Feminist groups view the profit motive with suspicion and would prefer to put government in charge of our nation’s healthcare system. Once again, they favor government control rather than leaving decisions up to individuals. They look admiringly at systems in Europe and Canada where governments dictate access to healthcare services, echoing the principles that Hillary Clinton articulated in the 1990s.
Advocates of nationalized healthcare focus on benefits such as more access for the low-income population to preventative care, but overlook the drawbacks to the single-payer healthcare system, including reduced innovation and the rationing of care. Canadians wait an average of 7.3 weeks to see a specialist after their family doctor makes a referral under Canada’s celebrated single payer, healthcare system. They wait another 9.2 weeks between seeing the specialist and receiving treatment.10 For women, the median wait between a referral by a general practitioner and an appointment with a specialist in gynecology was eight weeks in 2004; the wait between meeting the specialist and treatment was nearly seven weeks.11
Instead of pushing policies that would give government more control over our healthcare system, policymakers should consider ways to put power back in the hands of patients. One of the most promising reforms is Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). HSAs allow individuals to put a portion of their pre-tax money into an investment account which can then be used to purchase healthcare services. An individual with an HSA must have a high-deductible health plan, but can use the money in the account to pay the cost of initial medical expenses. Unused balances in the account are invested and accumulate for future use.
Essentially, HSAs turn individuals into true healthcare consumers, with an incentive to make prudent healthcare choices, seek lower prices, and use only the services they need. It forces healthcare providers to consider how to attract patients and address their unique needs, since those patients are customers who can take their business elsewhere.
Women should consider the benefits of a healthcare system that puts more control in the hands of individuals and the pitfalls of the feminist recipe of giving more power to government.
Women and work
Feminist organizations push policies designed to make the working world more accessible to women, particularly, mothers. The underlying purpose is to make their vision of what women should want—full-time jobs and kids in daycare—into reality. These policies ignore the real desires of many individual women and have unintended consequences that make it more difficult for women to find work arrangements most suited to their needs.
As discussed in chapter thirteen, government-funded daycare is a favorite of groups like NOW. Yet while the government can make daycare seem “free” to working parents, it isn’t free to taxpayers. Passing on those costs means families who have one spouse at home will have a tougher time making ends meet. Stay-at-home-moms’ service would be devalued since they could be replaced by the “free” substitute: government daycare centers. This proposal would push stay-at-home moms to seek formal employment.
Instead of finding ways to make institutional care more affordable for parents, policymakers ought to consider leveling the playing field to make it easier for parents to stay home with their children. Not only does research suggest that having more parents at home may be better for children, but it’s also the daycare arrangement that most men and women say that they would prefer.
The Public Agenda survey confirmed this preference. Parents supported policies that would “make it easier and more affordable for one parent to stay at home” over policies that that would “improve the cost and quality of child care” by a margin of 62 percent to 30 percent. This stands in stark contrast to the opinions of the so-called “children’s advocates,” seven out of ten of whom wanted public policy to move in the direction of a universal child care system.
Some feminist organizations and left-leaning politicians lambaste attempts to make life easier and more affordable for stay-at-home parents as “giveaways to the rich,” but the evidence simply doesn’t support this characterization. The highest number of stay-at-home moms comes from families earning between $20,000 and $25,000—hardly what we consider rich in the United States. Policies that subsidize center-based care often end up transferring resources from a less financially well-off group (families with a single earner) to a richer demographic (dual-earning couples). 12
Policymakers should listen to parents, not the rhetoric of organizations or experts who claim to speak on behalf of women and children. Instead of focusing on making daycare more affordable, policymakers should consider how to make it easier for parents to adopt their ideal daycare arrangement—which, more often than not, is having one parent stay home.
Government should also steer clear of mandates that purport to make it easier for women to balance family and work, such as requiring employers to offer benefits of lengthy periods of leave. Such policies have good intentions, but can limit women’s employment options and reduce their salaries. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, the real wages of married women in states with laws mandating comprehensive coverage for maternity expenses fell, while wages rose in states without the mandate on business. In other words, the costs of the mandates were passed on to the intended beneficiaries. Gruber’s research provides evidence for what most people instinctively understand: Policies that force an employer to spend more on particular workers make those workers less attractive financially and reduces their take home pay.
They can also limit the availability of employment. Government demands that businesses provide health insurance or leave benefits to their employees create an incentive for businesses to hire fewer workers. The consequences of the regulations are more pronounced for women who move in and out of the workforce and are more likely to seek part-time employment or other nontraditional work relationships.
