Abstract
This article presents an experience of applied social justice advocacy to maintain and advance women’s reproductive rights and is a call to action for the entire social work profession. The reader is offered a strategy that can be used to effect broad policy change in all political climates. Drawing upon some fundamentals of the social work profession such as coalition building, advocacy engagement, and stakeholder outreach, this article shows how social workers can become engaged in the political arena to pass legislation. It is the author’s hope that this article will be used by social workers and social workers in training to deepen their commitment to women’s issues and social justice advocacy and facilitate their engagement in making policy change.
Keywords
Introduction
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, n.d.), the American “War on Women” describes legislative attacks on women and women’s rights taking place across America. These efforts are designed to place restrictions on women’s health care and erode protections for women and their families (ACLU, n.d.). According to the Guttmacher Institute, in the first quarter of 2014, legislators in 38 states introduced 303 provisions seeking to limit women’s access to care (2014). Twenty-two states have five or more restrictions on abortion access, and Louisiana has 10 (Guttmacher, 2014). Beginning in 2011, states also began a concerted effort to limit federal family planning funding to Planned Parenthood clinics with nine states prohibiting certain entities from receiving federal funds (Guttmacher, 2014). This increase in attacks on women’s bodies leads us into a discussion about how the body is being used as a tool for violence in the war on women in America, how the policies restricting reproductive health care access are being used as a tool of violence against women’s bodies by forcing them to carry unintended pregnancies, and how professional social workers can place themselves in the public space as a response to these brutal attacks.
The mechanism of “othering” has allowed politicians around the United States to dehumanize women while simultaneously dictating what they can do with their reproductive organs. Here “othering” refers to defining women in relation to men, leaving women as inferior because being female means to lack qualities that men come by naturally. It is a woman’s deviance from the norm (i.e., lack of maleness) and assumed passivity that leaves women marked for attack. Conservative politicians have become experts at using this assumption to marginalize women through policy. “Social processes, such as status expectations, cognitive bias, othering, and trading personal power for privilege, create different social opportunities, experiences, and realities for women and men” (Swigonski & Raheim, 2011, p. 14). The way our current government engages in policy formation and the policy domination of women’s reproductive health creates gender-specific structures that perpetuate control over women’s bodies. As Gloria Steinem (2015, p. 4) states, “In the United States, the rightwing has chipped away at the reproductive freedom of minors, poor women, and women in the military—who can’t get an abortion, even if they’re raped while on duty.” Advocacy is desperately needed to counter the war on women and ensure safe and full access to the health care women need to care for their own bodies, plan for their families, and space their children.
This article is a call to action. Advocacy, which is a necessary activity to fulfill our obligation to the communities we serve, is a simple endeavor that takes place in a complex system. The use of a feminist agenda that includes working on specific objectives that promote gender equity, stopping the war on women, increasing and protecting access to safe legal abortion, promoting women’s reproductive freedom, and advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) equality can be combined with a practical approach to advocacy practice giving professional social workers the foundation to engage in groundbreaking, unique, and successful policy initiatives and accomplish their social justice goals. I know this is possible because I have experienced this myself. In the next section, I describe how my passion for LGBTQ equality and women’s health, combined with my anger at the ways in which war was being waged on women and members of the LGBTQ community, led to my first foray into policy advocacy, and, eventually, an entire career built on it. I discuss my own experiences in order to help inspire emerging professional social workers to engage in social justice advocacy.
Beginning an Advocacy Career
My first research project during my master’s in social work education involved LGBTQ homeless youth in Utah. In 2002, there were no homeless shelters for youth, and the law clearly stated that individuals and agencies were not allowed to shelter a youth for longer than 8 hours without parental consent or emancipation. At the time, Utah did not have an emancipation law. Taking the skills I was learning in my policy class, I combined my research on homeless youth with Jansson’s (2003) policy practice framework. I gathered emancipation laws from 26 other states and systematically reviewed each policy looking for key terms and content that I could use to write an “Emancipation of a Minor” law for Utah. After securing sponsorship of the bill, I worked with legislators and community leaders to identify key stakeholders and built a coalition of support for the legislation. However, in a state where parental rights are paramount, I was presented with my first major political challenge. Drawing upon the basic fundamentals of the social work profession such as coalition building and building relationships with stakeholders, I was able to overcome the most daunting of political circumstances to pass legislation that has impacted hundreds of homeless youth.
