Women's Issues are Economic Issues

The conversation surrounding women in the United States has moved from being one with and including women to one about and excluding them.  Adding yet another layer of polarization to this country and to this election cycle. Women are most likely to identify as and vote for Democrats and the gender gap between Mitt Romney and President Obama is almost as wide as ever. The first exit polls measuring the gender gap started in 1972 and 1976, where there was really no gender gap to record.  But after Roe vs Wade in 1973, reproductive rights became a focus in presidential elections. Ronald Reagan in 1980 was more willing to campaign on this issue owing to a 17-point gender gap never previously seen and with men more likely to vote for Reagan than women.  Various polls today estimate the gender gap to be as high as 30 points.  

Mitt Romney and the Republican party have said that women aren't interested in issues on abortion or contraception but rather, the economy.  I have news for you:

• Women still to this day make on average 77 cents to the dollar of that of men.  In states such as Utah it is 55 cents to every dollar a man earns. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is a bill which clarifies previous anti-discrimination legislation enabling a woman to sue her employer over pay discrimination.  A bill which Republicans voted against, 172 of the 179 in Congress at the time to be exact (and three of these were a no-vote).  This is an economic issue.

• Republicans have also gone out of their way to include exceptions in the health care law that would allow employers to decide and thus discriminate against as to whether they will provide contraceptive coverage to female employees based on religious and medical reasons. Romney also supported a House bill which would toss out the Obama administration’s policy requiring insurance companies to provide contraception without a co-pay. For women to participate in economic life, they need to be able to plan pregnancies and space pregnancies apart. This is an economic issue.

• And when Mitt Romney suggested that single mothers were to blame for gun violence in the U.S. and instead of offering policy solutions suggested women should find someone to marry before having children – guess what, this is an economic issue.

• And if women don’t have an interest in the politicization of contraceptive and abortion coverage, why does Congress?  The cost for one day of work in the House of Representatives is $4.8 million – 52 days from January 2011 to July 2012 have been spent introducing and trying to pass legislation focusing on personhood laws, fetal pain laws, defunding of Planned Parenthood and other family planning organizations, restrictive abortion legislation, laws against violence towards women, as well as laws focusing on voter ID requirements, redefining of rape, workplace discrimination, and equal pay. At least one bill for 38 weeks out of this 46-week period in session has seen legislation aimed towards women. This is an economic issue.

What is to be gained from all of this?

Women make up about 47% of the workforce in the Unites States and while hit just as hard, if not harder than men in the economic downturn, men have been unemployed in larger numbers. Contraception and abortion access are huge factors when women want economic participation, allowing for pregnancies to be planned and child bearing to be spaced. One unplanned pregnancy can mean receding below the poverty line for some women. Keeping women barefoot and pregnant, and thus excluding them from economic life must be the goal of these attacks. Get women in the house, let men take their jobs. Giving no say to women as to their reproductive lives takes away women’s abilities to make decisions in every other aspect and makes for a less egalitarian and balanced society – one that could hardly be called a democracy. Impoverished, oppressed and unempowered – that is the goal of these policies.

With these types of legislation being pushed, and predominately by men, women need to push back. Not all women hold the same beliefs and not all women have the same hardships but we do have something to add to the direction being taken in this country. After all, we make up 51% of the population. Perhaps it is time we make up 51% of the direction of this country.