Miriam Yeung is the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF), a Maryland-based non-profit that advocates for social justice for Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women and girls.

Most of the organization's advocacy projects are based in three areas: reproductive justice, immigrants' rights, and anti-human trafficking.

Born in Hong Kong, Yeung immigrated to the U.S. at the age of two and grew up in Brooklyn, NY.

Before assuming her current position at the NAPAWF, she worked for the Safe Schools Campaign, a project that seeks to erase hate and homophobia in New York City schools.

She spoke with EthnicNewz.org by phone on April 14, 2008, shortly before speaking at a conference in Boston on "Women Must Lead Health Care Reform."

Yeung's presentation at the Simmons College event was about "A Vision for Healthcare for All."

She spoke to EthnicNewz.org about Obama v. Clinton on the better health care plan, the hypocrisy of Viagra, and health care's marginalization of minorities and women.

Following is the edited condensed interview.

 

Whose approach on health care reform do you prefer, Obama's or Clinton's?

[long pause] I prefer neither of them.

Both plans require a continuing organization of health care based around an employer.

You will always have folks who are under- or unemployed.

Also, the employer's motivations are not always primarily focused on the well-being of their employees.

In a for-profit corporation the main goal is to make money. I think health care ought to be someone's main priority, period.

 

 

What would be the ideal health care system for you?

I hesitate to say specifically right now, but, one, it's important that health care be truly universal.

Two: (It's important that health care be) not linked to employment or marital status.

Three: That health care should be given to all people, no matter who they are or how different they are from somebody else.

And we should treat bodies with respect, acknowledging that we come from different life experiences.

That's where cultural competency comes in, how a fair health care environment would look.

We should encourage people to do prevention as a justice motivator. We have a crisis motivator right now; we're always taking actions when something terrible happens.

 

 

Do you believe women are facing obstacles to access to health care?

In some narrow sense, yes.

Traditional reproductive rights activists, and I am not one of them, would say that contraceptives and abortions being so expensive cause a disproportionate impact for women and girls.

Take the way health insurance works now. Some insurance companies cover Viagra, which doesn't help anyone with life (-threatening) illness; it certainly is a matter of quality of life for men.

But those same insurances would not cover the (birth control) pill. That, for me, is a judgment being made. That suggests that health insurance (companies) are valuing men's bodies and men's standards of living more than women's.

 

 

So what would you do to engage more women to react?

That's a good question. In a weird way, women have being viewed in society as caregivers.

Often in situations where someone is ill, women are the caregivers already. But the way sexism works, women's opinions are not being heard.

But we've learned a couple of things through social justice movement-building.

One: individual woman's voices may not be as powerful as a group's voice, so we need to come together.

That's why the Simmons College seminar was so important to bringing us together -- organizing so we can amplify our voices.

Two: women need to talk to each other in a better way than big companies or Washington policymakers may talk to us.

Three: we are starting to frame health care as a matter of human rights. When we do that, we can also undo some of the lies that claim that some bodies are more unworthy than others to get health coverage.

 

 

Can you highlight aspects of what you call "a new vision on health care for all"?

Because health care reform is such a politicized issue in the U.S., I think we lost sight of the fact that we're talking about taking care of people's bodies.

And when it is politicized, we starting thinking: Well, that's too expensive to care for that type of body, or that body shouldn't belong in this country, so we shouldn't admit them into a hospital. Or we can say: Women's bodies are less valuable than men's bodies, so we shouldn't focus on that.

The common factor it that we all inherit a human body, we all know what it is to be sick, scared or sad. So what has been missing in the health care reform debates is that the goal is really to take (care) of everybody, right?

It has being well documented that you can get better health coverage if you are rich or white.

 

 

Do you think the way health coverage is set up in this country, health providers are prepared to deal with the disparities found in immigrant communities?

I think this country has not dealt effectively well with people who come from marginalized communities, including immigrants, women, people of color and poor people.

Did you know that Vietnamese women have the highest risk of having cervical cancer, higher than any other ethnicity?

Specifically in the Asian Pacific American community we work for, not only do doctors not do it (care for minorities), but they don't even know they are not doing it.

The reason why they don't know is that data and knowledge is power, and who controls what kind of data we get is usually federal in nature and is in the hands of those who are dominant in power.

One example of that pops up when a national health survey is conducted. Oftentimes the survey doesn't even ask for Asian American or Pacific Islander as a specific category.

So we are not even able to cut data for our community. And when they do ask, the questions do not reach our sub-ethnicities. So what they miss out is shown in our own research.

Did you that Vietnamese women have the highest risk of having cervical cancer, hgher than any other ethnicity?

Or that Korean women under the age of 65 are the most uninsured group?

Sometimes, the government doesn't even ask if we're Asians; we're just "other," right?

So, they don't know if we are first-, second- or third-generation (American), and they miss on that nuance.

 

 

You talk a lot about bodies rather than people. How does your organization push forward the movement of reproductive justice?

We understand reproductive justice as existing when all women and girls have full opportunity to make decisions to take care of their lives and their families.

How is it different from frames, such as reproductive health or rights? It is a combination of social justice and sexual rights to reproduce.

We care about the larger factors in a woman's life that affects her health and her rights, whereas a reproductive rights community is very focused on the right to privacy to have an abortion and to providing health care.

We see the reproductive movement as one that would allow a more holistic view at a woman's life.

 

 

After reading your organization's Web site, one cannot find a lot of traces of feminism, but rather an effort to giving choices via information? Is that right?

I think we do a fair amount of both. If the word feminism is not explicit, it certainly is a piece of core values.

We believe in human rights, embedded in that are our feminist principles of equality.

And most importantly, we have to acknowledge that Asian Pacific Islanders girls and women constitute only 2% of this country's population.

So, if we are to gain any traction we need to get allies. We need to show other people that our issues are completely related to their issues, so we can build power through unity.

 

 

Your organization's new location is in Tacoma Park, which is a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants (in Maryland, in suburban Washington, D.C.). How is your work on immigrants' rights?

We have three work areas we care about: reproductive rights, immigrants' rights and comprehensive immigration reform, and anti-human trafficking.

On immigration, we are linked to National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and the National Women's Right Coalition.

We've put out an analyses report on what immigration reform through a gender lens would look like. If you were to center the experience of immigration on women and girls, we list some of the thing we (would be) looking for.

We've recently attended an immigration rally in D.C. with South Asian leaders, most of them men, about people trafficked to this country with the pretenses they would gain immigration status.

They were fooled and coerced to work exploitation. Those are some of the issues we've been working on.

 

You certainly don't run away from a good fight. You touched many controversial issues. How involved are you with the immigrant communities?

We are getting more and more involved. That's a new area of work for us.

Because we're a member-based organization, we have people disbursed all over the country who have worked within immigrant communities.

We have a lot more fight inside us than we're funded for right now. Although our national office is conducting discussions with these communities, we'd like to do more about immigrants' rights.

Learn more about the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum at www.napawf.org [2].

Source: EthnicNewz.org

Copyright 2008 New England Ethnic News, EthnicNewz.org. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express permission of the source. Contact Newz for more information.