The United Nations has 193 countries in it and among the countries 7 of them do not mandate paid maternity leave for parents. The United States of America finds itself among the 7 countries. Child care in the United States for working parents costs the parents more than 20 % of their income again among developed nations the United States is last, most nations offer heavily subsidized or free child care. In June of 2022 the United States quit protecting women’s right to health care for abortions. Health care costs for families in the United States are almost twice as much as all other United Nation countries.
The election season will start soon and the politicians will lean heavy on the family and the importance of the family. However if that politician is not addressing the families needs through policies their words are nothing more than lip service and the family doesn’t matter enough for the them to do work.
When something matters and is a priority we will find ways to make that something work.
If you live in the United States of America chances are high that you will live in the same economic status that you and your parents are born into. The American dream of rising out of poverty or even moving up in the ones socioeconomic status is highly unlikely. In the United States, less than 50% of children born in the 80’s will out earn their parents.. I find this statistic interesting and a complete bummer. Why has social mobility gone down every year since the 1940’s?
That is a big question with lots of moving parts. society is a group of people living together in an ordered community and there are lots of parts in that society that can and do influence socioeconomic mobility in that society. Guess what is currently the number one driving force behind socio economic mobility in a society?
Did you guess? What was your answer? Was it crime or lack of? Was it education? Was it natural resources or access to them? Well the answer is (insert drum roll here)…. COMMUTE TIME TO WORK!! Yeah my mind is also blown something that simple seems to make all the difference. Long commute times work to keep society in poverty. Lack of mobility creates a lack of socio economic mobility.
So what can we do? I quit a job with an hour and a halve commute two years ago and traded for a 10 minute commute and have never been happier. I understand that not everyone has that luxury though. Stronger, good communities provide robust public transportation. Good communities are made up of citizens who participate in them. I know you are tired form the long commute but if you can get active and attend local town hall and county meetings, this is where the public transportation is often shelved in the United States of America and this is where you, the good citizen, needs to be heard. “Hey guys who are already in the upper class, if we shelf this transportation plan, no one will reach the status you are at now.”
Cities cannot afford to not have good, clean and safe transportation. It is possible and will happen eventually don’t you want to be able to say that you drove this change?
It has been 100 years since women have gotten the right to vote in the United States of America and there is still dramatic inequality when it comes to women’s and men’s rights in the United States of America. Right now The United States is ranked 17th for women. Just all around there are 16 more countries, all of which have less money, influence and power than the United States and yet women are treated better there.
It’s not the money, or military might that makes a nation good or bad, it is the way the nation treats its citizens.
The United States has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, if the anti choice movement takes away the right to abortion it can be assumed that this rate will grow even larger. In 2020 17 women died for every 100 000 births. To compare the UK was 7, New Zealand was 3, and South Korea was 2.8. In the top ten richest countries in the world the United States has the highest rate for killing women while they are giving birth.
1 out of six women in the United States have been raped in their lifetime. Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark are among the top ten safest places for women, the United States is the tenth least safe country in the world for women.
After the civil war came the reconstruction period in the United States and that was the beginning of Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action is a plan to address racism in the United States. The program was working well and getting better until somethings happened in the supreme court and the White House.
In 1978 the supreme court ruled that quotas for measuring affirmative action were unconstitutional, in 2017the Whitehouse advocated for using “ace-neutral alternatives” for admitting students.
Affirmative Action was moving and had a way to measure it’s success however there have been some bumps in the road. Affirmative action also benefits women when it is executed and protected.
The playing field is not equal women and minorities start and often stay at lower levels than white men. To argue against this is to argue against the numbers and facts.
To make the United States better for women we must treat women with more that respect. We must bring women to the level of the white male in all facets of life. In the home, the workplace. the religions, and the government.
Women are 51% of the population but only make up 20% of representation in the government. That has to be fixed and it starts with our votes. The majority of Americans did vote for a women president however the antiquated broken system that the United States uses to count votes made it so that the unpopular male won. So we are getting there now we just need to look at the rules that have been created by the white males to keep white males in power. Its a lot of work but it can and will be done and it needs to start with men. We need to show women more respect than we do our fellow men. We need to be sure that we always consider representation when we are hiring, and we need to be aware of our training and unconscious bias against women.
Instead of scoffing at this post and ones like it perhaps consider your own actions or inactions. I certainly am going to try. I know that we can do better than 17th place!!
The Corrigan Encore 