Hillary Clinton, who just wrapped up a four-year stint as secretary of state after eight years as a U.S. senator, reportedly will write in a new book that “the clock is turning back” for women in America.
It’s a striking, if unsurprising, statement from the presumptive Democratic nominee for president who, by the way, is a woman. Things seem to be going well for Clinton, despite her gender.
Clinton’s proclamation is nothing unusual, though. If you get your news from liberal women seeking elective office, you might never know the extent of academic and professional gains women have made in the past 40 years.
Women have attended college in greater numbers than men since the late 1970s, and 60 percent of students at private universities today are female. In graduate school, women outnumber men, according to the American Enterprise Institute. Almost 60 percent of all master’s degrees awarded in the United States in 2012 went to women. Pay equity for millennial women stands at 93 percent, and that gap is narrowing, fortunately, according research data.
But the “war on women” never gets old with female Democratic politicians, including Clinton, who is gearing up for another White House run. The clock must always be turning back because the “war” pays perpetual political dividends, so long as it is never won.
The Clintons of the world get away with it because no man in his right mind would publicly object.
At the same time, dissatisfaction among women continues to grow, paradoxically, according to the highly regarded University of Chicago General Social Survey, which has been keeping a happiness index for women since 1972. The better women have done professionally over the past 41 years in which the survey has been done, the unhappier they have reported being.
It’s more than a little ironic, then, that the self-proclaimed champions of women’s rights turn out to be the ones promoting policies that have made women increasingly unhappy. Sexual liberation and less focus on child rearing have left some women feeling empty, according to the social survey.
I’m all for equal rights for women. I’m just saying that in any other industry, we’d call this a scam.
