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State of the State Address
from Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area Coalition (PAAWBAC)
Event, May 14, 2003
The year has been one of economic and military turmoil. Through
my work at The Women’s Foundation, I have seen larger
foundations cut their grantmaking to non-profit organizations.
On a daily basis, I watch as many of these community-based
organizations struggle to survive, some not making it through
the current year. The state has cut $1.2 billion from education
and public health care, and women bear the brunt of the hardship
that results from these cuts In California, 37%of single women
and their dependent children live in poverty.
There is some good news. Within the corporate world, more
women are holding executive-level positions. Women now hold
15.7% of corporate officer positions in Fortune 500 companies.
Yet women of color represent 1.6% of corporate officers. At
1.6%, invisibility is the reality.
More visible are the estimated 1.2 million businesses owned
by women of color in the United States, which employ more
than 822,000 people and generate $100.6 billion in sales.
California boasts the greatest number of minority women-owned
firms in the U.S. Yet even with the growth in businesses,
in cities such as San Francisco, few government contracts
are awarded to women-owned companies.
And, we have to ask ourselves: are these firms being started
by women who have hit proverbial glass ceilings and, out of
frustration, started their own businesses? Or have issues
such as language barriers or caring for the elderly and the
young kept them out of the more traditional workforce in the
first place?
As we look at those who have succeeded, we also need to look
at the Asian immigrant women at the bottom of the economic
ladder. Poverty rates can be as high as 63%, and the rate
of limited English proficiency over 70% in certain Southeast
Asian communities.
We know that there is a wide gap between affluent Asians and
those living in poverty. We occupy the extremes of the spectrum.
We are simultaneously more likely than whites to have earned
college degrees and to be educated to lower than a ninth-grade
level. As the “model minority,” Asian Americans
have had to earn higher test scores to enter academic institutions
because there are now “too many of us” in higher
education. Yet many of us suffer daily by being on the bottom
rung of the economic ladder, in dead-end low-wage jobs. Women
of color are more likely to earn minimum wage and work in
unsafe conditions as garment workers, domestic workers, home
care workers, and those in high-tech sweatshops. Only one-quarter
of immigrant workers had job-based health insurance in 2000.
In our own backyard in Silicon Valley, workers in various
industries are exposed to dangerous chemicals. Piecework,
or home work where assembly is done in workers’ homes,
reflects both manufacturers’ demand for cheap labor and
the large number of desperate Asian immigrant women who suffer
from employment discrimination, lack of on-the-job training,
and dire need to supplement their meager incomes.
It is in recent times that an Asian American woman, Elaine
Chao, was appointed U.S. Secretary of Labor. Are we working
with her to address the needs of immigrant Asian American
women?
This past year witnessed the passing of Patsy Mink, U.S. Congresswoman
for 24 years and one of the authors of Title IX of the Education
Act, which mandates gender equality in any education program
or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Scholarship
money for women increased from $100,000 in 1972 to $179 million.
Three thousand women participated in sports in 1972. It is
now 3 million. Patsy did make a difference.
Although the numbers are miniscule as of yet, there are a
number of promising Asian Pacific American women who have
been elected to local and state office and who may be in the
pipeline to run for federal office. This January, Mee Moua
became the highest-ranking Hmong politician by joining the
Minnesota Senate. The first woman majority leader in the California
State Assembly is Wilma Chan.
And the goal of having more women and men of color in office
is that they may help to create a foundation and a framework
for achieving equity. For it is clear that in low-income communities
of color, the question is how to eradicate the structural
barriers that impede the full development of all people.
So my role is to be a part of the new and emerging California
and beyond — a California that needs to examine and address
all the many identities of its residents and all the many
needs that must be met. To ensure that more money and attention
is going to communities now when they need it most, and to
be a voice to raise questions and to provide possible solutions.
To be a voice that says that in California, the number one
agricultural producer and exporter in this country, it is
not okay that 40% of Latinas, 30% of Native American women,
and 25% of women of African descent are food insecure. To
say that it is not acceptable for women over the age of 65
to be more than twice as likely to live in poverty. To say
that we know who is being excluded at the border, and who
is kept in detainment at Guantanamo Bay without being charged
for a specific crime. To question that if we were to create
a “usual suspect” category based on race, why didn’t
our nation put an effort around incarcerating young angry
white men such as Timothy McVeigh after the Oklahoma City
bombing or those of Columbine high school? To ask why was
it even thought to be okay to look askance at Asians in Silicon
Valley with and after the Wen Ho Lee case, or to believe that
the solution for SARS was to exclude all Asians from Berkeley.
To say that it’s not justifiable for gay youth to be
two to three times more likely to attempt suicide.
My role is to say that all of these things matter. To say
that gender and ethnicity and sexual orientation and race
matter. And to say that we need to create a new paradigm that
addresses all of these identities. We need to create a new
movement where the moral center is not defined by how well
and how long we fight for our own rights, although that is
extremely important. The moral center of a movement is defined
by how well and how long we fight for those who are not us,
for those more easily left behind.
Patti Chang
President & CEO
The Women’s Foundation
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