President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris ran on a promise to govern according to an agenda that “aggressively protects the rights and addresses the unique needs of all women.” But in office, the administration has arguably done just the opposite. Biden and the Democrats have repeatedly put obstacles in their way.
The party’s erasure of women is relentless: from schools to sports to the workplace.
Who would think that in 2022 women would be litigating over the right to compete only against female peers in swimming pools, at track meets, and on soccer teams throughout the United States? But it’s happening in several states around the country.
Here’s just one example: Ever since the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference adopted a policy that allows males who identify as female to compete in girls’ athletic events, biological male athletes took first- and second-place wins in major races from some of the best high school female runners in the state a few years ago: Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, Chelsea Mitchell, and Ashley Nicoletti.
PHILADELPHIA’S DE-POLICING BACKLASH
After repeated losses, Soule, Smith, and Mitchell sued in 2019, with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom (Nicoletti later joined the lawsuit), claiming their records should be corrected and that Connecticut’s policy, now bolstered by Biden’s 2021
executive order
, which directed federal agencies to issue new rules reinterpreting sex in federal law to include gender identity, violates Title IX. Soule v. Connecticut is still percolating through the courts.
Democrats couch such policy changes in the language of “equal protection” and “anti-discrimination,” but the young women and girls affected by them are anything but protected.
Beginning in 2017, two biological males competed against females in the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and won 15 women’s track championship titles, titles held by nine different girls the year prior.
“Four times, Chelsea Mitchell qualified as the fastest female,” Christiana Kiefer, Mitchell’s attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Examiner. “Yet she walked away without the gold medal, without the public recognition she deserved, and without the record books rightly reflecting her accomplishment because she lost to one or two male athletes in the race.”
The four women in the lawsuit estimate their female peers have lost over 86 opportunities to qualify for higher levels of competition since the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference changed its policy. One specific championship stood out in Mitchell’s mind. She retells it in a video clip posted online summarizing her case. In 2019, Mitchell ran the 55-meter indoor track state championship in 7.23 seconds, a stunning time. Yet she still only managed to finish third overall against the two biological men on the team. The new champion, a biological male, finished in 6.95 seconds, a sliver faster than Mitchell. Had the same runner competed in the same race among biological males that year, the runner would have landed in 140th place.
“It’s hard to explain the feeling that no matter how talented you are, how hard you train, how much you practice, how much you want to win, you’ve already lost before the competition even begins. Losing builds character, but only if the competition is fair,” Mitchell
says
in the clip.
The new interpretation of anti-discrimination laws, which codifies gender identity as a protected class, protects people embracing gender fluidity. In doing so, though, it rips the safety net Title IX provided out from under girls and women, not just in sports but also with their safety and privacy in locker rooms, women’s shelters, and bathrooms.
“This is an increasing problem across the country. We’re aware of males having competed or currently competing in women’s sports in several states and in a variety of sports,” Kiefer said. “The Biden administration is clearly making a choice to stand with activists instead of female athletes. As we can see from all these states, girls lose when you reinterpret sex to include gender identity and allow males to come in women’s sports, locker rooms, and elsewhere.”
Women find themselves elbowed out of other spaces as well. Pandemic policies took a particular toll on working women, who represented a majority of job losses at
5.4 million
thanks to shuttered businesses and school closures. Instead of making it easier for women to recover from the pandemic, Democratic policies have made it harder.
Take the need for flexible work schedules. “According to a
Pew Research Center study
, around 30% of moms with children under 18 at home prefer part-time work,” Karin Agness Lips, founder and president of the Network of enlightened Women, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “
Research
from the Institute for Family Studies found that 40% of moms with children under 5 prefer part-time work, with 35% preferring full-time work and 25% preferring not to work.”
Many women are rejecting full-time executive
positions
because they prefer a flexible schedule that allows them to enjoy motherhood, too. Often, many working mothers opt to work as independent contractors, selling goods online or doing freelance writing or photography.
