Last week during the primary voting, I realized there was something missing. Women.
OK, there were women on the ballot, but there were a heck of a lot more men. This got me wondering about who exactly was passing federal laws on my behalf. People like me?
As it turns out, the decision-makers aren’t much like me at all.
Despite the fact that we ladies constitute more than 50 percent of the U.S. population, we only comprise 17 percent of Congress.
However, if you look at the facts, the country would be better off if women were in charge:
Women have smarticle particles: More women hold degrees in higher education than men and graduate from high school than men.
We have good genes: Over the age of 85, women outlive men 2 to 1. Maybe that's why Medicare covers Viagra.
We’re responsible: 4 percent more women vote than men. We just keep voting for men.
As I dug into my research, I learned Congress is even less like me than I thought. While only 1 percent of the US population is a millionaire, almost half of the members of Congress are (47 percent).
During a recession, while most of us were digging change out of their sofas to buy groceries (they’re too big to shake out), the net worth of our Congressmen actually increased 25 percent (since 2008).
Speaking of money, we ladies take an additional hit. For every dollar a man earns, women still only earn 77 cents, a disappointing statistic if we consider 59 percent of the workforce age 16 and over is female.
An additional gender “tax” is waged on women who can pay up to 50 percent more for health insurance than men. One reason for the penalty is related to the one thing women are decidedly much better at than men: giving birth.
I admit I didn’t realize how much more women paid for health insurance. This fact is coming to light as the disproportionately gendered Supreme Court weighs in on the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act.
Millionaire Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi promised us that we’d have to “pass the bill to know what is in it,” and I guess that has come to pass and disturbing details are coming to light.
Sadly, I’ve been so busy having babies, earning 77 percent of my value, working four jobs and digging for snack money in my sofa I didn’t even realize that I had become so expensive. There was that time my husband told me that if he dropped me from his company’s health plan the insurance bill for our family of four would be cut in half. That should have been a clue.
Nobody seems to know what is in that health care bill, but I hope I can still get my annual exam as recommended by my doctor. That’s not a decision I’d trust to even a well-trained actuary.
I hope as we learn to cut costs women aren’t further penalized for the one thing we can control: our health.
Let’s just hope the path to reform doesn’t come with too many shortcuts. Like this one (click it).
I am glad that you have acknowledged that there are other groups that are frequently missing from this discussion. I would just like to point out that being gay or lesbian is actually forms of sexuality rather than gender. It is interesting to note (and well known in any Women, Gender, or Sexuality Studies class), that these categories you have mentioned all deviate from what is considered heteronormative. Anyone who strays from the sex, sexuality, and gender binaries that are solidified by man/woman, female/male ect., are cast into the "other" category. Most people do this. Why didn't you include other categories included in the alphabet soup like bisexual or genderqueer? Probably because you lump them into one category that simply blurs the borders of binaries. In many binary systems, there is a seemingly better choice in the eyes of society (some examples: heterosexual is better the homosexual, man is better than women (if you need proof for this claim, look at the cultural preference for sons all over the world))). I see including women in office as a first step to a greater inclusion of those in the lesser binary or binaries. This type of progression can be seen in universities: first having women and gender studies programs and then having queer studies programs.
Whereas men have egos that lead them into politics, women don't have the need for power trips that come from winning elections and getting their names in the media on a regular basis.