Davis discusses gubernatorial campaign, women's rights at lecture

Politicians need to stop damaging women’s lives in their political games and instead design policies to support women’s rights and true gender equality, formerTexas state senator and former Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis said at a lecture on Wednesday.

Davis gained nationwide attention for her 11-hour filibuster in June 2013 to block a bill restricting abortion rights that was ultimately signed into law by Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Gender equality, despite some remarkable advances during the past century, is currently losing ground in the U.S., Davis said. More than 60 percent of minimum wage jobs are occupied by women and women’s reproductive rights are being restricted by sexist legislation, she said.

Some politicians are intentionally and strategically using gender, as well as race, as a tool to pursue power, money and success, she added.

“In my [gubernatorial] race, my opponent’s supporters derided me by using photoshopped sexual images of me in social media, with my face on a very sexy body, in order to invite responses from potential voters to view me as highly sexualized, rather than intelligent and confident potential state leader,” Davis said.

Her political opponents also attacked her for attending law school rather than paying full attention to her children, she said, adding those acts belittled her achievement and framed her as a traitor of traditional gender roles.

Some women respond to such so-called “wolf-whistling" because they feel like their chosen role as traditional stay-home, caregiving mothers would be devalued by gender equality, she said.

“Sadly, messages from the far right have convinced so many young women that feminism is about trading in their license to be women, to be feminine," Davis said. “What we have to help them understand is that fighting for women’s equality isn’t about telling women how they have to live ... It’s about having the ability to choose freely.”

This fight against gender equality is often nothing more than a strategic tool for politicians, she said, adding it nonetheless damages women’s health and lives. For example, as a result of the Texas government’s strategic defunding of Planned Parenthood, more than 180,000 women lost a major source of their health care, Davis explained.

“[The politicians] need to consider the human casualties of the fight,” she said.

Rather than investing in a fight that damages so many lives, Davis said lawmakers should design policies to support women from low socioeconomic status escape their poverty.

“Policies to support women’s ability to climb out of the deep well [of poverty] actually do work,” Davis said.

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She added that she herself is a living example of how policies that provide women with access to education, health care, child care and family leave do change their lives.

She then called for a creation of inclusive, shared community where both men and women are given the ability to freely choose their life paths, get adequate support and have the choices they make respected and celebrated.

“True gender equality will come only when [we] take care not to view each other’s choices through a pejorative lens,” Davis added.

The lecture, titled "Wolf-Whistle Politics: Taking Back the Conversation to Advance Women’s Rights,” took place in Dodds Auditorium at 4:30 p.m. and was co-sponsored by the Wilson School and the Women’s Center.