Where Are the Feminists?

To return to a story that we reported last week-- in the post called Homecoming-- the shutdown of local schools, largely instigated by the teachers’ unions, is having a markedly detrimental impact on women’s career prospects.

Now, Karol Markowicz asks a salient question:

Where are all the feminists when women need them?

Or better, how does it happen that people still believe that feminism is devoted to defending women. If a woman thinks the wrong thoughts, she might be among the greatest judicial minds in the country, feminists will despise her and will try to destroy her. 

Modern feminists believe that they advanced their cause by donning pussy hats and marching on Washington behind a bunch of anti-Semites. And yet, they consider Amy Coney Barrett to be beyond the pale. As for Joe Biden’s sexual assaults, not a feminist peep.

Anyway, closing the schools is having a disproportionately detrimental influence on women.

Markowicz explains:

The US jobs numbers for December were grim: 140,000 jobs were lost amid new lockdowns across the country. But the gender breakdown of the losses was stunning. As the National Women’s Law Center notes, “Although net jobs lost hit 140,000 nationwide, women lost 156,000 jobs while men actually gained 16,000.”

Of course, the fault lies with the teachers' unions and with the Democratic politicians whose campaigns they finance. Even Joe Biden cowers in the corner when it comes to school closings. In an exemplary instance of double talk Biden suggested that he definitely wanted the schools to open, but that they had to open safely. That means, when the union bosses have extracted whatever they can extract in government concessions. They are effectively on strike.

Everyone agrees, not only that the school should open safely, but that going to school is not going to spread the coronavirus. The CDC says that it is safe to open schools. Local Democratic officials have refused, up to now, and will do so until the public pressure is too strong. 

This is disproportionately impacting women, of course. And, minority women in particular. If anything it exposes the hypocrisy of feminists:

Even more female workers may have felt forced to “voluntarily” give up their jobs to be home looking after kids exiled from their school buildings at the behest of powerful teachers’ unions. Oh, and as CNN reports, the job losses hit black and Hispanic women disproportionately. Feminists are supposed to care about minorities, along with women, aren’t they?

What happens to women’s lives when you close the schools? Why, they are obliged to stay home to care for children, and especially for young children who cannot focus on Zoom learning:

Women have been hit especially hard by the pandemic in large part because school, in many major American cities, has all but ceased to exist. And yet that deafening sound no one hears is the tragic silence of a feminist movement that has chosen to side with teachers’ unions instead of with women throughout the country who are bearing the brunt of these school closures.

When kids have to be home, the workload of child care, meal preparation and playing Zoom Sherpa lands squarely on moms. Some kids attend schools that have been closed for in-person learning since March. Other kids, the lucky ones, attend schools operating on an extremely truncated schedule, one to three days a week.

In New York City, middle- and high-schoolers who attend public school haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since November.

Obviously, feminists are wont to blame men, because that is why men exist-- to be scapegoats for failed social and cultural policies.

Women are left to pick up the slack. For all the conversations over the years about the lack of child care to help women have successful careers and be good mothers, nothing has been as crippling to their careers as the, poof, disappearance of schools.

And though some outlets have lamented the crisis for women, they often pay short shrift to the chief culprit: closed schools.

When the New York Times reported the story they ignored the role that the teachers unions have played.

The New York Times just ran several pieces about the struggles of mothers but largely avoided the schools, paying lip service to them in a paragraph (inserted only in an update) that called for more janitors and counselors. Please: Schools don’t need more janitors to open.

The Times also blamed men for not picking up slack. But many dads do a great job of helping out. My own husband stepped up in a significant way since the pandemic began. But there’s only one “Mooooooooom” in the house, and she’s the one who has to stop working and tend to her kids.

Life has become far more difficult for women and children:

A Morning Consult poll in December, which asked 2,200 Americans their feelings on the year 2020, found that life worsened for women on every single level.

Their mental health suffered, their personal finances took a hit, they saw a loss of job security and a decrease in take-home pay, their physical health and personal life suffered and they felt a negative work-life balance.

True, things weren’t great for men either. But at least they had a net positive in their personal life and work-life balance. And their negatives in other areas were minimal.

So, Markowicz asks, where are the feminists?

Instead, these supposed champions for women sit silently by as moms crumble in the face of all that is expected of them. A real pro-woman movement would urge action. That action begins with opening our schools.

Dare we mention that the lost learning opportunities are damaging children’s minds. And that they are especially damaging to the minds of minority children. The story has been reported, to some extent, but where is the outcry.

It would appear, by all appearances, that the American left does not see problems needing to be solved. It believes that with Democrats in control of the government, its mission has been completed and the Heavenly City is about to descend on earth. When it does, however, it is going to find large number of children damaged by the policies of the teachers unions and the silence of the feminists.