The recent ruling in Alabama’s State Supreme Court that IVF embryos constitute human life has sent medical practitioners and women’s rights advocates reeling. This ruling comes on the heels of Dobbs v. Jackson, a landmark court case that many describe as rolling back the clock to the 19th century. These decisions validate what many activists have felt – that the United States is enduring a gender crisis: women’s voices are not taken seriously. Women’s pain and health issues are not taken seriously. Women’s financial wellbeing is not taken seriously. Women’s justice in the legal system is not taken seriously. There is a pattern emerging that shows a devastating revelation: women are not taken seriously in the United States in many aspects of their lives.
It’s time that the women of the United States have somebody to fight for them. The United States needs a position at the highest level of the American government to fight for women’s rights with the authority to achieve the goals that it would exist to fulfill. The United States needs a cabinet-level advocate for women’s equality.
A significant amount of the world’s nations already have cabinet-level ministers dedicated to women’s issues, which are tasked with the responsibility to close gender inequity. The United States is not one of them. On gender political representation, the US is 72nd out of 193 countries.
Gender inequality is an expensive problem to leave unaddressed. Women control 85% of consumer purchases in the United States, but on average, only earn 82 cents to a man’s dollar, with more discrepancies for women of color. Violence against women costs the United States a lot of money: $3.1 trillion over the course of a population lifetime for rape and $8.3 billion annually for domestic violence. Rape is the most expensive violent crimame. Domestic violence pushes many women into poverty. The United States would add $4.3 trillion to the GDP if they invested more in women’s equality. Investing in women is investing in everyone.
Indirectly, violence that occurs because of a lack of a legal remedy adds up too. Over 33% of women experience gender-based violence in their lifetimes, but the conviction rates for rape and domestic violence are extremely low. Insurance often does not cover all costs associated with these crimes and other loopholes in the law may leave women responsible for paying them. This is difficult for many women, especially if their workplace, like many workplaces, does not provide paid time off after sexual or domestic abuse.
Women’s quality of life suffers too as a result of this. Health issues that predominantly impact women are drastically underfunded in comparison with issues that primarily impact men and this lack of funding and research causes preventable pain and death every year. The United States is the only developed nation in which maternal mortality is increasing rather than decreasing. Menopause, which can be debilitating and happens to anyone assigned female at birth who reaches that age, is severely understudied. Gaslighting is incredibly common in the medical industry and women of all ages have reported these experiences, which tend to be worse for women of color.
The United States claims to be a gender advocate. But in reality, we’re hypocrites. We need to call this what it is: a crisis. Crises demand action and pull the American people together to unite for a resolution. After 9/11, the government had a massive restructuring that led to the creation of a new department, the Department of Homeland Security, which was created by combining existing offices from other areas of the government into a new department designed to prevent another tragedy from occurring.
Inequality is more than the overt act of discrimination. The vast majority of the patriarchy’s tools are silence and omission – denying our pain, our justice, and our humanity. This concern is echoed by American leaders of gender equality. Secretary Clinton correctly said that “Too many women in too many countries speak the same language – of silence.” It’s time for a nonpartisan demand to fix this and allow women to be able to thrive and have control over their health, their financial wellbeing, and their experience with the legal system.
Other leaders on gender inequality share these concerns too. Speaking about women’s inequality in the legal system, Diane Rosenfeld writes that “Women [are] directly endangered by men’s violence often appeal to the courts to save their lives. These courts systemically disregard the seriousness of the threat men pose to women’s liberty and lives. A law, VAWA, was passed to remedy this. The Supreme Court eviscerated the authority of the law and of the legislature to pass such a federal law. Women are thus left to be directly endangered by men’s violence.”
Women’s lives have historically been inadequately supported by the U.S. government. A centralized authority is a reasonable next step to addressing this issue. It’s time for the United States to catch up to the rest of the world and establish a cabinet-level secretary for women.
Special thanks to Hanna Johnson for the research on this article.
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