All issues are women’s issues. That’s a mantra the IWF embraced long ago.
Not so with many so-called women’s groups.
Minnesota Rep. Laura Brod learned just how narrow many of these groups are recently when she considered a run for governor of her state:
What particularly caught my eye was a questionnaire from a “Women’s” group. What were the questions? The majority of them were about abortion, gay marriage, and how much we should expand big government spending.
In the midst of the deepest recession in living memory and international uncertainties, those don’t strike me – or most people – as the issues keeping women (or men) up at night.
Where were the ideas of economic freedom and economic opportunity? Where were the questions about challenges that women business owners face in small business start-ups which are the mainstay of Main Streets throughout the country? Where were the questions about the national debt and its impact on our children’s future? Where were the questions about how we best educate the children of our country so that we have a qualified and well positioned workforce? This list goes on and on.
In her must-read piece, Brod notes that for eons women have talked about the “glass ceiling.” But Brod says that she is more concerned about “the glass box that liberal feminists have placed women and ‘women’s issues’ in, all tied up with a pretty pink bow. That glass box is all about keeping women and ‘women’s issues’ firmly in their place on the left side of the political spectrum.”
Brod is onto something.
With the emergence of women like Nikki Haley, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, and (yes) the Momma Grizzly herself, isn’t it time to redefine “women’s issues?