Some people are not happy to see former First Lady Laura Bush receive the Alice Paul Award from the Sewall-Belmont House. The annual award given by the headquarters for the National Women’s Party is named for the acclaimed suffragette who picketed the White House and was jailed for her tireless effort to win women the right to vote in 1920.
A protest letter signed by 20 women protesting the selection states:
Laura Bush is not known as a champion of women’s rights. She has done little or nothing to advance American women’s equality … Her advocacy on behalf of Afghan women is commendable, but she has been conspicuously absent in every major arena of American women’s rights … To give it to a non-feminist Republican figurehead, at a time when the Republican Party is doing its utmost to demolish women’s hard-fought rights, reflects a stunning lapse of judgment.
Wow. Where to begin? How about the notion that the Republican Party is trying to rescind the rights our foremothers demanded and won for us? We can vote, work, marry, not marry, plan our families, be breadwinners, raise our kids … the list is exhaustive. Which one of these rights, exactly, is the GOP trying to take away? None. The answer is none.
Speaking of women’s rights, you know who does not enjoy the freedoms we American dames have? Afghan women. As the letter mentions, Laura Bush has done commendable work advocating for girls and women in Afghanistan, but it glosses over it.
After the United States went after the Taliban in Afghanistan, the world was made aware of the horrible subjugation suffered by Afghan women. They were not allowed to leave their homes without escorts, educating girls was illegal, and mutilations were common. Laura Bush helped change the culture in that oppressive country, where girls now go to school and women now work “as entrepreneurs, educators, lawyers and community health workers.”
That is a win for the international sisterhood, girlfriends.
Domestically, she has been a champion for childhood literacy, because when you can read, you don’t have to depend on others for information dissemination. Knowledge is power, and the best way to gain it is to read all that you can.
One last thing: The protest letter states that Laura Bush has done virtually nothing when it comes to advocating for American women. I think a few feminists should read up on the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health, a research facility dedicated to discovering how diseases and illnesses affect male and female bodies differently. If that’s not looking out for women’s health, I don’t know what is.
Laura Bush absolutely deserves this award for her tremendous commitment nationally and worldwide in seeing all women rise to their full potential.
Image via Bush Library/Flickr
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Comments 33
if your right to choose involved removing something as worthless as a fingernail, or 10 inches of hair, then fine, Republicans would be all for letting women do whatever the hell they want with their bodies. The FACT is that they are all in favor of protecting a living being. When an abortion is performed, a heartbeat is stopped. It's not a just a clump of cells. Call it a fetus, say it can't survive on it's own, whatever....but that heartbeat is forever silenced. We consider it a life. You (pro-choice advocates) consider the woman's convenience more important that that heartbeat. We believe that your right stops where someone else's rights begin. That heartbeat matters.
Mandango: "By the way, I'm a registered Republican. I just don't understand how a party went from wanting less laws and government to wanting to govern what gays and women do with their relationships and reproductive systems"
*Yawn*
The Left wants to define women by their reproductive organs. It's misognynist. Period. Just #SayVagina! http://twitchy.com/2012/06/18/michigans-vaginas-gather-on-the-capitol-steps-to-celebrate-one-another/ And drag your kid and dogs into it as well!
Nobody ever talks (cites) the work George & Laura Bush did to combat AIDS in Africa. That's truly "woman friendly". And effective.
I have no problem with Laura Bush winning the award. She's a very nice woman and has done a lot of work for women in Afghan.
However, Republicans ARE trying to limit womens rights.
They are trying to limit access to birthcontrol with some of their laws, access to abortion, access to emergency contraception.
They don't support equal pay for equal work.
In Michigan, they punished to Reps for speaking out aginst abortion and in Congress, they have had hearings about women's health without any women present.
Laura deserves the award. She has contributed well. I've always liked her, and I daresay she's more of a 'feminist' than she lets on! Dubya freely admits she outshines him, and runs the show.
Why can't we focus on the good someone does, even if you don't agree with EVERYthing they did (or didn't do)?? Not every FLOTUS can be a Dolly Madison or Eleanor Roosevelt. God, we could have had another Nancy, Mamie or Mary Todd!