The Patriot Post® · So Who Is Waging War on Women, Anyway?

One of the talking points of the Democrat Party this campaign is the claim that Republicans (or, more accurately, conservatives) are “waging war on women.” The claim is based on the notion that conservative policies are so detrimental to women’s interests as to be warlike in nature.

Really?

Looking past the war being waged on conservative women by progressive Democrats, in which no weapon of slander, sexual innuendo, sexism, racism or character assassination is too vile, progressives are by their own standard waging war on women.

For example, HR3541, which would have banned gender-specific abortions, was voted down May 31 because of progressive opposition. The Democrats’ reflexive claim that the bill attacked women’s health was nonsensical because it would also have banned race-based abortions. But by defeating HR3541, these “Republican-war-on-women” progressive Democrats, including our own Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, are now on record as advocating the killing of unborn baby girls simply because they are female. Is that not an act of war on women?

And what of the war on women’s faith? Starting August 1, religious women will be forced by law, courtesy of progressive-backed Obamacare, to fund contraceptive practices that violate their consciences. Both the commandment not to kill and the right to free exercise of religion are forfeit to the progressive cause.

Progressives also wage economic war on women. During the Obama presidency, 683,000 women, compared to 57,000 men, have lost their jobs. That said, it should be explained that the Romney campaign’s claim that 92.3% of all jobs lost under Obama were lost by women is statistically skewed.

From the start of the recession in December 2007 until Obama’s inauguration, 3,264,000 men and 1,157,000 women lost their jobs. Men losing more jobs early in the recession and women losing more jobs later evidently follows typical historic patterns, rendering Romney’s claim moot. But the question of the Obama administration’s colossally erroneous job creation forecasts is begged. Two years ago, the Obama administration ballyhooed the “Summer of Recovery.” With rapidly diminishing patience, men and women alike are still waiting for that summer.

The unemployment rate for men is also slightly higher than for women; but unemployment, speaking of flawed forecasts, has yet to drop below the ceiling promised if the Porkulus were passed. And, when underemployed workers and workers who are employable but who have given up looking for work are added to the labor pool from which the unemployment percentage is calculated, the correct rate nearly doubles to 14.8%.

Be that as it may: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, as of this May, 3,622,000 women are looking for work. 1,183,000 more are “marginally attached to the labor force,” meaning they are available to work and have looked for work in the past year, but not in the past four weeks. Another 360,000 women have simply given up looking, because there is no work (either in fact or in their perception), they lack education or training, or they are facing discrimination. All of these figures are higher than a year ago.

Another 3,366,000 women have been relegated to part-time work for economic reasons, which the BLS explains as, “[P]ersons who indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time [1 to 34 hours] because of an economic reason, such as their hours were cut back or they were unable to find full-time jobs.”

If this economy is on the way to recovery and has recovered, as Obama and the other Democrats contradictorily claim, then why are all these women either still looking for work, having to settle for part-time jobs, or giving up altogether?

More to the point: By their own standards, is it not waging war on women to continue economic policies that so utterly fail to create solid jobs for the millions of women who want to work or who seek better jobs, and that have encouraged another 1,543,000 women to leave the labor force?

Admittedly, departure from the labor force is not always due to the failure of Obama’s economic policies to foster economic growth. Many women have dropped out for other reasons, particularly to resume traditional roles of motherhood and family. But that discloses another front on the progressives’ war on women; for is it not the progressives who urge women to seek employment rather than be housewives or (so-called) stay-at-home mothers?

In sum, progressive policies raise the cost of living so as to make two household incomes all but mandatory for a family while denying the needed jobs to both men and women, as progressives themselves demean women who choose to opt out of the workplace and teach dependency on the government to those who are forced out.