Occasionally, feminists promote policies designed specifically to benefit stay-at-home moms, whose work, they argue, is “uncompensated” since women don’t receive a paycheck for their services. Naomi Wolf and Danielle Crittenden, for example, want stay-at-home moms to receive a “Social Security credit” for their work, even though they pay no payroll taxes.
This attempted to institute government policies to reward the stay-at-home mom is just as misguided as their policies to favor working moms. The government would have to “assign” a value to the work of the stay-at-home mom, which would likely start a political bidding war. Consider how unfair it is to a mother who is working and desperately wishes to stay home but she can’t afford it. Let’s assume that the government decides to credit the stay-at-home mom the national average wage for Social Security purposes. The working woman loses more than one dollar in Social Security taxes in every ten dollars she earns. If she earns the same as a stay-at-home mom’s government-mandated wage, she’d be paying thousands of dollars in taxes for the same Social Security benefit.
Margaret Thatcher
“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.”
—1982
“If a woman like Eva Peron with no ideals can get that far, think how far I can go with all the ideals that I have.”
—1980
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1888444.stm (all Thatcher quotes use this link)
Instead of pushing programs that favor a particular lifestyle, government should focus on facilitating flexibility for everyone. Lowering taxes and reducing government spending, for example, would reduce the fiscal burden on all families—without favoring one choice over another. Families with a parent at home could stretch one income further, and working women would have larger incomes to purchase child care. Paring back costly regulations would allow businesses to hire new employees and offer more flexible work arrangements—something that may appeal both to women already working and to some homebound moms who may enjoy part-time jobs.
What a Feminist Icon Said:
“There is not the woman bo
rn who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for any one who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it.”
—Susan B. Anthony
http://quotations.about.com/cs/morepeople/a/Susan_B_Anthony_2.htm
Government can’t erase the challenges that women face in trying to balance work and family. The best government can do is to remain neutral and let women make decisions based on their own preferences.
Affirmative action
Feminist calls for affirmative action are the most explicit example of their belief that women are less capable than men and in need of special consideration. Proponents argue that women should receive favored treatment in employment and in education to overcome the pervasive sexism that holds women back. But the message is that left on their own, women are less likely to succeed than men and need the bar lowered for them.
Whether affirmative action policies actually lower standards and reward less qualified individuals, they certainly suggest that a lower standard is used, creating the perception of undeserved reward and tarnishing the earned accomplishments of the policy’s intended beneficiaries.
There are times when it is useful to compensate for differences in ability or experience. Golf courses are designed to let women and men compete against each other more evenly. “Ladies’ tees” take into account the biological fact that, in general, women have less physical strength than do men, and therefore are not going to be able to drive the ball as far down the course.
Ladies’ tees make sense since it’s generally accepted that biological differences give men an advantage in the game of golf. However, women should be concerned by policies that attempt to set up “ladies’ tees” in other areas of life—like education and employment. Policies that favor women on criteria such as intellect and initiative demean the accomplishments of successful women. Affirmative action creates an environment in which people wonder if these women truly earned their success or if they merely rose to the top of a rigged game.
Sexism does exist. Women will probably always face gender-related challenges—but they will have to clear those hurdles one at a time. Embracing affirmative action institutionalizes a far more damaging form of sexism: the official recognition of an assumption of female inferiority. Feminist groups make a grievous error when they pursue government-mandated advantages; true feminism means trusting that women can compete and succeed on their own.
School choice
Feminist groups often hold themselves up as champions of “choice.” But it turns out this rhetoric applies solely to a woman’s choice of whether or not to carry a child to term. When it comes to some of the most important decisions about raising that child, they want to limit choice and keep the government firmly in charge.
Consider feminists’ hostility to school choice proposals. For more than a decade, school choice has flourished: Policymakers across the country have been embracing proposals—from charter schools and public school choice to vouchers and education tax credits—that give parents greater ability to select a school for their child. Fifteen years ago, there was no such thing as a charter school. Today, about 2,695 charter schools serve 685,000 students. In spite of fierce opposition from teacher’s unions, voucher programs, including the program in Washington D.C., are helping give low-income parents the option to choose a private school for their children.
This momentum is fueled by a growing body of research, which suggests that competition in education works. Competition leads to greater parental satisfaction and better student performance and behavior, including higher test scores. Educational systems faced with competition use their resources more wisely, leading to improvements for kids who opt for a new school as well as those students who remain in the public school system.
Unfortunately, groups that typically claim to speak for women—such as NOW and American Association of University Women—have ignored this evidence and continue to defend the status quo. They support the calls of the education lobby for more money, despite a lack of evidence that money alone solves any problems.
