It looks like real women know something that our supposed protectors in the Democratic Party don’t know: gender is not holding us back.
A Gallup poll released Friday reported that the “vast majority of women do not see gender bias in promotions, raises.”
Gallup reported that overall 15 percent of those surveyed felt they had been passed over for a raise or promotion because they were women. That means that 85 percent feel that gender has been irrelevant in obtaining raises and promotions.
And somebody has to ask, so I will: of that 15 percent, how many simply prefer to see bias in places where their own failures have held them back? I am not saying that gender bias never, ever happens. I’m just saying that, when it comes to that admittedly low 15 percent, we still should have some health skepticism.
The findings of the poll, in fact, indicate that discrimination is often in the eye of the beholder. For example, 88 percent of Republican women say they have never been passed over because of gender, while this number for Democratic women is 85 percent. Gallup comments:
Republican women and conservative women are slightly less likely than all other groups of women to feel they have been passed over for a promotion due to their gender. They are also less likely to have felt gender discrimination in obtaining raises. Liberal women are the only group to perceive more gender discrimination in both promotions and raises than their demographic or socioeconomic counterparts. Together, these findings reveal that there may be some political or ideological issues at play in perceptions of gender fairness in the workplace.
Even if you buy into the 15 percent figure, perceptions of gender discrimination are low: if gender discrimination happens only infrequently, it is still a problem, especially for the women who experience it. But is gender discrimination an issue on which to build a political campaign? Apparently, it is. President Obama did and won.
What this Gallup poll seems to say is that women understand in their own lives that discrimination is rarely, if ever, a factor. Yet they still fell for the smear that was the phony “war on women” put forward by the Democrats. Go figure.