Building on that first experience of successfully advocating for social justice legislation, I forged a career as an advocate and lobbyist for women’s reproductive health in Utah. I served as the executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council and as the chief lobbyist for the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. Motivated by a feminist agenda and the war on women I worked in the halls of Washington, DC, and the back rooms of the Utah State Capitol as a leader against the so-called War on Women fighting for women’s freedom in the belly of the conservative beast. This experience combined with the guiding principles learned during my social work education allowed me to build a social policy experience that can be duplicated by any social work professional in any state.
While at Planned Parenthood, I helped to ensure the passage of four pieces of legislation into law. Utah became the only state in the nation to pass “Emergency Contraception in the Emergency Room” legislation the first time it was introduced. This policy mandates that emergency contraception be offered to every rape victim who presents at a hospital for care. Planned Parenthood introduced the Fertility Protection Act to secure state health department funding for chlamydia and gonorrhea treatment and prevention and developed Expedited Partner Therapy legislation that allowed pharmacies to dispense an extra dose of antibiotics to treat chlamydia and gonorrhea to an intimate partner without a prescription. Finally, Planned Parenthood worked with legislators to fund an education campaign to educate pregnant women with substance abuse issues about treatment opportunities throughout Utah. As a result of this work, these models of legislation have been introduced in other conservative states.
These successes were, in large part, attributable to my social work education, and specifically to two core principles: embracing the ethical mandate to engage in advocacy and the importance of cultivating relationships. In addition, I propose that successful policy advocacy requires that we embrace (or perhaps even reclaim) the term lobbyist. Each of these is discussed subsequently.
The Ethical Mandate to Engage in Advocacy
Social workers have an ethical obligation to engage in actions that bring our clients closer to fairness, justice, and equality. Our profession was founded on these principles. Pioneering social worker Jane Addams (1902) proclaimed that “action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics” (p. 273). Social justice advocates are individual social workers, collaborating and partnering with others who are aware of policy decisions that effect every aspect of social welfare. They are practitioners who are motivated to learn how a bill becomes a law in the states in which they live. Professional social workers must participate in thoughtful dialogue, approach leaders regardless of political affiliation or assumed political ideology, and build coalitions that bring together decision makers who can help frame discussions in a way that inspires real and lasting change.
Fully engaged advocates engage with their local media. They write op-eds in local newspapers, contact reporters to suggest timely news stories that are relevant to the community, and work with editors to ensure that social justice messages are spread throughout the year. Finally, professional social workers are trained to negotiate and deal with conflict. Advocacy and lobbying efforts are only as effective as the messenger delivering the proposal. The process of change is successful when professional social workers are able to remain calm and engage in thoughtful conversation in the face of adversity. These behaviors can lead to cultivating long lasting, powerful relationships that can help professional social workers achieve their policy goals.
Establishing Relationships
The power of the professional social workers’ influence with elected leaders develops because we engage with people, hear their stories, connect with them, and collaborate together to make change. Engaging in advocacy gives professional social workers a platform where they can take their social work education to heart and approach every leader, elected official, or reporter with a simple mantra: “Start where people are at, not where you want them to be.” An example of this relationship building took place in Utah when I was able to build connections with Bill Evans, former lobbyist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) who sat in meetings with devout LDS women who had endured the harrowing journey of terminating a pregnancy. This led to a group of citizens working with elected officials to stop the passage of a restrictive antiabortion bill that would have affected hundreds of women. Connecting people in power with the individuals who are directly affected by their policies changes the face of politics.
Professional social workers are educated to find common ground with members of various communities and organizations. This concept is an integral part of a professional social workers advocacy strategy, so that every conversation is underpinned with the intention to find commonalities. In practice, this means knowing the professional and volunteer histories of each elected official. By knowing their backgrounds, social justice advocates can deepen their personal relationships with people in power in order to further their policy agendas.
During my tenure as a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, I met Holly, a former midwife who served as a lobbyist and was later elected to public office. We had little in common politically (she was conservative, I was not), but she knew that healthy moms make healthy babies and that women should be able to plan their pregnancies with their partners. She would pass along information or oversee an introduction to difficult conservative legislators. This is an example of how relationship building is fundamental to being a social justice advocate. Building relationships with stakeholders goes a long way in the halls of city councils, state legislatures, and Congress.
As professional social workers, we are able to communicate real-world stories that encourage people to open their hearts and their wallets. As leaders in nonprofit organizations, professional social workers must raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to ensure that organizations have plenty of money to engage in grassroots (community-based action) and grasstops (influential leaders’ action) social justice advocacy. Sometimes advocates have to initiate relationships with wealthy and influential community members. These relationships are needed not only to build coalitions but also to raise the financial resources needed to do advocacy work. Our passion for equality and justice is bolstered by the companionship of others who are willing to do what it takes to help others rise. In the case of Planned Parenthood, powerful women and men were key to helping the organization raise enough money to support pro-choice candidates and influence women’s health legislation by being an integral part of our fund-raising structure.
