07 Apr 2014 180,000 Women Lost Jobs in February While Obama’s Promotes Gender Warfare

Close-up Of A Two Businesspeople Holding Cheque Over Desk

It’s probably a pretty safe bet that President Obama won’t be talking about last month’s unemployment numbers when he officiates at “Equal Pay Day” at the White House on Tuesday, April 8.

Last Friday, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the overall unemployment rate for the American workforce as a whole was unchanged at 6.7 percent.  To break that down among some key Obama demographics, Hispanic unemployment went down slightly to still-high 7.9 percent while black overall unemployment rose by twice as much as Hispanics fell to post at an extremely high 12.4 percent.

And the unemployment rate for all women who are 20 years old or older rose by two-tenths of a percent.  It’s back to the same rate — 6.2 percent — as last November.  Not good news.

There are approximately 180,000 more women in the American workforce who joined the ranks of the unemployed last month.  Black women 20 years and older, in particular, saw their unemployment rate skyrocket by 1.1 percent to 11.0 percent.  While not seasonally adjusted, the Hispanic unemployment rate for women is reported to have fallen four-tenths of a percent to 8.4 percent.

Also, according to CNSNews, approximately 36,000 women chose to join the over 54.6 million other American women who are now considered to not be participating in the workforce at all.  Overall, the American labor participation rate is near a modern low of 63.2 percent.

Yet, as Obama prepares to stoke the partisan fires of an alleged “war on women” on Tuesday by using his much-heralded pen and phone to sign two executive orders he will undoubtedly claim will help equalize the genders in the workplace, the fact that 180,000 more women than in February are no longer drawing amy regular salary should hang over the event like a dark cloud of foreboding.

These very stark facts about womens’ employment will likely go unmentioned as they don’t fit the liberal narrative that the economy is recovering splendidly and that problems right now are borne more out of race, class, gender and power dynamics than an environment toxic to job creation and fiscal growth.

The expected Obama orders, to mandate that federal contractors (the apparent extent of Obama’s pen power) provide federal regulators with salary data broken down by factors of employees’ gender and race and to protect contractors from retaliation for publicly complaining about their wages, are considered dubious in effectiveness and considered by critics to only add more of a regulatory burden on employers that will instead depress wages for all affected workers.

This latest skirmish in the liberal war on women meme fronted by the White House and its supporters is being rebutted by members of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network.  These black conservatives find there is more to worry about in the workforce that the specter of gender discrimination.

For instance, Project 21 member Derryck Green, who writes a regular monthly commentary for the National Center’s blog that analyzes the unemployment numbers and the state of the Obama economic recovery, said:

For all the talk about this so-called conservative “war on women,” it seems like an actual two-stage war is being waged on women by the actions of the Obama White House and as a result of his economic “recovery.”

Under Obama’s recovery, for example, women saw their share of the nation’s unemployed increase by 180,000 from February to March.  Since Obama has been in office, the representative percentage of employed women in the civilian federal workforce has also declined.  In 2013, roughly 44 percent of the civilian federal workforce was women — a 16-year low.

Also, during Obama’s tenure, for example, women are reportedly earning less on average than their male counterparts.  Not only are there fewer women working in the White House than men, they are also making $9,000 less per year.

So much for gender equality!  It’s just another example of the apparent unspoken motto of the Obama presidency: “Do as I say, ignore what I do.”

Americans should keep this in mind the next time the Obama Administration and their sympathizers campaign against the “war on women.”

Project 21 member Lisa Fritsch, a Tea Party activist who ran for governor of Texas earlier this year, added:

The way liberals are addressing this alleged recent “War on Women” is equivalent to their “War on Poverty” initiative of the last five decades.  It has only made things worse for both minorities and women.

The unfortunate truth is that women are finding fewer professional jobs that they depend on to support their families.  A real reason is the Affordable Care Act and the unpredictability of its implications and taxes.