Womenomics

AlterNet’s Joshua Holland has a great piece up today called Womenomics 101, examining not only the work and pay disparities between women and men in America, but between America and the rest of the world.

The good news:

The American workforce has one of the highest rates of female participation in the world…

And women are a big part of that entrepreneurial class that we worship in this country. According to the Center for Policy Alternatives (PDF), one in four Americans now work for women-owned businesses; those firms grew at twice the rate of all new businesses between 1997 and 2002. It's part of our national edge -- American women start up almost five times as many new businesses as women in other high-income countries (PDF).

The bad news…well, there’s lots of bad news, unfortunately, but here’s one of the worst bits:

According to Harvard's Project on Global Working Families (PDF), the United States is one of only five countries out of 168 studied that doesn't mandate some form of paid maternal leave. The only other advanced economy among those five was Australia's, where women are guaranteed an entire year of unpaid leave. That puts the U.S. -- the wealthiest nation on the planet -- in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.

Holland notes that “Putting all these pieces together, you get a picture that puts the lie to the right's claim on ‘family values,’” and that’s a very astute observation not only because of its political angle, but because it correctly identifies women’s issues as affecting more than just women. Women’s issues affect families.

One of the key tenets of feminism that its critics always seem to miss is that the issues which concern us are not just about women. When women lack equal pay and job protections, that affects their partners and children, too. When women are denied reproductive choice, that affects men who will become fathers against their wills, too. We fight for women’s equality because it makes our society stronger and all its members better off.