Every woman knows that feeling of being watched, followed, or pursued when they aren’t interested. It’s a predominately unpleasant experience — to feel singled out, spotlighted outside of your own volition. Sometimes, it’s well meaning. Sometimes, there’s even a connection, but too often, there’s a man who neither understands women nor how to interact with them attached to the encounter.
This happened to me recently. I was minding my business in the comfort of my home, perusing Twitter, and all of a sudden, there it was: “The Biden Agenda for Women.”
Talk about a man who doesn’t know how to handle or, err, rather not handle women. I groaned and Googled. Sure enough, the Trump administration also has its own idea for saving us poor damsels in distress through the brute force of government.
It was then that I realized it. I am being pursued by a government I am not interested in, and it probably won’t take no for an answer.
Years ago, when I was younger and not fully into my career, I would have told you that women had every advantage in the world equal to men. No one likes to see themselves as a victim or feel like opportunities aren’t open to them. And in one sense, that is true. Under the law, I am equal in every way to a man. But I also now know that women do still face many unique challenges, roadblocks, and cultural proclivities that disadvantage them.
That’s an unfortunate reality and one that we as individuals should seek to solve.
I hope business owners prioritize having diverse workplaces, not to appoint women as tokens but in recognition that they bring distinctive skill sets to the table. I want a world where women aren’t punished for stepping away to have children, where it isn’t assumed they will shoulder so much of the burden in having a family, which most men and women desire equally. It would be lovely to live in a world where a man lives in fear of threatening my career with sexual advances instead of the other way around. I wish violence was rare and I felt comfortable going for an evening run without a .38 weighing me down on my hip.
In order for women to live fuller, more productive lives, these are changes that need to occur. But that only happens when hearts and minds of individuals are reformed. Creating a culture that values and supports women takes real buy-in, effort, and, most importantly, a commitment by each of us to change our behavior. No matter what administration is in power, the government is the least capable entity of effecting this change.
Government only has so many tricks up its sleeves, and most of them include force or intervention in the market, both of which always have unintended consequences. Quite frequently, when the government seeks to improve upon a problem, it actually makes it worse. For one example, if you were to implement laws mandating that all employers give women eight weeks of maternity leave, the result would almost certainly be that employers would limit the number of women they hired who were in their 20s and 30s.
Upon first glance, the Biden agenda is filled with proposals that would miss the mark in this manner. He claims he would fight for equal pay. Um, thanks, dude? But it’s been illegal to pay women less than men since 1963. Maybe he forgot.
While there are a lot of people committed to the narrative of the pay gap, it’s been disproven and easily explained time and again. Given the same career field, education, and experience, women are not paid less than men. The difference in average incomes is explained by the individual choices men and women make in selecting their career path. Next.
Included in this agenda was a promise that Biden would solve violence against women, noting that he authored the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. Like many bills Congress passes, this one carried a nice-sounding name but was filled with problematic content. The law funneled hundreds of millions into the court and police system for decades, but its reliance on failed incarceration approaches to crime actually exacerbated the root causes of violence against women. Furthermore, a quick look at crime stats reveals that police are still highly negligent when it comes to handling these types of crimes. Hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested, and victims fight tooth and nail to get anything from the system.
So, you’ll understand if I don’t think Biden is the guy to fix the mess he helped create.
Though more economically focused, the Trump administration’s plan is also flawed. It purports to elevate women’s economic positions in the world through government intervention. Women don’t need the government to come in and rig the playing field for us. We just need it to get out of the way. Reduce regulations and government bureaucracy that make it difficult to open a business. Stop taking so much of our pay through taxes.
Women don’t need to be coddled; we need you to get out of our way.
Ultimately, the best thing government could do to improve my life as a woman would be for it to leave me alone. Government, I’m not interested in having you in my life, the feeling isn’t mutual, and you need to respect my wishes. No means no.
Hannah Cox (@HannahCox7) is a libertarian-conservative activist and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
