The Truth About International Women’s Day

This International Women’s Day, remember the inconvenient truth behind the buzzwords.

By Emma Peel

 

Happy International Women’s Day! According to the IWD 2024 homepage, “all IWD action is valid.” Fortunately, I have the gender demagogues’ blessing upon my IWD action: highlighting the real problems that women face internationally. And because IWD is all about equality, it is only right to identify the slew of crises postmodern men are assaulted by. I won’t waste ink on the Communist roots of IWD because our favorite Commie expert Dr. Kengor has already covered that in detail. The cultural case, however, is worth considering.

 

International Women’s Day

The UN called for action in these main categories via IWD. 

• “Investing in women, a human rights issue: Time is running out. Gender equality is the greatest human rights challenge, benefiting everyone.” That’s right…the GREATEST human rights challenge is not human trafficking, Islamic terrorism, or abortion. It is the way women are stereotyped! 

 

• “Ending poverty: Due to the COVID pandemic and conflicts, 75 million more people have fallen into severe poverty since 2020. Immediate action is crucial to prevent over 342 million women and girls living in poverty by 2030.” Maybe if the U.S. could give the UN a couple more billion dollars, we could end world poverty! While reducing poverty is an admirable redemptive goal,  eliminating it is impossible – especially via government spending.

 

• “Implementing gender-responsive financing: Conflicts and rising prices may lead 75% of countries to cut public spending by 2025, negatively impacting women and their essential services.” Believe it or not, cutting public spending will reduce prices. Maybe the U.S. should allocate some of its UN billions to sponsor a diplomat field trip to the Mises Institute instead of to Davos.

 

• Shifting to a green economy and care society: The current economic system disproportionately affects women. Advocates propose a shift to a green economy and care society to amplify women’s voices. Nothing amplifies women’s voices more than legally restricting their usage and accessibility to the cheapest and most reliable energy source.

 

The Real Issues

If IWD or the U.N. would like respect from critical thinkers maybe they could use this day to address these three legitimate causes of concern for women internationally: 

 

1. Sex Trafficking

Estimates vary that 70% to 99% of sex trafficking victims are female. According to the Department of Defense, as of 2023, $99 billion is made annually via sex trafficking and 4.5 million people worldwide are victims of sexual exploitation. What’s fueling this lucrative modern slavery: pornography. Why can Facebook and Instagram swiftly flag political “misinformation,” yet the lords of censorship cannot tame this epidemic?

 

2. Islamic Terror 

The most sickeningly ironic part of IWD is that the pool of women who will rejoice in IWD on social media are the same lemmings who chant via infographics and GoFundMes, “From the River to the Sea Palestine shall be free!” Should Hamas reign free, women surely will not. It is more socially acceptable for American women today to gripe about an economically fallacious pay gap than publicly condemn atrocities against women in the Middle East.  

 

3. Abortion 

In the turbocharged abortion conversation, conservatives often fail to highlight how abortion causes harm to the mother, not just the baby. Millions of women worldwide have been convinced that they will be happier without their babies, and many arrive at the excruciatingly painful conclusion that they are not. Post-abortive women are 81% more likely to develop anxiety and depression. 

 

The Male Side

Further, have we even considered the devastation to the fathers? Have we neglected the needs and trials of men entirely? Being a good social justice warrior must also mean addressing our male allies’ problems too – right? It doesn’t look like it. 

• 74 men receive a bachelor’s degree for every 100 women.  
• Women outnumbered men in law school classrooms for the eighth year in a row. 
• 93% of American prison inmates are men. 
• Men die by suicide 3.9x more than women.  

• 60% of the homeless are men. 
• 97% of mass shooters are male.   
• 1 in 4 American children are growing up without a dad. 

 

Perhaps most disturbing, 7.2 million men have dropped out of the American workforce. 7.2 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 would rather collect an unemployment check than provide for themselves or a family. In 1953, 98% of men in that demographic were employed or actively seeking employment. What are these 7.2 million men doing without professional ambition or social accountability? Undoubtedly, very little good for themselves or the country at large.  

 

A Clash of Narratives

Maybe these grim figures are partially driven by the metanarrative of the postmodern world. Women don’t need men, so men, why try? Culture used to revere masculine excellence. The word virtue itself is derived from the root word of man. Contrast how fathers were depicted in the Andy Griffith Show versus the Simpsons. Psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax reviewed the current 150 most popular TV shows and determined that only one, Blue Bloods, portrayed a baseline competent father. No wonder virtue is devolving.  

 

It is interesting that we are obsessed with the topic of privilege – race, gender, wealth, sexuality – in our pyramids of victimhood, yet are silent on the privilege of growing up with both parents.  Children ought to have the right to this “privilege:” 

• Children from single-parent families are twice as likely to suffer from mental health and behavioral problems as those living with married parents. 
• Children with an actively engaged father are 33% percent less likely to repeat a class and 43% more likely to get A’s in school. 
• In a study of 56 school shootings, only 10 of the shooters (18%) were raised in a stable home with both biological parents.  

 

A Crisis of Character

The devaluation of men of noble character is not merely a crisis of national identity, it is a crisis of national security. While 25% of children in America are raised fatherless, only 3% of children in China, 4% of children in Nigeria, and 5% of children in India live in single-parent households. Imagine wartime – without families, what would our men even be fighting to protect?  

All things have a spiritual nature, and there is a concentrated, long-game attack by the enemy on men. He needs only to take out the head to crumble the household. 

 

A Call to Action

Women, pray for the protection of the men in your life and cherish and encourage their masculine drive to provide and protect. Do not teach your daughters that they should never depend on a man, but teach them how to identify the type of man they could someday depend upon to complement them.  

Men, get into community – Christian community, not the losers you play video games with— have a vision for your life, and put on the armor of God daily. Be the type of man your wife and your daughters can depend on. Be an example to your sons that your daughters in law will thank you for, instead of the source of their therapy  bills.

 

 

Moving Forward

On IWD, Americans can enjoy the privilege of addressing social issues deeper than fundamental human rights, which have already been equally granted to men and women in the U.S. for decades. Barring the sports arena, there has never been a better era or nation for women’s opportunities than today in America. Conservatives can savor a subtle victory in the calendar overlords’ unwitting recognition of binary gender on IWD. Don’t be duped by the impending International Women’s Day infographics. We have heavier lifting to do in many issues beyond women’s representation in the Fortune 500 C-suites.

 

About the Author

Emma Peel is a proud Grove City College alumna working in the financial services industry. Ms. Peel enjoys hiking, cooking, and hosting friends and family. When corporate America is too repugnant, she retreats to reading and writing about conservative virtues.