Was possible to move society to the place where it should be for the better of all of us. Everyone is the beneficiary of ending gender discrimination, women, men, and children. Thats how the old chief was persuaded when he was justice ringquist. This was a story of a man whose wife died in childbirth. He was left as sole caretaker of the child. Wanted Social Security benefits that would help him be able to work only part time while his child was young. Both benefits for mothers, not fathers. So the court decided that case, i think it was in 1975, it was a unanimous judgment. Three sets of opinions. One well of course was the discrimination against the woman as wage earner, her Social Security taxes dont get for her family the same protection, and then a few of them thought it was really discrimination against the male as parent. He would not have the opportunity to render personal care to his child. And ringquist all along said totally arbitrary from the point of view of the baby. Why should the baby have the chance to be cared for by the parent only if the parent is female and not male. Its that realization that we will all be better off if we end the discrimination, if we end the era of women are for the home and children and men are for the outside world. Both should be in both worlds. [ applause ] before we go, let me say on behalf of everyone here i think we are all enormously fortunate that youve lived the life that you have and been such a tremendous inspiration to so many generations. And we look forward to whats still to come. Thank you so much. [ applause ] hes on vacation, but the president today defended his landmark nuclear deal with iran but conceded the time it takes for iran to acquire Nuclear Weapon would shrink to a, quote, matter of months as the agreement expires. Asked by npr what irans breakout time will be 15 years from now, the president said, quote, it shrinks back down to roughly where it is now, which is a matter of months. But they write in thehill. Com, president obama said it was no reason to reject the 15year limit on irans program under the deal. Read more and hear the interview at npr. Coming up today on cspan, a hearing on the epas pending proposal to revise the existing ambient air quality standards for ozone. Epa is planned to finalize the rule by october 1st. The epa proposes to revise the current parts per billion standard. That hearing starts in about 45 minutes. Again, thats over on cspan. The cspan cities tour visits literary and Historic Sites across the nation to hear from local historians, authors and Civic Leaders every other weekend on cspan 2s book tv and American History tv here on cspan 3. And this month with congress in summer recess, the cities tour is on cspan each day at 6 00 p. M. Today, lincoln, nebraska, where well look at the design of the state capitol, the past and present of the first peoples of the plains, and well talk with nebraska governor pete rickets. Thats at 6 00 eastern. Then at 8 00 on cspan, the National UrbanLeague Conference with the reverend al sharpton, education secretary arny duncan and several other activists. Heres benjamin crump. They are passing all kinds of laws to disenfranchise our community to stop the souls to the polls, to stop the early voting, to make voter id, to put Police Officers at the voting polls to intimidate us and stop us from voting. So i know with the National Bar Association what were focused on is that were going to challenge them. And were not concerned about our corporate sponsorship. Were not concerned about our status because the fundamental right in america is your right to vote and vote for the prosecutor, vote for the judge. We get confused sometimes with the president ial vote and think thats the most important vote. Man, you go down to that courthouse, the most important vote in many instances is that d. A. D. A. , the judge. Hes going to decide whether your child go to jail or not. You dont get to the judge. If the prosecutor billy come to court and june bug come to court, same offense, billy get to go home with his parents. June bug going to get fingerprinted and handcuffed. And thats all on the prosecutor. So you tell me whats more important to vote for the prosecutor or the president . And youre talking about jury duty . Thats right. Man, the vote in jury duty just one person being in that back room, just one person. In florida we got six. In st. Louis they have 12. But one africanamerican who has the courage to say im going to be on this jury, im going to answer every question appropriately and im going to be fair and im going to go back in that room and im going to defy the fate of this young black person today makes all the difference in the world because your vote really do count when youre on jury duty. Part of the National UrbanLeague Conference which also includes discussions on the 2016 election, Voting Rights act and education. See that tonight at 8 00 eastern over on cspan. Texas state senator wendy davis spoke for more than ten hours during a filibuster in 2013 opposing the texas law on abortion clinics. Last fall she was the democratic nominee for Texas Governor losing to republican candidate greg abbott. The university of california berkeley as davis talks about the difficulties faced by her and other women running for Political Office as well as the state of gender equality issues. