Woman Roar Without Affirmative Action
Fellow women, be warned: The race/gender-baiters against Proposal 2 (to stop choosing between people by sex and skin color) are mounting a twisted campaign to scare women away voting “yes” on this important change. They ludicrously claim that “white women benefit the most from affirmative action.”
Huh?
Do Michigan’s women, particularly white women, believe we’ve gotten our jobs by affirmative action? I beg to differ!
I come from a family of working women, in all fields from sewing to medical to finance. None of us believes we achieved our goals by being affirmative action hires. We got our jobs because we’re competent, not to fill a sex quota!
White women don’t live inside little bubbles. We have husbands, sons and brothers. Why would we vote to discriminate against our own men and boys just because they’re white and male?
How many Michigan women have watched our husbands lose jobs or contracts because they’re white men? Men who were qualified and had the lowest bid, but weren’t of the politically “correct” race?
MCRI’s opponents claim that “women make 67% of the money men make,” but that statistic is fake. It compares “all” women to “all” men, leaving out factors like job choice. Women who don’t interrupt their careers to have children make exactly the same money as men in the same jobs.
Millions of women want the flexibility of jobs like teaching, office services, or cosmetics. Those jobs don’t pay as much as computer programming, construction or engineering, but will survive a break to raise families. That’s not “turning back the clock.” That’s freedom of choice!
It’s also a lie that women’s sports, medicine and scholarships will suffer. In California and Washington State, where anti-preference laws have already passed, women’s sports, medical, and education services continue to thrive. Check the websites of Cal State, U of C, the UW, and their State websites: women’s cancer research and screening, violence prevention, college women’s tennis, racquetball, golf, track, rowing, and other sports are booming without gender affirmative action. For 25 years, women have outnumbered men in college.
But, gosh, how can that be?
Maybe women don’t really need gender affirmative action. Maybe we roar without it.
Vote “Yes” on Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.