Did feminists skew the Obama stimulus plan towards women even though men are worse affected by the downturn?
Yes, they didThe National Organization for Women (NOW), the Feminist Majority, the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and the National Women's Law Center soon joined the battle against the supposedly sexist bailout of men's jobsAt the suggestion of a staffer to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, NOW president Kim Gandy canvassed for a female equivalent of the testosterone-laden 'shovel-ready'? terminology(Apron-ready was broached but rejected.) Christina Romer, the highly regarded economist President Obama chose to chair his Council of Economic Advisers, would later say of her entrance on the political stage, The very first email I got was from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.'? They were right indeedOur incoming president did what many sensible men do when confronted by a chorus of female complaint: He changed his planHe added health, education, and other human infrastructure components to the proposalAnd he tasked Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, Joseph Biden's chief economist, with preparing an extraordinary report that calculated not only the number of jobs the plan would likely create, but the gender composition of the various employment sectors and the division of largess between women and menRomer and Bernstein delivered The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan on January 10They estimated that the total number of created jobs likely to go to women is roughly 42 percentLest anyone miss the point, they added that since women had held only 20 percent of the jobs lost in the recession, the stimulus package now skews job creation somewhat towards womenWhat misandry can beat this? But of course, it is level headed Feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers who can see things for what they are, much less, be vocal about itCHSummers is a hero!
