It’s amazing how so much that is just plain dumb can spread like wildfire on Facebook. The latest absurdity being presented as some objective assessment of just how evil the United States is comes from (believe it or not) The Huffington Post, in a piece titled “The U.N. Sent 3 Foreign Women To The U.S. To Assess Gender Equality. They Were Horrified.”
I know! The United Nations! The same outfit that puts the worst human rights violators on their Human Right Council, has three of their own judging America on “gender equality.”
Maybe they were addressing the fact that it America, a man can be named Woman of the Year? That, at least, truly was horrifying. But, no… that wasn’t it.
While it’s easy to just dismiss the premise of the article on its stupidity alone, let’s actually address the key points made by these arbiters of gender equality.
According to the article, the U.N. women (or womyn?) found the United States “lagging far behind international human rights standards in a number of areas,” including the gender pay gap. That’s right, the first issue mentioned in the article is the gender pay gap, which literally, doesn’t even exist. Let’s start with the fact that there’s this thing called the Equal Pay Act of 1963. It makes paying women less money based on their sex illegal. If that wasn’t an existing law, the U.N. Womyn would maybe have a point on this issue… except that the gender pay gap still doesn’t exist. There are plenty of studies and sources that back this up, including from the Department of Labor, as Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation explains:
In fact, a 2009 Labor Department study found that, when we control for work experience and education, the gap is only about 5 percent. And when we account for the fact that men are more likely to be injured or suffer an accident on the job, and do riskier work and often more unpleasant jobs than women, the gap virtually disappears
The next big gripe was paid maternity leave. The United States has no government mandated paid maternity leave. Well, isn’t that interesting… Other developed countries have this, but not us? Why not? We must hate women! Chinese gendercide ain’t nothing compared to paid maternity leave! But, there’s just one problem… these policies in other countries, while they sound just so super-duper-awesome, don’t exactly work to the advantage of women in the work place:
In Chile, a law requires employers to provide working mothers with child care. One result? Women are paid less.
In Spain, a policy to give parents of young children the right to work part-time has led to a decline in full-time, stable jobs available to all women — even those who are not mothers.
Elsewhere in Europe, generous maternity leaves have meant that women are much less likely than men to become managers or achieve other high-powered positions at work.
Wow, we want that shit in the United States? That’s like saying “We want a gender pay gap!” Did I mention that this information came from the New York Times? Just thought I’d mention that. Anyway, there’s more. According to the analysis, these policies “can end up discouraging employers from hiring women in the first place, because they fear women will leave for long periods or use expensive benefits.”
You think?
Perhaps my favorite part of The Huffington Post piece was the following:
The most telling moment of the trip, the women told reporters on Friday, was when they visited an abortion clinic in Alabama and experienced the hostile political climate around women’s reproductive rights.
“We were harassed. There were two vigilante men waiting to insult us,” said Frances Raday, the delegate from the U.K. The men repeatedly shouted, “You’re murdering children!” at them as soon as they neared the clinic, even though Raday said they are clearly past childbearing age.
“It’s a kind of terrorism,” added Eleonora Zielinska, the delegate from Poland. “To us, it was shocking.”
Oh really? Freedom of speech is kind of terrorism? These are the brainiacs the United-Freakin-Nations sent to assess just how anti-women the United States is? Access to abortion, which kills more women than not having paid maternity leave ever has or ever will, is apparently more important to women’s rights then that outmoded First Amendment.
I could keep going, but let’s face it… these women were never going to say anything positive about America in the first place. America wasn’t about to get a fair assessment, and that’s really the point I’m trying to make here. It just a bunch of b.s. left-wing talking points being bundled together to shit on America because it’s a lot easier to shit on America with crap than facts.
As for any American, particularly American woman, who shared this article with a nod and a warm fuzzy feeling because you thought “yes, finally, someone said what I’ve known for so long!”, I encourage you to visit some Muslim country where girls can’t go to school, or are subject to FGM (look it up), or what about countries that practice gendercide? How does that compare to not getting paid to not do your job? A little perspective and a little research would be good for you.
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