Yesterday the National Council for Research on Women released a devestating report about the trend of government websites deleting information that relates to gender inequalities :

With weekly headlines about suppressed information, slanted scientific panels, and altered research reports, the National Council for Research on Women joins a growing chorus of researchers, scientific experts, policymakers, and journalists in a call to concerned citizens to protest and reverse decisions that diminish the amount and quality of information available to us all. These decisions, we believe, cannot be left unchecked.

MISSING concentrates on missing information ? information that directly affects women?s lives. Vital data has been deleted, buried, altered, or has otherwise gone missing from government websites and publications. Taken cumulatively, these actions are serious for women and need to be addressed. As the report shows, such distortions and omissions have debilitating consequences for peoples? health and livelihoods. They also deny researchers critical facts and impede our ability to craft solutions and develop strategies to address the pressing challenges of our times.

Americans share a proud legacy of trusting the federal government to assemble information needed to advance women?s rights and well-being. As data on women disappears, an important, non-partisan tradition of government is being destroyed.

MISSING concentrates on four key areas that affect women and girls where priorities have changed, funding has been cut, research findings distorted, important social differences masked, and critical committees and programs dismantled. The report makes clear the following has gone MISSING:

Accurate and Science-Based Information on Women?s Health

Accurate and Reliable Information on Women?s Economic Status

Scientific Objectivity and Expertise

Information to Help Protect and Advance Women and Girls

Lest you think this is just another one of those NOW/Planned Parenthood reports decrying the slippery slope leading to women having no control over their bodies, here’s some of the more damning examples :

The executive summary of the National Healthcare Disparities Report, a Congressionally mandated report card on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in healthcare, downplayed major inequities in diagnosing and treating such conditions as hypertension, diabetes, and HIV ? all of enormous importance to the health of women of color. After strong public objection, the decision to water down the report was reversed.

A major resource for working women, the Department of Labor?s Women?s Bureau, an agency charged by Congress with providing information on women?s economic status and rights, is now nearly silent on those issues.

A valuable Department of Labor publication on the rights of women workers once distributed by the Women?s Bureau, Don?t Work in the Dark?Know Your Rights, is no longer available.

An ongoing series of Department of Labor ?Fact Sheets? on women workers, widely used by researchers and the media, has been curtailed, limiting information on rights in the workplace.

A much-used Department of Labor Handbook on Women?s Workers is scheduled for re-release, but as of March 2004, no date was available for its publication.

The Census Bureau touts the ratio of women?s earnings as compared to men ? 76 cents for every $1 ? as ?an all-time high.? In reality, the disparity in wages has remained nearly constant with less than 1% change in the ratio in recent years, and was characterized in 2000 as a lack of pay equity.

The Office of Women?s Initiatives and Outreach in the White House and The President?s Interagency Council on Women ? both designed to assure that the concerns of women are addressed in policy development ? were disbanded.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to terminate a 53-year-old panel, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). The committee was resuscitated after an outcry by Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM), the only congresswoman who is a veteran, but with a new mission ? to focus on issues such as health care for servicewomen and the effects of deployment on family life, but not issues of equity and access.

Under the 2000 Violence Against Women Act, the Attorney General is required to conduct a national study of discrimination against domestic violence victims in the issuing or administration of insurance policies. The report to Congress was due in October 2001 and, as of March 2004 the report has still not been published. Data in this report would support legislation introduced last fall to address insurance discrimination and workplace issues.

The one theme that ties all these changes together is that they were all made over the last three years and a half years. Hmmm….I wonder why things would get worse all of a sudden??