The Biden administration released the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” last Friday. “This is our vision for the future of our nation—one that is bold in strategy,” said an enthusiastic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Yet a close look at the 42-page report finds that it seeks to profoundly change “social and cultural norms” about gender identity, eradicate “harmful gender norms” like masculinity and femininity, radically expand abortion funding at home and overseas, promote transgenderism and the erasure of women, fund universal pre-K around the world, promote sex education, institute new gun control laws, and prevent anyone from using the internet to “intimidate” any woman.
President Biden and I released the first ever National Gender Strategy. This is our vision for the future of our nation—one that is bold in strategy and one that this moment calls for.https://t.co/89T8lDmkIM
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) October 23, 2021
The new, equity-focused program was developed pursuant to an executive order signed by President Joe Biden on March 8. The report makes clear that it seeks profound “structural change” to the way Americans think about gender and gender identity/transgenderism. “Building back better requires not just policy reform, but also a shift in the social and cultural norms that undermine gender equity and equality,” from the administration’s perspective.
Here are a few of the most controversial and misguided aspects of the report:
Gender pay gap: The new gender equity plan calls itself “a roadmap to help our nation close pernicious gender gaps.” The report insists that, in “the United States, the wage gap remains a stubbornly persistent problem. In 2020, full-time year-round working women on average made only 83 cents on the dollar as compared to men — with women of color paid even less.” It promises, “We will also promote pay transparency, taking steps to increase analysis of pay gaps on the basis of gender, race, and other factors, and outline plans to eliminate these disparities.”
But the plan ignores the fact that millions of independent life choices lie behind those economic outcomes. Numerous surveys have shown that working mothers prefer flexibility to money or job status; one poll found that 40% of women would take a pay cut for more family-friendly hours. The Pew Research Center found in 2013 that, while fathers with children under the age of 18 work seven hours a week more than men with no children at home “mothers spend less time [three hours a week] in paid work than working-age women without children at home” – and 13 hours a week less than fathers.
In practice, mothers with children at home put in less time at the office and more time with their kids. Who is the Biden administration to say that’s the wrong choice for them?
Universal pre-K all over the world: “We will also promote universal pre-kindergarten education, giving a head start to our earliest learners,” the report says. The Biden administration truly means “universal” daycare, as it intends to promote pre-K worldwide. To “strengthen the global care infrastructure,” the Biden administration will “leverage our role in multilateral economic institutions to promote government and private sector investment in care, including child, elder, and health care, and universal early childhood education, as well as support programs that expand access to and availability of care.” Underwriting these services for every country in the world would amount to an enormous amount of money, on top of the administration’s multi-trillion-dollar spending packages at home.
Promoting transgender identity and destroying women’s sports: The administration makes clear that its plan to help women will in fact help many males at the expense of females. The Biden administration declares itself the enemy of any traditional sense of masculinity or femininity. “We also combat discrimination and harmful gender norms that affect people of all genders: women and girls — including transgender women and girls — gender nonbinary and gender nonconforming people, as well as men and boys,” the plan says. (Emphasis added.)
Among those it pledges to support is “[t]he transgender athlete who dreams of the chance to compete free from discrimination,” the report states in a sentence fragment. Yet the plan promotes this self-contradictory policy: “We will promote equitable access to sports and school facilities for all student athletes; support athletics participation by girls, who currently participate at much lower levels than boys in elementary and secondary school sports; and promote respect for the gender identity of all students, faculty, and staff.”
The administration will appoint “diverse” judges for justice: “The [a]dministration will continue to prioritize the nomination and appointment of a diverse and representative group of people to the federal bench who are committed to ensuring equal rights under the law, including for women, girls, and gender nonconforming people.”
The plan will also try to place, among others, transgender ex-cons in the workplace. “We will also address barriers to reentry into the labor force from the criminal justice system, particularly those barriers that are unique to women, girls, and gender nonconforming people,” it says.
