My blog

Tag: government

  • Addendum: The biggest losers in a feminazi world

    Addendum: The biggest losers in a feminazi world

    This is further addition to the last article on same topic. This time we concern ourselves with the winners of this new feminist world. The last articles focussed on the impact on different classes of men/women in the society, but more can be said about other groups. The other winners are-

    1. Corporates: Apart from sexual winners, if one thinks about economics then the corporates win. The reason they started to let women work is because they were falling short of laborers during the world war. The feminist social doctrine that evolved was just an extension of this economic model. Not letting women work means 50% of capable labor force remains unproductive. Instead, if they are made to work, the production goes up and need to import migrant labor goes down. There are more buyers for all sorts of products and local economy goes up.

    Now the attack on biological aspects of womanhood is a further extension of this economic agenda. If she is stuck in traditional gender roles then their economy is hurt, so they are trying to take away the femininity of the woman away and trying to brainwash all women into thinking that they are a “resource”, like a good HR would label them. Women have started buying this definition too and just like men, they have started attaching their self worth to how much they earn.

    In the west, this is somewhat okay because it increases productivity but in India young women have started a new doctrine of their own, they want the good points of the western doctrine but don’t want to let go of the traditional benefits of “patriarchy”. For example a girl earning the typical 3.5 Lakhs Per Annum from one of the top 4 mass recruiting IT firms now wants her potential husband to earn at least 12 LPA. So she is trying to play the realpolitik game and make the best of both doctrines and squeeze benefits for herself. Although western women too display hypergamy but not at the same level as their Indian counterparts. If one goes around barking about being an independent woman who is not dependent on any man to sustain herself, why not marry a low earning artist, or a plumber or a carpenter? Why 3X salary requirement from the husband? Where’s the feminism now? Why claim maintenance money after divorce? Why claim custody of children by default of being a “mother”?

    1. Government: No one can forget the second beast in the room which is the government itself. It has all the reasons to make corporate slaves out of women. More labor means more tax and more tax means more spending on welfare. The increased and non-stop growth in the size of bureaucracy means that the government needs an ever expanding size of labor force to balance budget. Now having run out of women, the same western governments are not shying away from importing foreign migrants to shore up their finances in the future.

    The government bureaucrats and politicians not only draw power from increased spending power delivered through increased revenue but it also gives them immense power to interfere in public sphere. Large number of propaganda programs can be rolled out to change mindsets and thus favours can be curried to the select few through media and academia. Different gender issues which were earlier monitored and improved by civil society now require explicit government interventions, which means more redundant jobs created by the government.

    We leave the reader to dig deeper into this issue but look at the kind of studies funded by taxpayer’s money as shown below. If they are not outrightly ridiculous, then one would wonder what is:

    Gender scholar asks 55 women if there’s a link between being a woman and having a vagina.

    If you want to think in Indian context, then think about abuse of 498A. An incoherent law has been imposed on the society which has led to destruction of families through rampant misuse, but the vested interests do not want to let it go. And who are the vested interests in this case? Feminist groups and law fraternity. These two groups hardly want to budge back on this issue, even though greater than 90% of the cases don’t get any conviction and half of the victims are themselves women. So once a law is enacted, it is almost impossible to backtrack on it. The one way street of feminism allows no U-turns.

    As one can by now see, the feminist ideology gives enough reasons for the above two classes to implement these policies even more zealously. So next time when you see a government funded program in favour of altering social norms, you would understand why.

  • Who should pay for your pregnancy?

    Who should pay for your pregnancy?

    Motherhood is one of the biggest and most wonderful gifts of nature to women. But in the modern economy, when women are increasingly joining the workforce, it has taken a backstage and has become only one aspect of the multifaceted lifestyle of a modern woman. Even after the advance of modern medicine, women still have to take considerable time off from work to fulfil their motherhood duties. So in such a situation, the question arises: who should pay for the cost of motherhood, or pregnancy to be precise?

    There is a story doing the rounds in the media where a girl was fired from her job when she asked for leave on medical grounds over and above the maternity leave that she had planned, due to complications during her pregnancy. It is a delicate issue and many people will react emotionally without looking at the whole picture. It is an expected reaction as traditional Indians still associate high value with motherhood, although it is increasingly disparaged as a worthless exercise by liberals.

