It doesn’t surprise me that the RNC created a blog to deal with women’s issues and then forgot about it. They don’t really have anything to say. It is, of course, hard to identify an issue about which all women agree. But a good start would be receiving equal pay for equal work. Another one would be having some recourse in the courts if they don’t receive equal pay for equal work. If you take a look at the roll call on the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, you’ll see that House Republicans voted against it 3-173. You might assume that those three Republicans were women, but they were actually two dudes from New Jersey and one from Kentucky. In the Senate, the Republicans voted against the bill 4-36. The four pro-votes? Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
Not a single House Republican woman voted for it, and not a single Senate Republican man voted for it. It’s really quite remarkable. I mean, consider for a moment how hard it is to find a woman in real life who will agree that she should be paid less for the same work as a man, and that she shouldn’t be able to do anything about it if she isn’t paid the same.
This is just the issue I think has the most consensus. I think strong majorities of women disagree with the Republicans’ positions on abortion rights, the availability of contraception, funding for Planned Parenthood, doctor/patient privacy and discretion, paid maternal leave, sex education, protecting against violence directed at women, and so on.
If you try to reduce the interests of women down do the strength of the economy and the availability of jobs, as Romney and the Republicans are attempting to do, you are effectively denying that women have any issues that are distinct from men. And if that’s the route you are going to take, then you naturally will have no content to post to a blog aimed specifically at women.
