YEAR OF THE UNEMPLOYED WOMAN

Via Drudge, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women are dropping out of the labor force in droves. And, no, it’s not because times are so good they can stay home and bake:

American women participated in the nation’s labor force in September at a rate that matched the lowest level in 24 years, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, the number of women actually holding jobs declined by 154,000 from August to September.

Back to the 1950s! That was the Obama campaign’s re-election slogan, wasn’t it? It is almost eerie how Obama’s policies are most devastating to his most loyal supporters–who, for the most part, are remaining loyal despite the havoc that the Obama administration has wreaked on their lives.

Via: Powerline

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The Gender Wage Gap Lie

You know that “women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar” line you’ve heard a hundred times? It’s not true.

How many times have you heard that “women are paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men”? Barack Obama said it during his last campaign. Women’s groups say it every April 9, which is Equal Pay Day. In preparation for Labor Day, a group protesting outside Macy’s this week repeated it, too, holding up signs and sending out press releases saying “women make $.77 to every dollar men make on the job.” I’ve heard the line enough times that I feel the need to set the record straight: It’s not true.

The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than “77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That’s not at all the case. “Full time” officially means 35 hours, but men work more hours than women. That’s the first problem: We could be comparing men working 40 hours to women working 35.

How to get a more accurate measure? First, instead of comparing annual wages, start by comparing average weekly wages. This is considered a slightly more accurate measure because it eliminates variables like time off during the year or annual bonuses (and yes, men get higher bonuses, but let’s shelve that for a moment in our quest for a pure wage gap number). By this measure, women earn 81 percent of what men earn, although it varies widely by race. African-American women, for example, earn 94 percent of what African-American men earn in a typical week. Then, when you restrict the comparison to men and women working 40 hours a week, the gap narrows to 87 percent.

Via: Slate

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Pelosi, Sebelius are not representative of Catholic women, nine Catholic women write

PRINCETON, NJ, October 5, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to some in today’s popular culture, being a “Catholic woman” is practically an oxymoron. In a newly-released book, nine women of faith seek to dispel that myth.

The book, Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, is edited by Helen Alvaré, a Witherspoon Institute Senior Fellow in Princeton.

Alvaré recognized the need the “Catholic woman’s” story to be heard while observing popular culture and media increasingly treating the Catholic female as a split personality: a woman who, while she might say “yes” to the faith as a private source of comfort, should say “no” to its countercultural teachings on sex, contraception, marriage, child-rearing, and other ethical teachings of modernity.

In recent years the faithful Catholics, as well as hierarchy and canon lawyers, have tried to correct the perception that political figures like Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are in good standing and representative of the typical Catholic female.

“But Catholic women themselves are in a different place,” stated Alvaré. “Faced with situations their grandmothers and even their mothers never imagined, they are faced with the question of whether a 2,000-year-old Church has anything to offer them at this moment in time. They are trying to make sense of the intersection of faith, modern science, and their contemporary, lived experience.”

Alvaré’s book attempts to show that the authentic Catholic woman’s life, while not being devoid of struggle and confusion, is lived quite differently than what is being portrayed by the popular culture.

Via: LifestyleNews

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