After those threats to the quantity & quality of your Life, how about something else that affects how good your life is, besides in some part how long you live.

You can prossibly guess [sic] what I’m talking about: Money.

I independently stumbled on the phrase “equal pay for equal work” about 10 years ago, only to find it was already coined, back in about 1948. In public fora some would ask why I wanted us to intervene on women being paid less –

What people call the gender pay gap –

“They’re weaker,” someone would say – I would say what about a male typist & a female typist; if there were no discernible difference in the speed or result of their work, one produced a typed sheet in 9 minutes compared to the other producing the same typed sheet in 9 minutes – why were we paying them different? That’s equal work – why not equal pay?

“They work less days a year, taking care of kids.” Shouldn’t we pay people to make & raise people, especially at one of their most vulnerable stages of Life — not the opposite – discourage & punish them for creating & raising our most valuable asset: people?

This went on & on, & it seemed clear women need equal pay for equal work, stereotypes be damned.

But the thing is, as I’ve talked about in this site previously, equal pay is only part of economic security. equal pay without a job to keep is poverty – we need a strong economy so there’s plenty of work – & moola – to go around.

& What about income inequality – the fact that CEO’s & people like them took 89/90ths of the fruits of everybody’s labor since 1979, I figured – taking 89/90ths of the wealth generated by everyone working?

The rest of us had 1/90th to fight over, & more accurately, to suffer with. That’s money to raise a family. to get a safe car. to get a respectable home. Spread the word about income inequality . . . it is a very serious problem.

A 4th issue is economic security in the larger sense: the protection from crashes in the economy. As best I can tell, de-regulation & lack of regulation in financial markets has led to our last crash – millions of people lost their jobs & homes as a result of that.

That’s not financial security. Your home is where you live most everyday. Your job too is essential . . . We can’t let financial finaglers’ greed shyst millions out of these basic needs, & then bail them out. That isn’t how it’s going to be. Nah unh.

. . . So, equal pay for equal work . . . job availability . . . a fair share of the income . . . & protection from things like unfair mortgages, costing you your home or job, are some things I think of when I think of a better Life for women, after recognizing the actual threats to your Life that are overwhelmingly Health-related – (not military or other violence. (The one other case that ranks somewhat high is car accidents.))

What do you think of?
♡ J.V.