Diana Furchtgott-Roth - How Obama?s Gender Policies Undermine America

How Obama?s Gender Policies Undermine America — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "How Obama?s Gender Policies Undermine America" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

123456

Table of Contents

COMPARED WITH MEN , women in 21st-century America live five years longer; face an unemployment rate that is significantly lower; are awarded a substantially larger share of high school diplomas, BAs, and MAs; and face lower rates of incarceration, alcoholism, and drug abuse. In other words, contrary to what feminist lobbyists would have Congress believe, girls and women are doing well.

With these data before us, reasonable individuals should be holding conferences on how to help men get more education and employment opportunities. Policymakers should require that government contractors hire men to bring down their 10 percent unemployment rate. Health reform bills should feature Offices of Mens Health to help men live to the same age as women.

Unfortunately, the reverse is occurring. Both Congress and President Obama continue to advocate policies that favor women over men. The new financial regulation bill has mandated the creation of 29 offices to help the advancement of women. The recently passed health reform law has set up multiple offices of womens health. President Obama wants to extend quotas now in place for women in university sports to science and math.

Much of this is motivated by congressional defensiveness in the face of fierce feminist lobbying that is largely unopposed. Once, feminists advocated equality of opportunity. Now that this has largely been achieved, they clamor for equal outcomes a result that Congress prudently should not try to legislate. Equal outcomes is a pernicious goal for government policy, one that smacks of central planning and heavy official intrusion into private decision making, such as what to study and what vocation to pursue.

Women as a group spontaneously make choices that are different from mens, and there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, if professional feminists were to acknowledge the validity of these choices, they would put themselves out of business - and might have to make some other career choices of their own.

Congress also responds to data that show differences in average wages between men and women. There is less to these differences than meets the eye. The gap almost disappears when the analysis accounts for gender differences in education, on-the-job experience, and the presence of children in the workers household.

By rightly lobbying for equality of opportunity, feminists in the 1960s were sending the message that women can take care of themselves in the economy and in society. Helen Reddys song I Am Woman, top of the charts in 1972, contained the lyrics I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman. Helen Reddys woman was not intimidated by going into law and medicine, and the idea that she would need affirmative action and quotas to go into science or finance contradicts the basic message that women are as strong as men.

Once, feminists advocated equality of opportunity. Now that this has largely been achieved, they clamor for equal outcomes.

In contrast, the 21st-century feminist message is that women are weak and need protection through special preferences. Not only does this harm men by depriving them of opportunities, but it harms women by invalidating their hard-earned credentials. Not even a woman would choose a female brain surgeon for delicate surgery if she knew that the surgeon was a product of affirmative action. Instead, the patient would choose a man, because he might be better at his job. Giving preferences to a few women sows seeds of doubt that reflect on all.

The great irony is that women succeed in everyday America but are doomed to failure in the distorted lens of official Washington. A woman who chooses a part-time job with a flexible schedule in order to have time both for her family and her career thinks of herself as successful. But to feminists, she is a failure because she is on a lower earnings path than a man and has not selected the chief executive officer track.

THE WAGE GAP AND THE PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT

Every year, usually in April, Democratic members of Congress hold hearings on pay differences between men and women. In 2009, it was New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, and in 2010, in was Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin. The occasion is Equal Pay Day - the day of the year, according to feminists, when all full-time womens wages, allegedly only 80 percent of all mens in 2009, catch up to what men have earned the year before. The story is that women have to work those extra months to achieve equality.

Maloney declared at the 2009 hearing, [W]e have considerable work left to do before women earn equal pay for equal work. And, in 2010, Harkin wrote, Nearly half a century after Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act, too many women in this country still do not get paid what men do for the exact same work. On average, a woman makes only 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

No matter that the latest figures show that comparing men and women who work 40 hours weekly yields a wage ratio of 86 percent, even before accounting for different education, jobs, or experience, which brings the wage ratio closer to 95 percent. Many studies, such as those by Professor June ONeill of Baruch College and Professor Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago, show that when women work at the same jobs as men, with the same accumulated lifetime work experience, they earn essentially the same salary.

Marriage and children explain a large part of the wage gap, because many mothers like to spend time with their children and value flexible schedules. The Yale Law Women Web page, the site for female law students at Yale Law School, reads, In the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, YLW believes that the focus on family friendly firm policies and policies designed for the retention of women remains more important and pressing than ever.

Not even a woman would choose a female brain surgeon for delicate surgery if she knew that the surgeon was a product of affirmative action.

In addition to a desire for flexibility within full-time work, the U.S. Department of Labor reports that 26 percent of women chose to work part time in 2009. (Another 9 percent of all female workers, who usually worked full time, reported that they worked part time for economic or noneconomic reasons.)

Labor Department data show that in 2009, single women working full time earned about 95 percent of mens earnings, but married women earned 76 percent of what married men earned. Married women with children between the ages of 6 and 17 earned 70 percent of the salaries of men with children of the same age.

Of course, children are not the only reason that women, on average, have lower earnings than men. Some people are paid less than others because of the choices they make about their field of study, occupation, and time on the job.

When these differences are considered, a 2009 study by the economics consulting firm CONSAD Research Corporation, prepared for President George W. Bushs Labor Department, shows that women make around 94 percent of what men make. The remaining gap is due to unexplained variables, one of which might be discrimination.

In order to solve the purported wage gap, Congress is considering the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill designed to raise womens wages that was introduced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she was still a Democratic senator from New York. The bill has 42 Democratic cosponsors, and it would vastly expand the role of the government in employers compensation decisions.

The Paycheck Fairness Act was one of the first bills that the House of Representatives passed in January 2009, and, as of this writing, has been stalled in the Senate. It would require the government to collect information on workers pay, by race and sex, with the goal of equalizing wages of men and women and raising womens wages. (Fortunately for men, depressing their wages to achieve pay equity is not permitted under the proposed law.)

Next page

123456

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «How Obama?s Gender Policies Undermine America»

Look at similar books to How Obama?s Gender Policies Undermine America. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Silke Roth

Gender Politics in the Expanding European Union

Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Disinherited: How Washington Is Betraying Americas Young

Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Regulating to Disaster: How Green Jobs Policies Are Damaging Americas Economy

John Fund

How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections

Thomas R. Dye

Whos Running America?: The Obama Reign

Esther Mukewa Lisanza

Gender and Education in Kenya

DSouza

Obamas America: Unmaking the American Dream

Obama Barack

Hugs from Obama: a photographic look back at the warmth and wisdom of President Barack Obama

Philip Roth

Philip Roth at 80

Donald R. Kinder

The End of Race?: Obama, 2008, and Racial Politics in America

Shahram Akbarzadeh

Americas Challenges in the Greater Middle East: The Obama Administrations Policies

Philip Roth

The Plot Against America

Discussion, reviews of the book How Obama?s Gender Policies Undermine America and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.