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you all. Thank you to ethan and camille for putting this together today and all the work particularly that camille undertook to make sure that we were able to do this. And thank you all for being here and giving me an opportunity to speak with you. Ive been looking forward to this afternoon. And i was delighted to land in sunny california after being in a really cold winter in texas. Im here today to address gender, specifically why gender equality is losing ground and how we can work to reverse that. Im going to ask you to challenge conventional thinking and how we define and talk about gender equality. And ill hopefully help you understand the lens through which i view these issues a bit better. More and more i am coming to understand and appreciate how much each of our individual filters formed through our Life Experiences matter in the way that we approach conversations in the political framework. And i would like to invite us to consider each others personal perspective, each others lens as we strive to move womens equality forward. But first take a moment to acknowledge past victories in the womens movement. It can be easy today, particularly with an onslaught of antireproductive rights legislation affecting some of the most personal of a womans decision making. To forget that on the long road to gender equality women have fought for and have gained some significant ground. It was less than a hundred years ago when women earned the right to vote. 51 years ago when president kennedy signed the equal pay act. Only 50 years ago when Birth Control became legalized. Only 42 years ago when abortion was legalized. Less than 35 years ago when president reagan appointed the first female Sandra Day Oconnor to the Supreme Court and only about six years ago when president obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter into law. These are all cause for legislation. But when we look around we see theres so much work to be done. As we watch and celebrate lgbt advances with more and more states moving to marriage equality, and as we witness divisive discriminatory policies like dont ask, dont tell being repealed, each after years of hard work and effort that is to be celebrated. Gender politics seems to be taking a step backward. Women are facing an onslaught of legislation that threatens their reproductive freedoms and access to abortion. We occupy 56 of minimum wage jobs even though we make up only about 49 of the workforce. And governors in states like mine are vetoing fair pay laws if they ever make it to the governors desk at all. And all of this is happening without significant voter backlash that says we disagree with the direction that things are heading. And we have to ask ourselves why. I think the answer is largely dictated by our own personal experiences and the lens as we voters view our issues. My lens was formed. My views were shaped very early in my Life Experiences. And in my memoir, forgetting to be afraid, i sought to explain the experiences that shaped me. Not just those that gave me the strength to be a fighter, but to illustrate why it is that certain issues hit me deep in the gut and compel me to respond in a particular way. I am a living, breathing example of the promise that can be created through gender equalized opportunities. Informal as they were, they existed at a time when i needed them. I was 11 when my parents divorced, and my ninth grade educated mother who had never been in the workforce before was left to support four children on her own. While my father pursued his dream of starting a nonprofit theater. We went from a blue collar lifestyle into poverty literally almost overnight. And watching my mother struggle to put food on the table working in a lowwage Fast Food Restaurant job, made me want to assure that i would never be left without an education and the means to support myself. And yet i too fell in the well of poverty and despair for a time. Pregnant at 18, married for a very brief time, i was left to support myself and my daughter amber when i was only 19. With only one semester of college under my belt, i could not see a bend in what looked like a long bleak road ahead. My greatest fear literally was coming true. I was going to live the very same struggles that i had watched my mother live. And fear fortunately can be a powerful motivator. My fears were reinforced on nights when i would come home to find that my electricity had been turned off because i couldnt pay the bill. Or the embarrassment that i suffered when i had to put grocery items back in the line because i didnt have enough for that weeks food. But im here today because policies that support a womans ability to move from poverty to stability actually do work. And these policies, some formal, some less formal, created ladders that helped me to move from where i was. One of those was access to Affordable Community college education. With grants and low cost tuition that made it possible even for me to afford. That ultimately became my gateway to graduating from harvard law school. And without my Community College there is simply no way i would be standing here talking before you today. Another ladder came in the form of access to reproductive and wellwomen health care that i received at a planned parenthood clinic close to my home. For several years as an uninsured woman, that clinic was my only source of care. It was the place where i received cancer screenings, diabetes screenings, my annual wellwomen exams. And most importantly it was a place that provided me with the ability to control my reproductive destiny so that once i placed my foot on the path to higher education, i was able to keep it there. Another ladder for me came in the form of affordable quality child care that a dear friend of mine provided. And we see and certainly weve heard many in congress and the president talking about child care as an important issue. For many women the inability to afford and find quality child care is keeping them sufficiently as a roadblock to where they are. Finally, i was fortunate to work in an office where my employers supported a work schedule that allowed me to go to school in the mornings, and to leave sometimes earlier in the evenings. Flexibility. These workplace policies are so important in making possibilities available for women to improve their lives. Those years were a tremendous struggle. And they were filled with fear. But i am grateful for the motivation that that fear provided. And so very grateful for the lens that that struggle provided me and through which i now view the