Abortion: The Biden administration promises nothing less than a radical transformation of abortion funding in the United States and abroad. But it does so under the pseudonym of “protecting, improving, and expanding access to health care, including sexual and reproductive health care.”
Abortion is not health care and violates the Hippocratic Oath taken by those in the healing arts, which states, “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such advice; likewise, I will not give a pessary to a woman to induce abortion.” Yet the report states:
As part of expanding access to health care, we must protect and strengthen access to reproductive health care. Reproductive health and rights in the United States are under attack, in spite of the Supreme Court’s recognition of the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade nearly fifty years ago. Over the past several decades, women in the United States have faced a growing number of obstacles to and restrictions on reproductive health care, including safe and legal abortion, which have disproportionately affected and harmed women of color and others in underserved and historically marginalized communities. Most recently, Texas passed a state law that blatantly violates women’s constitutional rights, as recognized under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly five decades, thereby eviscerating access to abortion in our nation’s second largest state and threatening reproductive rights across the country. The Supreme Court is already poised this term to hear the greatest challenge to Roe in a generation, putting women’s fundamental rights on the line.
The report listed specific policies it will take to promote abortion-on-demand:
- “[T]he repeal of the Hyde Amendment, because health care should not depend on a person’s income or zip code.” The Hyde Amendment, which has protected American taxpayers from funding most abortions through Medicaid since 1976, has the support of 58% of Americans.
- “We will strengthen access to the full range of family planning services by restoring and expanding the Title X program, our nation’s only family planning program.” President Biden reversed President Trump’s pro-life policy, preventing Title X recipients (largely Planned Parenthood) from referring women for an abortion.
- “Globally, we will seek to end the harmful Global Gag Rule that restricts women’s access to critical health information and services.” The Mexico City Policy, which President Ronald Reagan first enacted in 1984, prevents taxpayer funds from paying for, referring, recommending, or lobbying for the legalization of abortion-on-demand in foreign nations. More than three-quarters (77%) of Americans, including 55% of Democrats, oppose compelling taxpayers to fund abortions overseas.
The report claims that pro-life laws protecting the unborn “undermine women’s ability to take care of their families.”
Perhaps because the administration knows how deeply unpopular its agenda is, its discussion of abortion is almost always surrounded by more popular concepts as a smokescreen: “From the Emancipation Proclamation, to the passage of the 19th Amendment, to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, to the fight for reproductive rights and [redefining marriage].” Its abortion advocacy is presented alongside “responding to gender-based violence” and staving off purportedly “grave threats” to “voting rights.”
Promoting sex education globally: The report states that the U.S. taxpayer “will support medically-accurate, inclusive, age-appropriate sex education,” which it claims “will reduce teen and unintended pregnancies.” Inclusive sex education means explaining both transgenderism and same-sex sexual activity to minors. Former abortionist Carol Everett has explained how “sex education sells abortions” to underage girls. “You have to break down the natural modesty. You have to become the experts in their lives, and you have to separate them from their parents and their values.”
The Biden administration seeks to expand abortion activism and sexually explicit education globally. “[W]e will restore U.S. global leadership on sexual and reproductive rights and comprehensive sex education,” the document says.
More women in the military: “To strengthen peace and security efforts in the United States, we will enact reforms to improve gender integration in the uniformed services and foster the recruitment, promotion, and retention of women, which is a critical step for force readiness, military effectiveness, and national security,” the report alleges.
Signing up women for welfare: In addition to promoting women in work, the plan also advocates having more women sign up for welfare programs: “We will work to reduce barriers for eligible women and families to access public benefits through administrative reforms to simplify enrollment and increase awareness.”
