Some 20 years ago the feminist crusade ran out of legitimate issues to
address, so it did what any smart advocacy group would do: fabricate new
injustices and outrages.
The gender wage gap? Well, that turned out to be a fraud.
The glass ceiling? A fatuous exercise in smoke-and-mirrors logic.
Then there's the "feminization of poverty" canard. Hillary Rodham
Clinton has been milking this one for years.
Back in 1995, HRC led the U.S. delegation to China to attend the United
Nations World Conference on Women. There Hillary held forth on the
economic status of women, making the claim that "Women are 70% of the
world's poor."
And sure enough, Madame Hillary is at it again. Two weeks ago, she
spouted the "feminization of poverty" cliché at her husband's conference
on global challenges. No doubt shedding crocodile tears, Clinton
deplored the fact that "Far too many women are stuck in the cycle of
poverty from which there is no escape."
During my life I've traveled far and wide, visiting some of the most
poverty-stricken regions of the world. And I've never seen anything that
resembles a sex-based imbalance of poverty.
Indeed, a 2000 document from the UN Economic and Social Council had to
admit, "Despite observations on the 'feminization of poverty,' for
example, the methodologies for measuring poverty among women respective
to men are still inadequate."
A recent
report from the UN Development Program was even more pointed:
"There is no evidence of systematic over-representation of women among
the poor around the world."
And Alain Marcoux of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization once
ridiculed Hillary's 70% claim by noting the total implausibility of the
statistic "will teach us a lesson about using illustrative figures for
advocacy."
So exactly where did the notion of the "feminization of poverty" come
from?
Not too long ago, men were the primary breadwinners. Poor, middle-class,
or rich, men were the designated hitters to bring home a living wage.
But then the Great Society came along. Eligibility criteria for welfare
programs either required the man to leave the home, such AFDC, or openly
favored female recipients, such as the Women, Infants, and Children
program.
"Now listen carefully, class, to today's arithmetic quiz. Here it is:
Take one daddy, one mommy, and two children. Now subtract the male
breadwinner. What's left over?
a) Financial ruin
b) Welfare dependency
c) Social decay
d) All the above
"Class, if you answered d) All the above, you're absolutely right!"
But the architects of the Great Society were playing hooky that day.
So, told they were unwelcome or unnecessary, men gradually melted into
the woodwork. And the Black family, which had weathered the storms of
the Great Depression and two World Wars, began to disintegrate. In 1960,
the percentage of intact African-American families with fathers and
mothers at home was 80%. By 1990, that number
skidded
to 38%.
When economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research
combed through the figures from the 1970s, he concluded: "Statistical
decomposition of the changes shows that an increase in the proportion of
women in households without men was the principal source of feminization
of poverty."
Translation: Divorce places a woman at risk of becoming impoverished.
Fuchs went on to note, "between 1979 and 1984 poverty rates rose for
both men and women, but they rose relatively more rapidly for men." So
according to Dr. Fuchs, the real crisis was the masculinization, not
feminization, of poverty.
"Miss Rodham, stop drawing pictures of women in villages and start
paying attention!"
A few years ago sociologist Martha Gimenez sagely observed that the
feminization of poverty myth only serves to fuel "conflict between men
and women, young and old, and white and nonwhite."
Therein lies the secret of cultural Marxism.
Cultural Marxists know they cannot topple Western democratic societies
with a direct assault. Rather, they seek to undermine basic values,
incite gender conflict, and weaken institutions such as the family.
Gloria Steinem may have revealed more than she intended when she
remarked: "Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must
overthrow the whole... patriarchy."
When widespread divorce and social discord ensue, the Gender Guerillas
then blame the whole mess on patriarchal society, leaving behind no
marks or fingerprints.
Think about it -- it's the perfect crime. That's the genius of radical
feminism.
Carey Roberts has
been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Alliance.