world. Theres so many women today who cannot tell the story that i had the blessed ability to stand before you and tell. Because those ladders, those policies simply are not there for them. Affordable college tuition, Reproductive Health care, affordable quality child care, Flexible Work hours. These things are not there as they once were for me. Policies to support these ladders though theres a great deal of talk about them and effort in moving them forward are still unfortunately virtually nonexistent. And instead we find ourselves fighting old fights. And in many instances losing ground. Why is this happening . Quite simply because support for an agenda that includes these policies has eroded. A negative association has been fostered between the idea of womens advancement and the threat that that movement poses to traditional patriarchal notions of a womans place. Playing upon these negative associations womens reproductive rights and other issues important to womens equality have been hijacked by politicians who are using those issues as a wedge, whistling to those who will respond favorably to the perceived threats that they hope to engender. For these politicians, positioning against advancement of gender equality serves as a means to an end. That end being their desire to hold onto and further their political positions, status and power. Provoking favorable voting responses by using womens equality as their foil is much more important to them than any fallout that they leave behind. To explain my point, ill ask you to consider an argument made by berkeley law professor ian hanie lopez in his book dog whistle politics. Hell give a lecture on that at the law school tomorrow. I would invite you to please attend because his work is very, very important. Professor lopez in his book invites us to consider how coded racial appeals have played a role in politics. Often resulting in middle class voting against its own economic interests in favor of reacting to perceived social threats, which are far greater motivators. These reactions professor lopez asserts are strategically invited by politicians who employ techniques that play upon racial bias and animous in order to get voters to react in a way thats favorable to maintain or gain political power. To demonstrate his points he traces his accounts of president ial candidates using racial dog whistling to illicit voter support. Candidates like George Wallace who was ridiculed as an unrepentant red neck when he was outspoken in verbalizing support for policies defending segregation and extolling the proud anglo saxon south land. Voters didnt respond well to his de facto racism. To vote for a candidate with such blatant racial appeal would have been to admit their own racial biases and fears. But wallace learned that if he were more subtle with his message he could mobilize racebased voting without ever mentioning race at all. He stopped talking about objections to desegregation and instead talked about states rights to turn away arrogant federal authority. Does that sound familiar . When we think about the conversation about the Affordable Care act and about immigration, today we hear those same whistles. Wallaces softened language gave permission to those who opposed racial integration the ability to exercise racially motivated electoral responses without having to admit to others or even to themselves their racial biases or fears. Goldwater too talked of his support for states rights and freedom of association. Nixon employing the politically infamous southern strategy to motivate votes in the south. Dog whistled by talking about forced bussing. Reagan describing the young buck in the Grocery Store line buying sirloin steak with his food stamps while you were buying hamburger meat with your hard earned paycheck. Or his talk of welfare queens. Professor lopez cautions progressives not to get too smug about the rights use of this technique pointing out that president carter used arguments about forced integration. And of course president clinton with his welfare reform agenda when he sought reelection. Each of these strategic use of dog whistles, an appeal to white voters whose racial biases, conscious or unconscious, are being played. Importantly, professor lopez points out that this strategic use of race stands apart from other forms of racism because the driving force behind strategic racism is not racial animus for its own sake, but rather and perhaps more pernicious the strategic use of race in order to successfully pursue power, money or status. I saw this in my own Gubernatorial Race last year when my opponent played upon fears regarding an invasion of Illegal Immigrants into texas. Openly calling for militarization of texas border communities through support of a National Guard presence there in spite of the fact that these communities are notably safe with el paso having been named for the fourth year in a row the safest large city in the country. Married to a latina, greg abbott would hardly fit the typical description of someone with racial animus of latinos, but he knew how to dog whistle in order to gain their votes. This use of dog whistling is not limited to provoking and playing upon perceived threats based on race. This technique is also successfully employed to provoke votes based on gender biases and fears. So lets discuss the use of gender in that regard. Perhaps given the sexualized nature in which women candidates and womens issues are framed, wolflessly rather than dog whistling may be a more apt way to describe the tactic. Some of that wolf whistling occurs in fairly blatant ways. For example, in my race my opponents supporters derided me using photo shopped sexual images with my face or head on them in order to invite a response from potential voters to view me as highly sexualized rather than intelligent and competent as a potential state leader. There were also questions raised about my bona fides as a mother with suggestions that i abandoned my children when i wen