As Allison has already noted, IWF had a fabulous event today at noon. It was the first installment of our re-launched brown bag lunches, and we’ll be doing another one soon. Except that we voted unanimously to provide lunches in the future. Brown bag lunches without brown bags? Sounds like a plan.
Our subject today was Nancy Pelosi and women. The media has, of course, hailed the new speaker as the best thing that ever happened for women, but we had two speakers who refuted this hackneyed media conceit — National Review’s fabled online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez and IWF’s own Carrie Lukas.
Carrie suggested the idea that Pelosi is good for women just because she happens to be one is “sexist.” She pointed out that Pelosi’s high taxes agenda will hurt women and that Pelosi, before her ascension to the speakership, worked to prevent her party from engaging in debate about Social Security reform; the Democrats, said Carrie, are “comfortable with letting the system spiral towards bankruptcy.”
Lukas added that Pelosi and the Democratic party’s war on school vouchers is tinged with hypocrisy. “It is a sad fact that Speaker Pelosi and liberal women in Congress [favor] something different for their constituency than for their own lives,” Carrie pointed out. Attempts to regulate wages with an eye to eliminating the so-called “wage gap” are also counterproductive, said Carrie.
“Who’s the cause of the wage gap?” asked Carrie, replying, “I am.” She explained that many of her male colleagues from college may be earning more but that she had made what she considers life-enhancing choices such as working for a policy organization and working at home that affect earnings. It is women’s choices, not discrimination, which creates the wage gap (which is only about 2 cents on the dollar if you factor in choices). Carrie said that she could foresee employees refusing to make available such arrangements if they feared a lawsuit.
In a fast-paced, witty talk Kathryn Jean Lopez – K-Lo to her vast army of fans- talked about the effect of Pelosi’s becoming speaker. “For a long time politics has been girl-crazy, and now it’s worse,” said K-Lo said. She poked fun at the White House Project, whose sole goal is to elect a woman to the White House.
Geena Davis of the ephemeral TV series “Commander and Chief” wasn’t a real female president- but that didn?t stop the feminists from going crazy for her. K-Lo quoted Marie Wilson of the White House Project on why the series was so important: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” K-Lo said that it wasn’t just feminists who bought into the gender notion. “President Geena infiltrated the Bush White House,” she said, citing the appointment of Harriet Miers to the “women’s seat” on the Supreme Court.
There’s no way I can do Carrie and K-Lo justice – but a podcast of the lunch will be up momentarily. I beg you to listen to K-Lo’s hilarious version of the apologetic speech white male Chief Justice John Roberts should have given about his gender.
Please watch our website for future brown bags. And let us know if there’s a subject or person you’d like us to host.