(Fwd) [jwl] First Women's Call to Bush

[J. Halász Judit]

From:                   jwlegroups at aol.com
    The following is forwarded from the National Council of Women's
Organizations and is a first call for action to the Bush Administration.
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    Women and girls throughut the country need to speak out in support
of reauthorizing the InterAgency Council for Women.

    The Council will end with the Clinton Administration unless President
Bush issues an Executive Order for its continuation in his first hundred days
in office.  The InterAgency Council hs been the federal "mechanism" to
promote the rights and advancement of women and girls, and gender
mainstreaming across all federal agencies.  Without it, or a similar
structure, our gains of the past four decades will be diminished or lost.

    The Council was originally appointed on the eve of the UN Fourth
World Conference on Women in Beijing and charged with implementation
of the Platform for Action in the U.S. at the Federal level.  The Platform,
signed by 186 nations including the United States, is a consensus set
of public policy principles which encompasses economic opportunity,
equal access to education, prevention of violence against women and girls,
accessible health care, and other areas of critical importance.

    While essentially an international agreement, the Platform is also
an agenda for domestic action.  Within our country, women and girls have
embraced the Platform and developed their own version in the form of
the US Women's National Action Agenda on which there is broad consensus
among women's organizations.

    US Women Connect, the national action network which evolved since
Beijing, has prepared a sign-on letter for organizations and individuals to
add their voices to this critical effort.  To receive a complete copy of the
document and to sign on, contact Suzanne Kindervatter by fax at
(202) 667-8227, or email to <suswc at uswc.org>.

    Or, you may write directly to Clay Johnson, Executive Director,
Office of Transition, 1616 Anderson Road, McLean, VA 22102