The war on women is everywhere: in the home, locally, nationally and globally. Take the recent report from NELCWIT here in Franklin County: In this past year: they served 1,933 women survivors of mainly male sexual and physical violence.
In 2018, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center published that 81% of women reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault in their lifetime. Further, the majority of violence against women is perpetrated by male intimate partners and acquaintances.
There are a myriad other misogynist wars on women worldwide – including military wars; sex trafficking and pornography; the theft of female and lesbian sexual identity by SOME IN the trans movement; female genital mutilation; child marriage, etc. – but none at this moment so intensive as Israel’s and the US’ genocidal war on Gaza: 70 percent of those killed are women and their children. Israel’s bombing of hospitals with maternity wards; the starvation of pregnant and breast-feeding women and the record-acute malnutrition among newborns and young children speak loud and clear — End Palestinian women’s potential to give life and the survival of Palestinian babies and children.
How cruelly ironic that as US weapons murder life in Gaza and elsewhere in the world with impunity, 14 US states have criminalized women’s choice of abortion as murder, not even allowing abortion for the hateful acts of rape or incest, 6 more states have early gestational limits. There were 65,000 rape-related pregnancies between July 2022 and January 2024 in those US states banning or putting extreme limits on abortion, post-Dobbs.
Today a majority of US-adults including every from every religion, race, ethnicity; moderate and liberal Republicans and a vast majority of Democrats (women and men), agree that abortion should be legal. Thus, the end of Roe v Wade in the 2022 Dobbs’ Supreme Court decision is a both a War on Women and a War on Democracy, given that the will of the majority of US citizens does not prevail nor influence government policy.
According to the Economist, the United States ranks among “flawed democracies.” Another recent, comprehensive study of democracies worldwide concluded that “only 15 percent of people globally live in places where women and lower income groups have at least somewhat equal access to power.” THE US IS NOT ONE OF THEM.
What fuels the control of women’s bodies in our country? It is MISOGNY and INJUSTICE. After all, there is no comparable moral or medical control of men’s bodies.
Yet the moralistic urgency to preserve life in the womb evaporates once a poor child is born. One in 6 children lives in poverty – the highest rate of all industrial countries; four million youth are homeless.
Clearly, controlling a woman’s right to her own body, is not about the unborn’s right to life, otherwise, all kinds of social legislation for maternal and child health, adequate housing, a living wage, and well-funded education would accompany legislation criminalizing women for abortion.
Regarding women’s loss of economic democracy: women have higher rates of poverty than men, with women of color having the highest. And why? For at least 3 reasons:
1) Domestic violence causes women victims to lose altogether an average of 8 million days of paid work per year and is a strong factor in women’s homelessness.
2)Women’s reproductive labor – giving birth, breastfeeding and caring for children is not compensated with free childcare and paid parental leave in the United States, unlike all other comparable countries. Thus, women who give birth are cheated of savings, pensions and Social Security. No surprise then that the greatest risk factor for being poor in old age is having been a mother.
3)More women than men struggle to cover everyday expenses due to the gender wage gap, which has remained stagnant for 20 years – at 82% – a significant factor contributing to the substantial disparity in poverty rates between women and men age 75 and older.
Even for College graduates in 2024: The same Economic Inequality persists: Male college graduates have been hired at an average sightly over $30/hour; women at slightly over $25/hour: a wage inequality of 82% that will follow these women college graduates ALL THEIR WORKING LIVES
SALARY IS SYMBOLIC: WHY ARE WE WOMEN WORTH 82% OF MEN IN THE WORKPLACE.
I will finish with 2 oppositional realities:
More lives were lost in the 20th century through violence against women in all its forms in the US than during all 20th century wars and civil strife. Yet, while thousands of monuments throughout the United States honor those who lost their lives for their country in war, only one—the first of its kind—is currently being planned for women who lost their lives giving birth to the country’s children.
The counterpoint reality is that Feminist revolutions to gain human rights and equality for women (however incomplete that goal remains) have freed and saved the lives of millions of women and girls—without weapons, without fists, and without a drop of blood spilled.
Women have more than a lot that men can learn from: men commit 90% of homicides and almost all sexual violence; men are the primary wagers of war.
Were our skills, our social and intellectual Intelligence, and our wisdom valued and welcomed in all places of social and political decision-making: from home to national governments and the UN, the world might get a chance at global peace and restoring our beautiful planet.