Ending cash bail: The Biden administration promises to “work to end cash bail and reform our pretrial system, recognizing the harm these processes cause, particularly for Black women and families.” So-called “bail reform” in places like New York has produced repeat offenders like Charles Barry, who was reportedly arrested and released several times after the law took effect last year. “Bail reform, it’s lit!” Barry said before praising “the Democrats! The Democrats know me and the Republicans fear me. You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!” In Chicago, bail reform led to at least 32 people being released, only to be arrested for committing violent crimes later. How this improves the safety of women, the report does not say.
Gun control: The report makes one passing reference to the “implementation and expansion of common sense [sic] gun legislation to keep firearms out of the hands of adjudicated abusers.”
Free speech restrictions on the internet? The administration’s plan to curtail gender-based violence goes well beyond physical harm or emotional duress. It includes “the use of the internet as a tool of abuse to intimidate and silence women, including women politicians, journalists, and activists.” The report does not define what behavior constitutes “abuse” or intimidation.
Letting school bullies slide: “Black girls experience disproportionate rates of school discipline … Black girls and other girls of color, girls with disabilities, and LGBTQI+ youth are overrepresented in school-based arrests,” the plan states. That ideology led to the Obama administration’s Departments of Justice and Education creating a guidance threatening schools if minority students were punished at a disproportionate rate, a policy that critics said led to needless assaults in the classroom. President Trump noted in 2018 that this Obama-era policy “often led to school environments where discipline decisions were based on a student’s race and where quotas became more important than the safety of students and teachers.”
U.S. taxpayer funding of global feminist, left-wing groups? The plan promises to “support local and regional women activists and women’s rights organizations in advocating for needed policy reforms.” Subsequently, it spells this out in greater detail:
To advance leadership and meaningful participation, we will promote movements and community-based organizations led by women, girls, and members of other underserved communities, including LGBTQI+ people. Both domestically and globally, we will support leaders and organizations pushing for greater power, influence, and leadership for women and girls and other underrepresented groups, which research confirms will pay powerful dividends in advancing women’s economic participation, shifting attitudes about gender roles and gender- based violence, and promoting democracy.
In clearer terms, that means taxpayers will be forced to fund political activism in foreign countries that they may — and polls show, likely do — deem morally and politically offensive.
Kangaroo courts for men accused of sexual harassment: “In the United States we will strengthen the enforcement of laws—such as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, and … improve prevention and response policies at K-12 schools and institutions of higher education,” says the plan. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reformed the Obama-Biden administration’s draconian Title IX regulations for those accused of sexual harassment, instituting due rights process. But the Biden administration has signaled its commitment to repeal such fundamental rights as the ability to know the charges brought against you and to have someone cross-examine the witness.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The report says it will operate from an “intersectional” approach, a concept which strongly connects to Critical Race Theory, and fixates on “individuals from marginalized or underserved populations who experience intersecting forms of oppression, such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and economic exploitation.”
Global push: The Biden administration promises a complete, global push to implement its agenda. It will “partner with multilateral institutions … including in the United Nations General Assembly and Generation Equality Forum, the G-7 and the G-20, the Summit for Democracy, the UN Climate Change Conference, and through the Build Back Better World Partnership, among other initiatives.”
“Behavior Change” Programs? The overseas portion of the gender equity plan states that the Biden administration will “support programs that aim to eliminate barriers to women and girls in STEM fields, including behavior change communication programs.” (Emphasis added on the Orwellian phrase.) That Orwellian-sounding program, which is now widely called Social and Behavior Change Communication, constitutes “the strategic use of communication approaches to promote changes in knowledge, attitudes, norms, beliefs and behaviors.”
Belated concern for Afghan girls: The plan mentions offhandedly that “In Afghanistan, the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of a generation of girls and women are in jeopardy, threatening the future and security of the region.” But it does not address the Biden administration’s role in bringing the Taliban to power, nor how its precipitous withdrawal left hundreds of Americans stranded under the Taliban’s authority, perhaps forever. If the Biden administration wants to improve women’s dignity and freedom, it might take to heart the maxim, “First, do no harm.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.