Women are our best citizens. They graduate from high school, college, medical school and law school in higher numbers than men. They are now a majority of the workforce and still do the majority of heavy lifting at home. They clean our homes, raise our children, care for our senior citizens, and nurture our country. And when fathers physically and/or financially abandon our children, it is primarily women who hold these families together and pick up the missing pieces. On the flip side, women are responsible for an insignificant number of violent crimes, terrorist attacks, hate crimes, rapes, sexual abuse and domestic violence cases. And let’s not forget, since scientists have not yet invented a way to grow a fetus in a test tube, every President, Member of Congress, Olympic athlete, Nobel Prize winner, best-selling author and late night comedian, was born of a woman who literally gave her life’s blood and often sacrificed her career and dreams to create our nation’s progeny. And how does our nation reward our most loyal and generous citizens - shamefully.
· The US is the richest, most powerful nation on earth yet a women's average pay is 78% of men's wages and American women typically get no paid maternity benefits or leave.
· Violence against women has seen little, if any, decline. Approximately 600 women are raped everyday in the United States. Three to four million women are abused by their husbands or partners every year. Thousands of women in the military are assaulted annually and a miniscule number of these assaults are referred for trial. And if you think our daughters are safe on our college campuses, think again.
· Although women make up 51% of the population, women are drastically underrepresented at all levels of government. A woman has still not been elected President of Vice-President of the United States and less than seventeen percent of the members of Congress are women. Only two women sit on the Supreme Court and there are only six female governors.
· Symbolically the government still treats women as second class citizens. There isn’t a single national holiday named after a woman, nor does a woman grace our paper currency. Only nine of the one-hundred statues in National Statuary Hall are of women and less than twenty-five percent of the postage stamps issued by our government to commemorate individuals are of women.
· And to finish the Decade off TIME magazine named Ben Bernanke, Person of the Year. TIME changed the title “Man of the Year” to “Person of the Year” in 1999 but hasn’t selected a woman since the politically correct title change. The last woman to be awarded Person of the Year was Corazon Aquino in 1986 and only four women have received the title individually since 1927 when the first Man of the Year was Charles Lindbergh.
At the end of this decade and especially watching the debacle called the “Last Presidential Election” which I would re-title, “Misogyny: Alive and Well in America,” I have concluded that women are like dogs. They forgive and forget. You can abandon, beat, or starve a dog, and they will greet you with loving eyes and a wagging tail. Dog lovers will tell you, DOG is GOD spelled backwards. Whatever the wordplay, I wish women were more like elephants. Elephant herds are matriarchal. Any zoo keeper or circus trainer will tell you, elephants are the most dangerous animals in captivity. Primarily peaceful, once you cross a female elephant, don’t turn your back on her, since it’s true: elephants never forget.
Women are the privileged class.
Posted by: Jay Hammers | January 18, 2010 at 10:31 PM
The glass truly is half full for women.
Posted by: Tom | January 18, 2010 at 06:25 PM