Reclaiming Language and Meaning as a “Lobbyist”
Power and success in advocacy come from embracing politically charged terms. This concept comes from taking renowned linguist George Lakoff’s (2004) advice to embrace terms and language and make them your own. One of the most important things professional social workers can do is consider the term lobbyist. Working to ensure that social and economic climates offer women equal access to opportunity is what makes professional social workers lobbyists. The very nature of our work lends itself to seeking equal rights for women. In the case of advocacy and policy work, our focus for action is not on the client but on the policy in order to effect change for groups of people.
The challenge and context of working in a difficult cultural environment can seem daunting. Professional social workers who subscribe to these lobbying principles can find great success as they maneuver throughout any political environment. Social justice advocates often disparage corporate lobbyists and often times end up fighting harder than everyone else with little rate of return. In order to not fall into this trap, I incorporated the skills of those corporate lobbyists by recognizing that lobbying is not about front-row basketball tickets, fancy dinners, or rounds of golf. Lobbying is about personal relationships that are built from engaging in those lobbying activities. For social justice practitioners, our relationship building comes from driving across a state for one 15-minute meeting if it means getting to know the Speaker of the House better. It means sending birthday cards to legislators and sending a handwritten thank-you note within days of a meeting. Social justice lobbying is about embracing the inner advocate and building relationships with others so they can more fully understand your position.
By embracing the term lobbyist, professional social workers can receive access into a world where few have dared to enter. By listening to conversations, professional social workers can strategize, rework our talking points, and identify saints, sinners, and savables, which is important for message development that is clear and concise and gives meaning to the policies that we are trying to implement or change. Saints are the elected officials who are always going to vote with you (Shaw, 2010, p. 3). Sinners are elected officials who are never going to vote with you (Shaw, 2010, p. 3). Savables are elected officials who are open to your efforts to gain their vote (Shaw, 2010, p. 3). Knowledge of these players is key to effecting change and building a coalition of people who can help you access others who seem out of reach. These people can be identified by printing out the Senate and House seating charts, hanging them on the wall, and putting notes next to each name. This technique gives you a running tally of who supports you and who does not, and the visual allows you to stay on task as you watch your votes shift to ensure a win.
Making lasting, impactful policy change is not dependent on the crafting of good policy alone. It is dependent on our tenacity, willfulness, and refusal to give up. As professional social workers advocating for justice, we must bring unbridled passion and extraordinary energy to every endeavor. If we truly believe in social justice, one of social works ethical mandates, then we have to be willing to fully embrace our convictions such that our motives are never called into question.
Discussion
The War on Women is an overt action by white heterosexual men to maintain heteronormative gender roles by forcing womanhood to be synonymous with motherhood. These draconian policies force a woman to remain pregnant in order to keep her position clear in society, stripping her of her autonomy over her own body. “Now, woman has always been man’s dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped … ” (de Beauvoir in Nicholson, 1997, p. 16). This forced pregnancy, dependency, and slavery effectively shackles a woman’s decision-making abilities, leaving her helpless against the machinery of state legislatures and other governing bodies.
Professional social workers must place themselves in the public space as a response to the brutal policy attacks against women and their bodies. In general, history is thick with examples of social workers putting themselves where we’re told we don’t belong as a form of political outcry. Social worker Jeannette Rankin (Republican-Montana) was the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress (1916) and Senator Barbara Mikulski (Democrat-Maryland) is the longest serving woman in the history of congress. Frances Perkins was the first woman to be a Presidential Cabinet member, serving as Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Author Alice Walker is a social worker whose involvement in the civil rights movement is combined with her critically acclaimed writing that has changed how we view race in this country. The dehumanization of women and women’s rights activists is really a denial of their personhood. This denial is necessary in order for lawmakers to continue to violate women’s legal rights to access health care and to threaten violence against women who dare to be visible in the movement. Despite the constant attack on women, we can and must continue to take up space in America.
By following the practical approach described in this article, professional social workers will be well equipped to advocate for policies that advance the well-being of others. The processes and skills outlined in this article can be applied to any social justice issue and population that professional social workers serve. There will be advocates and social workers who doubt our ability to make change as a profession. By embracing a feminist agenda and using the skills I have outlined previously, we can deeply affect the lives of women as we fight back against the war on women and champion reproductive freedom. We must be willing to fully engage the social workers of tomorrow in building up an army of advocates who are fully equipped to pursue social justice with and on behalf of women.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.