WOMEN'S RIGHTS CAN BE WRONG

A recent very sophisticated econometric study by Silvia Pezzini of a huge body of data from several European countries looked at the effect of women's rights legislation on women's happiness. The study found, predictably, that getting access to the contraceptive pill was a great load off women's minds. What was much more interesting however, was the effect of laws that made divorce easier and laws that give working women maternity benefits. It was found that easier divorce REDUCES women's happiness overall and that job protection laws for mothers only worked for women who continued to be employed. Particularly in countries like Sweden, the main effect of maternity benefits for working women was that private employers stopped hiring women. Following is an excerpt from the conclusions of the paper:

"The main finding is that following the introduction of birth control rights, women who could take advantage from the policy (that is, they were of childbearing age at the time the policy was introduced) consistently registered an increase in welfare. The magnitude of the welfare gain is equivalent to the return from achieving higher rather than middle education and a third of the size of the gain from being married or cohabiting. It is approximately one tenth of the effect of going up one level on a 12-category scale of income....

At the same time, other women's rights have been less beneficial. The analysis shows that mutual consent divorce laws have decreased women's welfare, while granting high maternity protection in the workplace did not have significant effects, possibly because of negative feedback effects on the `employability' of women.

Source (PDF)

No-one really knows why easier divorce has made the majority of women unhappier but easier divorce certainly reduces the security of marriage and women do tend to value security in relationships highly.

USA Better for Working Women than Sweden

Just as one follow-up to the above, people might be interested in some findings in a 2004 book Key Issues in Women's Work by Catherine Hakim. Swedish women in the workplace who become pregnant must under Swedish law be given all sorts of benefits that few private businesses can afford -- so 75% of Swedish women work for the government. Nobody else wants them. And here's one result of that -- a result that should rile feminists no end:

"What is more, the glass ceiling problem is larger in family-friendly Sweden than it is in the hire-and-fire-at-will US, and it has also grown as family-friendly policies have expanded. In Sweden 1.5% of senior management are women, compared with 11% in the US."

Source

Conservatives keep telling Leftists that things are not as simple as you think and that coercion doesn't work very well -- and Leftists continue not to listen to that. But conservatives generally have the last laugh -- because human beings and human society ARE complex.

I say more about male/female matters in today's POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH.

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ELSEWHERE

Genetics will out: "A New Zealander who inherited $NZ1 million ($927,000) from foster parents who saved him from a childhood in institutions has been jailed indefinitely after 221 convictions in a 30-year life of crime, a newspaper reported today. A judge told Christian Harry Brusey, 46, he was a professional criminal who posed a risk to the safety of community despite his extraordinary upbringing by caring and affluent parents, The Dominion Post reported. The Wellington High Court was told Brusey was saved from life in an institution at the age of four by a wealthy couple and given the best education money could buy. But he turned to a life of crime with convictions for vicious sex attacks, theft, fraud and burglary with violence. Inheriting $NZ1 million when his foster parents died did not change him. "Maybe he was just born bad," detective Tim Leitch told the paper after Brusey was sentenced to preventive detention, which means he can be held indefinitely.

This is one poll you won't hear much about: "Most Americans, 55 percent, also say Bush does not deserve a significant level of personal blame for problems in the federal response to the crisis. And while 44 percent do assign him blame, only about half of them, 23 percent overall, blame him "a great deal."" There is a good coverage of the media frenzy on Newsbusters

A good post from Commonsense & Wonder: "How incredibly stupid is this? With housing and construction costs skyrocketing, a situation that Katrina is likely to exacerbate, the U.S. government wants to tariff Canadian lumber because it is too cheap. If the Canadian government wishes to subsidize their lumber industry with Canadian tax dollars so that U.S. citizens can purchase cheaper lumber what sane person in the U.S. would want to stop them?"

Three Cheers for "Price Gougers": "With every disaster or crisis, it seems that the public, press and politicians require a remedial course in Economics 101. In fact, apparently we need an ongoing educational campaign even when there is no catastrophe, as demonstrated by the recent foolish legislation in the state of Hawaii to cap wholesale fuel prices. Note the subhead in the linked story: "Some analysts warn move may spur supply problems." Really? Only "some"?"

Brits love the Gurkhas so this announcement should be popular: "Gurkhas, or Nepalese serving in the British army, are to be put on a par with British-born soldiers when it comes to family accommodation, British Defence Secretary John Reid announced this week. From April 1 next year, Gurkhas will be entitled to family accommodation once they have served for three years, and if they are accompanied by their spouses and children, he said. "The new arrangements put those Gurkhas who are eligible on the same footing as all other service personnel when it comes to the allocation of family accommodation," he said. In a statement, the Ministry of Defence in London said the announcement was proof of the government's commitment to ensuring that terms and conditions for Gurkha service were fair and equitable. Some 3,500 Nepalese serve in the British army, continuing a tradition that dates back two centuries. An estimated 43,000 Gurkhas were killed or wounded in action in the two world wars. Last year the government said it would grant the right to settle in Britain to those with at least four years' service.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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