Enclosed are the comments which the Association of American Foreign
Service Women wishes to make on the proposed Foreign Service Act of
1979. As you will note, we have examined the proposed legislation with
the concerns of Foreign Service spouses and families in mind.
We greatly appreciate the opportunity to comment and to contribute to the
shaping of this legislation. If there are any questions concerning the
views and suggestions in the attached analysis, we will be happy to
answer them.
Enclosure
Paper Prepared by the Association of American
Foreign Service Women3
Washington, undated
COMMENTS ON THE PROPOSED FOREIGN SERVICE ACT OF
1979
The Association of American Foreign Service Women appreciates having
the opportunity to comment on the proposed draft legislation of
1979. We agree that management should try to develop an informed and
supportive consensus in the Foreign Service community before
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taking this bill to the
Hill. A thorough review of the principles behind the legislation and
a careful explanation of the implementation of structural reforms
would be most reassuring.
Foreign Service families can testify to the uniqueness of a life in
the Foreign Service. Government service abroad is vastly different
from service in the United States. Indeed, the Forum Report on the Concerns of Foreign Service Spouses and
Families (1977)4 and the continuing dialogue between AAFSW and the Secretary of State
bring to light the many human costs that frequently do not appear in
a cost-benefit analysis or zero-based budget. We feel that the
introduction to a new Foreign Service Act should describe fully
these unique sacrifices and adjustments required of Foreign Service
families so as to make clear the justification for the Secretary’s
authority to assist families in special ways.
Most Foreign Service spouses are women. The Department cannot afford
to ignore them because they are the basis of an effective,
humanistic representation of American life while abroad. The Foreign
Service wife takes an extraordinary interest in the career of her
husband, because it affects her so directly. She feels that by
accompanying her spouse abroad she is in effect serving as a
representative of the United States Government. Regulations
circumscribe her daily life.
Her growing concern is that continual international mobility combined
with structural barriers to employment opportunities will virtually
exclude her from establishing an economic base of her own through a
career or even a consistent work record. Cultural adjustments,
family responsibilities, and representational activities consume her
time and energies. While her role as a support for family and
community is essential, particularly in those areas where support
systems normal to U.S. life do not exist, her economic dependency is
concurrently reinforced. It takes tremendous creativity, initiative,
adaptability and courage (sometimes even the willingness to endure
family separation) for her to continue her education or to undertake
economic independence.
The Foreign Service spouse is not adequately protected by the current
or proposed Foreign Service Retirement System. The “traditional”
Foreign Service wife finds that the very skills valued in a Foreign
Service context are useless in a situation in which she has to
support herself economically. A divorced U.S. homemaker is rarely
awarded alimony by the courts; child support is awarded in less than
half the cases, and a woman may even lose custody of her children if
she cannot provide an equal economic base. A widowed spouse is
dependent on
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her husband
to provide her with a survivor benefit. The penalties levied on
divorced or widowed older homemakers are apparent to us all. The
modern Foreign Service wife is beginning to question whether indeed
she can afford to continue being a “Dependent”.
The AAFSW feels that independent
women are representative of the best in American society. The
alternative to independence is, in the long run, more costly and
wasteful of human resources. We have sought creative responses from
the system to match the creativity of the women who are trying to
make that system work. For these reasons we have surveyed the needs
of Foreign Service families. We have made recommendations to the
Department in order to expand employment and career development
opportunities to enable women to establish their own economic base.
We have encouraged the expansion of training opportunities, because
we feel that the prepared person is the self-reliant person who can
more quickly and effectively become a contributing member of the
community. We have supported programs to improve community action
especially as such action benefits children. We have tried to help
the Department understand how the regulations of the personnel
system, family life and morale are inextricably interwoven. We are
continuing to study the legal rights and limitations on women in the
Foreign Service context.
Foreign Service wives in midlife today have already sacrificed the
earning potential of their most productive years in cultural
adjustments, family support responsibilities and in the creation of
a favorable social ambiance for the conduct of American foreign
policy. In order to protect these women the Foreign Affairs agencies
must recognize earned rights for spouses and former spouses to
survivor annuities and shared pensions. The talents of our
remarkable group of women can only be utilized in a more flexible
system which eliminates the barriers to the workplace. We wish also
to protect the homemaker as a vital community resource, while
recognizing that she should be able to move in and out of that role
in different stages in life without economic penalty.
In the context of the above philosophy we would like to comment
specifically on those sections of the proposed Act which we feel
directly affect spouses and families.
[Omitted here are the section-by-section recommendations the AAFSW made regarding the draft
Foreign Service Act of 1979.]
