FINDING ANSWERS FOR ISSUES FACING WOMEN
March is Women’s History Month, so our Community Conversation on Wednesday focused on challenges and opportunities confronting women in the Miami Valley. The discussion was co-hosted by Community Impact Editor Nick Hrkman and Managing Editor Sharon Wilmore, who oversees Lifestyle, Dayton.com and Community Engagement for the Dayton Daily News. It featured panelists from around our region who have been working to advance solutions to issues critical to women in our communities, such as domestic abuse, income inequality and reproductive rights. Panelists included: Melodie Bennett, Executive Director of the House of Bread; Christine Corba, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters; Kersha Deibel, President & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio; Mady Devivo, Manager of the YWCA Rape Crisis Center; Jane Keiffer, Executive Director of the Artemis Center; and Sybil Martin, Executive Director of the Norma J. Ross Memorial Foundation.
Jane, you wrote a guest column for us earlier this week about the need for state funding to address an increase in domestic abuse reports. How will that $20 million aid the work done by the Artemis Center?
Keiffer: Well, first we have to say that our state government did not even have a line item budget for domestic violence services three years ago, so we finally had a $2 million line item budget and then we’re asking for $20 million because we know that domestic violence affects so many individuals in our community. And the money will allow us to provide further services for survivors. Currently, we’re doing services in the courts and its partners and therapy and it would just allow us to reach more survivors in the community, help with safety planning, and help increase not only their safety, but the community’s education and understanding of domestic violence.
Mady, part of your role at the YWCA has been focused on rural communities. What are some of the issues that might be different for women in those communities than for women in urban areas?
Devivo: There are quite a few barriers that survivors in rural communities face but they share with urban counterparts, but some that are unique to rural counties. Rural communities often lack public transportation, accessible and affordable childcare and adequate medical care. These barriers often enhance the violence and the isolation experienced by victims of interpersonal violence. Often there’s only one emergency department in rural counties such as Preble County, right next to us, and survivors may have to drag upwards and outwards to receive treatment following an incident or an assault. Similarly, the housing crisis that we’re experiencing in Dayton, we’re also seeing playing out in rural counties. Imagine trying to leave an abusive partner just to have to not be able to find housing reside in a shelter or what little housing is available, might mean that you are neighbors with your abuser or with their friends or neighbors with their family. You can’t actually escape your abuser when you’re living in a rural county and everybody knows everybody. Odds are you graduated high school with them or your families grew up together, you go to church with them. It’s really difficult just to escape that community where your perpetrator resides in small town America, and no one wants to believe that anybody in their community could be violent or abusive. So often people get a pass for bad behavior. And when you couple that with high rates of gun violence or gun ownership in rural areas, we often see more lethal violence in these communities.
Melodie, you were recently honored at the YWCA Women of Influence luncheon for your work at House of Bread and in your speech you talked about the importance of how women talk to one another. What what does that look like in your work?
Bennett: We have to be very intentional and not blame women for the choices that they are making just because they may not be the choices that we feel we would make. Someone in a homeless situation or living in a kind of transition between houses may have four bad choices, and they’re going to make the choice that is the best for them at that time. It’s easy to criticize, but it’s much more helpful to be supportive and to be understanding. Sometimes we will ask ‘What what is the one thing that you want to change? What is the one thing you feel we can help you with?’ And quite often their answer will surprise you. It’s not always ‘I want out of this situation’ or ‘I don’t want to be in this abandoned house.’ It’s not always ‘I want to, I want to get a job,’ which everybody just thinks, ‘Oh, if we just have people get jobs, this will solve everything.’ And that’s not the truth at all. Sometimes the answer is honestly, ladies, somebody wants a clean pair of underwear. Sometimes they want a clean pair of socks. Sometimes they just want you to sit for five minutes and not judge them and not question them and not criticize them for the choices that they are making. And so I think when we as women are intentional in focusing on understanding and focusing on accepting where another woman is, we can make strides with helping them progress to where they want to be, rather than where we think they should be.
What can people do to affect change in their communities regarding women’s rights?