Feminists’ failure to support school choice proposals has consequences beyond the classroom. Women and families are affected directly by school choice and the lack there of. After all, there is one form of school choice that currently exists everywhere in America—locationbased school choice. Families can move and enroll in another public school.
That option is available only to those who have the means to move. Many families make significant financial sacrifices to buy a house in a superior school district. Some women may work just to afford to live in this district, but would prefer to stay home. School choice programs, by giving parents a new method of choosing a school, could ease the financial pressure that drives these women into the work place.
There are many reasons to embrace school choice proposals, from the potential benefits for children’s education to the increased flexibility for mothers and fathers. Feminists should also listen to their own rhetoric: parents should have more choice when it comes to their children.
Get More Information on All of These Issues
Find out more about how these and other important policy issues affect women:The Independent Women’s Forum, www.iwf.org
American Enterprise Institute, www.aei.org
Atlas Economic Research Foundation, www.atlasusa.org
The Cato Institute. www.cato.org
Citizens Against Government Waste, www.cagw.org
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, www.cei.org
The Goldwater Institute, www.goldwaterinstitute.org
The Heritage Foundation, www.heritage.org
National Center for Policy Analysis, www.ncpa.org
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, www.manhattan-institute.org
State Policy Network, www.spa.org
An agenda for women
Instead of following the feminist lead of constantly pushing for bigger government, women should embrace an agenda of returning power to individuals and limiting the size and scope of government. This agenda would include lowering taxes, reforming Social Security, education, and healthcare to give individuals more control of their resources, and reducing regulations.
Women are capable of competing and succeeding on their own merits. With government out of the way and women empowered to make decisions in the interests of themselves and their families, America will be better off than ever before.
NOTES
Chapter 1: The Difference between Boys and Girls
1 Steven E. Rhoads, Taking Sex Differences Seriously (San Francisco, Encounter Books, 2004) 16.
2 Ibid., 18.
3 Ibid., 21.
4 Ibid., 22-23.
5 Ibid., 27-28.
6 Ibid., 29.
7 Ibid., 31.
Chapter 2: Return to Romance
1 Mary Elizabeth Podles, “Tradition and the Sexes,” The American Enterprise Online. Available at: http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.16204/article_detail.asp.
2 Dr. Warren Farrell, Ph.D, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It, [New York, AMACOM, 2005] 66-68.
3 Norval D. Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt, “Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Dating and Mating Today,” Institute for American Values, commission by Independent Women’s Forum, July 26, 2001, 5. Available at: http://www.iwf.org/campuscorner/pdf/hookingup.pdf.
4 Ibid., 14.
Chapter 3: Sex: Love’s Got Something to Do with It
1 Doug Thompson, “Sex and the single coed,” Capitol Hill Blue, October 29, 2002.
2 April Witt, “Blog Interrupted,” Washington Post Magazine, August 15, 2004, 16.
3 Christina Stolba, “Lying in a Room of One’s Own,” Independent Women’s Forum Special Report, July 1, 2003.
4 Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Rediscovering the Lost Virtue, (Free Press, New York, 2000) 19
2.
5 Witt, 16.
6 Question 16 in “Questionnaire and Detailed Results: A Series of Surveys on Teens About Sex,” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, October 2003. Available at: www.seventeen.com/sexsmarts.
7 “With One Voice 2003: America’s Adults and Teens Sound Off About Teen Pregnancy,” National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, December 2003, 3. Available at: http://www.teenpregnancy.org/resources/data/pdf/wov2003.pdf.
8 Glenn and Marquardt, 11.
9 Rhoads, 103.
10 Glenn and Marquardt, 14.
11 Alexa Joy Sherman and Nicole Tocandins, Happy Hook-Up: A Single Girl’s Guide to Casual Sex, (Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA, 2004) 27-31.
12 Sherman and Tocandins, 248.
13 Rhoads, 104.
14 Ibid., 107.
15 Ibid., 91.
Chapter 4: Not Everyone Is Doing It
1 Rhoads, 23.
2 “Virginity and the First Time: A Series of Surveys on Teens About Sex,” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Seventeen Magazine, October 2003. Available at: http://www.seventeen.com/sexsmarts.
3 “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance—United States, 2003,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Summaries, Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vol. 53, No. SS-2, 18. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/ss/ss5302.pdf.
4 “With One Voice 2003: America’s Adults and Teens Sound Off About Teen Pregnancy,” 3.
5 “Virginity and the First Time: A Series of Surveys on Teens About Sex.”
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism Page 19