The Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) initially formed in 1982 when a group of women came together in response to extensive social benefit program cuts by the Reagan administration.  Naturally, the people most affected by the "reforms", poor and working women, made-up WEAP's original constituency.   Since then, WEAP has grown and expanded to include all poor and working class people in the interconnecting movements for poverty elimination and health justice.  Yet WEAP has not forgotten the unique position of women in our society and thus the special attention they need and deserve.  In the health arena, this means paying close attention to women's health access barriers and how this ties into reproductive rights.

Women in our society have been regulated to the bottom of the economic pyramid throughout our country's history.  Many believe that women's economic inequality is a misfortune of the past, but the facts demonstrate how this belief is simply ignorance.  Women continue to be more economically insecure than men.  Women's national poverty rates are 12.7% compared to men's 9.3% and households headed by single females have poverty rates double that of male-headed households.  This disparity largely stems from the fact women in general only make 77 cents for every dollar a man is paid.  Women also often deal with additional costs that many men do not, such as childcare.  The average annual cost for full-time childcare for one child between the ages of two and five in California is $7,485.  This cost represents almost 40% of the poverty threshold for a family of four and is much higher for a single mother trying to survive.

 Several of the commissioners who presided over the truths being told about health care economic human rights violations at the March 2006 Oakland Citizens’ Hearing and Truth Commission.
Credit: Austin Long-Scott

Similar outcomes appear when examining health insurance.  One in five women in the US do not have health insurance, a fact tied intimately to women's economic status in our society. It has been found that one in four women delay or forgo medical care due to costs.  Even women who are employed steadily are not health secure.  Increasingly, jobs and especially lower paying jobs that women fill more often than men, do not offer health insurance.  This explains statistics like 6 out of 10 uninsured women are working full or part time.  Another problem is that many women receive their health benefits from a spouse or partner.  This not only leaves out single women, but also means many women lose their health insurance when their partner retires or becomes unemployed.

These health access barriers are devastating to women, especially in terms of reproductive care.  Uninsured women are 40-60% less likely to receive a pap smear or mammography screening.  44% of pregnant women do not receive an HIV test and this comes at a time when women, especially women of color living in economically depressed areas, account for more than one fourth of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses.  The lack of universal healthcare also means a lack of universal prenatal care, which is a leading reason for the increasingly high infant mortality rates in the US compared to the decreasing rates found in countries with universal coverage. Women without health insurance in drug recovery do not receive proper care either, especially if they are pregnant or have children.  In fact, a dismal 3% of drug treatment programs that accept women in the first place offer specific programs for pregnant and postpartum women who require special needs.
 
Women’s reproductive rights not only suffer from a lack of access to health care but are also under attack politically. Almost half of the states in the US permit health care providers to refuse to provide family planning services under a “moral refusal clause”.  Thus, across the spectrum women’s health care needs are not being met.  For this very reason, WEAP has come to support an economic human rights framework in the past decade that applies to all of our basic human needs.  Women’s lack of access to proper health care and the effects this has on reproductive care is a violation of our economic human rights and the reason behind why WEAP is fighting for health justice.  It is time that we come together and build a strong movement for a just health care system that addresses women’s unique health issues.  This means mobilizing for health care that does not allow women to be pushed to the bottom of the economic pyramid anymore, but instead opens up health access barriers, including ones dealing with drug recovery and reproductive rights.  WEAP knows that we cannot move forward together towards poverty elimination and health justice unless we begin treating everyone with the human dignity they deserve.