Corba: What the League of Women Voters is all about is making sure that our voices are heard. The first step is education. I know for myself, there are so many things going on in the world right now, there are so many issues that are affecting each and every one of us, from reproductive health to education. What I always tried to do for myself is when I see or hear something that causes an emotional upheaval inside of me I think to myself, ‘I need to go check that out immediately.’ Because incredibly enough, not everyone is on the same playing field. People will say things because it is supportive of their point of view and not necessarily a factual point of view. So go and check things out. When you see an amendment coming up on the ballot, read the amendment! Don’t just listen to what other people are saying that is in that amendment, because oftentimes it’s not true. Sometimes it’s a kernel of truth in that statement, but you need to look at things on your own and read things on your own and do your own research. The other thing that we can do to effect change is to volunteer. Get involved in upcoming ballot initiatives or petitions. The League is encouraging our members to volunteer, get involved, learn more know what’s going on in your community and in your state. The other thing you can do is to make sure that you are keeping in touch with your legislators. Give them an attagirl or an attaboy when they do something right. So often we come from the negative, but there’s some good stuff that’s coming out and we need to appreciate and support our legislators because it’s a hard job. On the other hand, we also need to make sure that our voices are heard, and that if we disagree with something that’s going on in our government, if we disagree with something that our legislator has said or done, we need to let them know that as well. And then finally, we have a special election coming up in May. House Joint Resolution 1 may be on the ballot, and what that would do is to make it more difficult for citizen-led amendments to become part of the ballot. It increases the number of signatures that we need to have and it also would require a 60% vote in order for it to be enacted — and that’s only for citizen-led amendments. If you’re in the legislature, everything is still the same. But if you, as a citizen wants, to make change and want an amendment to the constitution, it’s going to get a lot harder if this particular resolution gets passed. So vote.
Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio has recently been vocal about Ohio’s controversial new record reproductive health law, last year’s Senate Bill 23. A movement is underway to secure reproductive rights language in the Ohio constitution. What is at stake in this fight?
Deibel: The majority of Americans, between 60% to 80%, depending on the poll, support access to abortion care. The majority of Ohioans support access to abortion care, but unfortunately over the last 10 years, it has not been left up to the voters on what access to abortion care looks like. It’s been left up to folks who don’t have the experiences of women making these decisions about women, about Black and brown communities, making decisions about the LGBTQIA+ community, making decisions about poor folks and people who experience homelessness, making the decisions about those bodies, and what they can and can’t do when it comes to their their reproductive health care. And so we’re at the point where we’re taking it to the voters, we’re taking it to the 80% of people who actually support abortion access to protect this in the Ohio constitution. To protect reproductive health and specifically to protect women and all the constituencies that I mentioned, to guarantee explicit abortion access through an amendment in the Ohio constitution, we created the coalition Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom. So this work and this group is working to put this on the ballot in November of 2023. And again, the purpose of this ballot initiative is to ensure that every Ohioan has access to safe, legal, comprehensive reproductive medical care, including abortion care, that is free from political interference. This is a coalition that’s joined by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, the ACLU of Ohio, New Voices for Reproductive Justice, Ohio Women’s Alliance, Pro Choice Ohio, along with 200 physicians, allied medical professionals, as well as business and community leaders and advocates. We need every single person who cares about these issues, who cares about women — and that includes men — to get out there hit the pavement and help us collect signatures. If you are interested in joining this fight, you can go to ohioansforreproductivefreedom.org. You can also go to ppao.org to learn how to get involved and volunteer, make phone calls, collect signatures.
Could you weigh in on what challenges women are facing in accessing care for breast cancer?
Martin: The challenges that I see are surrounding insurance coverage. There are still some insurance companies that will cover a 2D mammogram and not 3D. Transportation is also an issue for some women. We do provide transportation, we’re the only ones in the community who are providing transportation to preventative care appointments. I a woman has to come back as to get a diagnostic or some other sort of testing, we also provide transportation for that. And one of the biggest challenges is the mindset change. Some women are still a little bit fearful of getting mammograms, whether it’s because they’re concerned about radiation, which in fact is really a very, very small amount of radiation that they will receive. Some are just afraid of finding out that something’s wrong. The mindset change is the biggest barrier and challenge to overcome. We can deal with the other things. We can we can make mammograms accessible for you, we can take care of the financial piece, we can get you there. We can bring mobile units into your neighborhood. But the mindset part is where we struggle the most. I’ve had women who were diagnosed and one told me that their daughter said she’s not getting a mammogram despite now having a family history. And that should be one of the priorities to go to your doctor and have the conversation about that. We just continue to create awareness, we continue to put education out there, we work with our health care providers to go out into the community and provide educational forms with our Comfortable Conversations so that women can ask the questions that they’ve always wanted to ask, what they’re afraid to either bring up with their doctor or to someone else, but those are the challenges that I see see the most and some we can work to overcome with a little more effort.