While the US is not perfect, it is far preferable to many other countries. Why else would we be arguing about how to handle so many immigrants and refugees from lesser environments?
Activists want today to be a “day without women.” The organizers explain that because women receive “lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity,” they want bring awareness to these injustices. Similar to the ‘day without immigrants’ earlier this year, women are being called upon to take a day off from paid and unpaid labor, avoid shopping unless it’s at a small women owned business, and wear red in solidarity. As a result, several schools in three states are closing down for the marches.
Not everybody is so convinced there needs to be a march, however. The Concerned Women of America, for example, point out that the U.S. has the highest proportion of women in senior management positions (43 percent) of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (women comprise 47 percent of the U.S. labor force); the U.S. was ranked eighth globally in gender equality by the World Economic Forum; 24 percent of working American women are in professional fields (compared to only 16 percent of working American men); 46 percent of American firms are owned or co-owned by women.
More importantly, these marches are a sign of American elitism. On top of the successes of women in the marketplace, women earn the same amount as men when accounting for similar positions and job experience. While the country is not perfect, it is far preferable to many other countries. Why else would we be arguing about how to handle so many immigrants and refugees from lesser environments? In numerous nations, spousal rape is still legal and women lag far behind men in literacy and education. Many cultures still practice female genital mutilation. Gang rapes and honor killings are rampant in South Asia and beyond. There is no need to belabor the point– despite our imperfections, we remain many notches above the vast majority of the world.
Average Americans, both men and women, can’t afford to skip a day of work marching for the inflated, relatively trivial concerns of these organizers. In fact, many individuals work in positions from which they would be fired for missing a day, as many immigrants discovered during the ‘day without immigrants’ march. Many others can’t afford to miss a day of work because they are too busy paying bills and higher taxes that liberals often demand. The schools that closed down so their staff could protest means that many parents, especially single mothers, have to find child care at the last minute.
Burdening single mothers hardly seems like a way to affirm the importance of women, but elitist liberals are always trying to recreate the marches of the 1960s. That was a pivotal time period when real gains were made for the civil rights of women and minorities. But the modern demonstrations reek of snobbery, as most people are more concerned with living productive lives than taking time off from work for hyper-politicized causes of dubious value. Above all, most people have a much more balanced interpretation of life and the issues facing them. Women care about having good schools, jobs, access to health care (beyond birth control) and safe neighborhoods. This focus on biological sex or skin color simplifies and ignores the real problems in the country.
Morgan Deane is an OpsLens Contributor and a former U.S. Marine Corps infantry rifleman. Deane also served in the National Guard as an Intelligence Analyst.