But in October, the Labor Department issued a
notice of proposed rule-making
that could redefine how employees classify independent contractors or gig workers. The rule might make it easier for workers to be considered “employees,” working either part time or full time, and thus qualify for unemployment benefits or worker’s compensation. But the regulations could hurt an entire class of people, especially women, who choose to be independent contractors, knowing the risks. Part-time employees have less freedom to control their schedules, especially those who are moved to an hourly pay rate from a contract. And because they’re more expensive to employers under the new system, many of these jobs may not even exist anymore. Many women strike a delicate work-life balance that will be demolished by the Biden administration’s rules.
“The Biden administration has made it more difficult for women to have the opportunity to obtain the work setup that they want, for example, by threatening independent contract work that provides flexibility,” Lips said. “Not all women want to work full time. Women, especially mothers with young kids, are better off if they have more options than just traditional 9-5 jobs.”
“The official line is that [the Biden administration] wants workers to have more protections,” Carrie Lukas, president of the Independent Women’s Forum, told the Washington Examiner. “But really, the federal government is about to make it harder for people to work in nontraditional environments and take away a woman’s right to choose the way she works.”
Indeed, Democrats seem to disregard the entire concept of women balancing work and family.
That was evident in the response to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this year, returning the issue of abortion to the states. The narrative from the Left quickly shifted from women’s autonomy to their supposed limits. “I think the fact that we’re seeing this jump in expenses, that we’re seeing people having to pay more at the grocery store, pay more at the pump, pay more for housing is a reason” to keep abortion widely available, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA)
claimed
in an appearance on MSNBC. Rather than being chastened by the inflation spike that happened on their watch, Democrats like Porter insisted that inflation and abortion rights “reinforce each other.”
“For women, this is not a reproductive issue,” perennial Democratic candidate and activist Stacey Abrams
said
in the closing weeks of her failed gubernatorial campaign. Women of childbearing age, Abrams added, “understand that having a child is absolutely an economic issue. It is only politicians who see it as simply another cultural conversation. It is a real biological and economic imperative conversation that women need to have.”
Instead of showing how powerful women are in the face of adversity and how well they can raise children and facilitate careers, Democrats spread the notion that women are helpless and afraid without abortion and they need it to survive and thrive. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had only one outcome for women and it was negative.
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, pointed out how disempowering such rhetoric is. She argues that there are myriad resources available to women in need, including her own ministry,
Loveline
, which helps women through unplanned pregnancies. Yet Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is actively trying to shut down pregnancy resource centers whose sole missions are to help women in need while the Biden administration takes steps toward
removing
the requirement that women see a doctor before being issued the abortion pill.
“The Biden administration could care less about what kind of pain and trauma both medication and surgical abortion wreak on women,” Johnson said. “All they care about is pushing abortion with no limits, no matter the cost, all the while telling women they need abortion to succeed in life.”
Republicans see an opening here as well. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has sought to recruit Republican women candidates specifically, bearing the message that “whether it be men playing in women’s sports, attacking pro-life pregnancy centers, or canceling conservative women, it’s clear that what the Left hates the most is a free-thinking, independent woman.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER MAGAZINE
The idea is that the Democrats have waged a war on women but that women have the capability to put an end to it. That looks to be the developing theme in conservatives’ response to the Left’s portrayals of women as weak.
One of the best such responses came from Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). At a May hearing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated the claim of abortion as an economic issue and added a dose of class-and-race condescension: “In many cases, abortions are of teenage women, particularly low income and often black, who aren’t in the position of being able to care for children. [They] have unexpected pregnancies, and it deprives them of their ability often to continue their education, to later participate in the workforce. So there is a spillover into labor force participation.”
Scott powerfully responded: “I’ll just simply say that as a guy raised by a black woman in abject poverty, I am thankful to be here as a United States senator.”
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