    It is a very broad topic of discussion and has a very profound impact on the future of the nation, so it is essential to distil the case down to who benefits from a new child. Only when we know who is the ultimate beneficiary can we decide who should bear the cost of pregnancy.

    The decision to have a child is a private decision. Given how parents these days plan the time and number of children they want to have, it is almost a no-brainer to associate this decision with the parents. Since couples decide to have or not have a child, it means they are the sole beneficiaries from this decision, at least when they make the decision. Although a nation benefits from having a young population, most couples do not take it into account when making this decision. Since they hardly think of the nation or society during this decision-making, we will ignore this issue until the end before briefly touching on the ramifications.

    So, if a decision accrues private benefits, who should pay the cost? It is very simple if the case were made for buying a sports car. One does not ask his or her employer to gift them a sports car if he or she likes the car. Also, the employer gains no benefit from the employee having a sports car. A happy employee working hard is a side benefit, but there is no direct relation. Similarly, couples usually do not ask their employers if and when they can have a child, nor do employers gain any private benefit from their employees having children.

    This implies that the decision to have a child is a private decision and parents should take this into account before going forward with it. If this requires a woman to be out of work for a long and significant amount of time, it is not the duty of the firm to pay for her maternity leave while she does not work for the firm. There are two intertwined issues at play here which are often ignored. Firstly, small firms do not have enough working capital and often scrape through with their daily payments. The increased cost of an unproductive employee, if a pregnant woman takes maternity leave for three months, makes it difficult for many firms to survive. Also, it is morally wrong to expect the firm to pay for a private decision of its employee. Of course, if the firm is happy to pay for the pregnancy of its female employees, it should do it, but it cannot or should not be enforced by the state. Secondly, if the state decides to enforce compulsory maternity leave with benefits, it leads to the next problem, which is discrimination. If a small firm knows that its female employee will become pregnant and thus become unproductive for the firm in the future and it cannot fire her, the firm will just stop hiring young females. So the idea to correct one problem will lead to another problem.

    Since the Indian economy still depends significantly on the contribution of small and marginal firms, transferring the cost of the private decision of having a child onto the firm will have very bad consequences for the growth of new and young firms. But this also opens questions of discrimination in social policy. What about women who do not work and are stay-at-home mothers? Or women who work in contractual or small jobs, where firms are not forced to pay for maternity leave? The last set of women will not get the benefit of transferring the cost of their private decisions onto anyone else. So from a fairness perspective, why should a small section of middle-class women get subsidized by private firms for getting pregnant, while poorer women, also more vulnerable and needy, who work in the unorganized sector or don’t work at all, do not get any benefits?

    So who should bear the cost of having children? The cost of bearing children has been borne by the family throughout history and that is how it should be. The parents bear the future cost of bringing up their children, so why should it be different during the pregnancy period? Of course, firms can allow women to rejoin the workforce once they have fulfilled their maternal duties, but it is unfair to expect them to foot the bill for private decisions of individuals. It is daylight robbery if the state relinquishes its duty and passes on the tax to firms for its moral obligations.

    This brings us to the last point in this debate. While individuals and parents usually ignore the public benefits of having children, the state can very well understand such benefits. Not only does a young generation keep a healthy demographic and contribute future taxpayers, but new people also contribute new ideas. Parents might not always recognize this value, but a nation values future citizens. This is the reason that although feminists lambast motherhood in the West, their governments still try to subsidize maternity. Some countries like France, which pay high maternity benefits, have been able to maintain decent demography despite their young women increasingly trying to opt out of motherhood. But India is not a rich country and can hardly afford the cost of such benefits when it cannot even feed everyone. So, what is the way forward? India should inculcate the value of the family system in its citizens and shut down the propaganda against a big population, as most Indian states are already below replacement-level fertility, i.e. 2.1 children per woman. Putting emphasis on the family system will allow women to take help not only from their husbands but also from extended family during times of maternity, thus decreasing economic and emotional pressure. On top of that, government should decrease the cost of raising children by spending money on building healthcare infrastructure and repealing laws like RTE which have increased the cost of education, thus increasing the cost of having children. But before that, government should stop burdening young firms which are the growth engine of the economy and are needed for generating future jobs and income.