she’s an alum of my alma mater!), but I can’t quite get behind her after knowing about her support of George Tiller.
I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
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