Time to put more women in Congress

 
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agate
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Location: Oregon

PostPosted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:16 pm    Post subject: Time to put more women in Congress Reply with quote

If one's livelihood depends on one's monthly Social Security check, as mine does, one does well to keep a close eye on what the US government is doing just now.

It hasn't been pretty. There is a real danger that these monthly checks, on which many US citizens are totally dependent, will be delayed on account of a threatened government shutdown. Other benefits on which many depend are also in danger of being not just delayed but stopped entirely.

As I watch the TV news coverage, I see many men in suits barging importantly through the halls of government.

There's something very wrong with this picture. It's the men in suits. Why so many of them? Where are the women?

It is women who are apt to be most dependent on those Social Security checks. If you're like many women, including myself, you thought staying home and raising a child or two or several was really important. So you did that, and while you were kneedeep in diapers, you were almost certainly not paying into the Social Security system.

Sooner or later, probably trying to safeguard your own interests, you returned to the work force and began paying into it again. But you may have lost many years by being a mom.

A mom's efforts don't count as work. You get no salary or wages. You probably do get support but nobody adds that up.

So when the time comes to collect your Social Security benefits, you find that you're getting $100 a month or so less than a man of your age who didn't take any time off to raise kids. $100 a month is a figure I chose based on an instance I know of, where that was the difference. Individuals may vary based on work experience but, generally speaking, a woman who takes time out of the work force to raise children isn't "gainfully employed" in the eyes of the Social Security people.

Maybe it felt like work to you but they'll tell you it wasn't. Round-the-clock duty monitoring every cry from the crib, trundling kids in all kinds of weather to the doctor or dentist or school or any of a jillion other places, laundering, mending, housework, meal planning and preparation, administering medicines and taking care of emergencies, running errands, dealing with bus drivers and teachers and other people involved with your children--none of that was work. You may have been too tired to do anything but sleep if you ever had a spare moment, but no matter--it still wasn't work.

Most women enjoy being moms, and being able to take the time to be a full-time mom or even a part-time mom is a great luxury that many overburdened parents in the poorer parts of this country can only envy.

But when it comes to Social Security, you will probably depend on that check for your entire subsistence one of these days, and it won't be paying you nearly as much as your male counterpart gets.

There may be no answer for the inequity of the benefit amounts. But someone in Congress should be seeing to it that these checks are neverstopped or delayed on account of budget wrangles going on in the House and Senate.

Where are the women in Congress who could be speaking up on behalf of women Social Security recipients?

Not there in large enough numbers, according to this, which states that women hold only 20% of the Senate seats and 17.9% of the House seats.

And yet women are more than 50% of the US population--50.8% in 2012, according to this census summary.

Something is very wrong here.
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MS diagnosed 1980.

Avonex 2002-2005. Copaxone 2007-2010.


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