Tuesday: What is PUMA?

The PUMASPHERE is open for business

The NY Times asked this question yesterday, or so I’ve heard.

I’ll tell you what we’re not.  We are not the kind of people who are concerned with whether our vaginas are as fresh and sweet as a Massengill douche.

Oddly enough, our ability to make noise and vote appear to be independent of our vaginal status.  Some of us don’t even HAVE vaginas.  {{gasp!}}

We *do*, however, have a Credo*, which is the reason we consider ourselves to be USDA approved prime cut liberals.

Oh, and BTW, Wonkette readers, someday, if you’re lucky, you will live long enough to be old.  Your tits will sag, your scrotums will lose their perky tautness and young, stupid adolescent males will make fun of you, unless, of course, the PUMAs make them insignificant.  Someday, you may thank us.

In other news:

Amy Siskind of The New Agenda must have read our post on the Double X, where we call for scrutiny of the next Congress’s legislation in order to ensure that women benefit from any stimulus packages that are proposed.  She pointed me in the direction of this post by Sheryl Robinson, Obama should appoint a woman to Commerce because jobs are not a given.

Now that Bill Richardson has resigned, er, before being appointed, Obama has another opportunity to appoint a woman to his cabinet.  He hasn’t made a very good start to being the Change! president.  He’s appointed about as many women as George Bush did.  When Clinton was president, nearly half of his cabinet were women.  How does one explain this?  How was Bill Clinton able to create an efficient, well run executive branch, half of the departments managed by women, but Obama can’t do this?  If we know it *can* be done, why isn’t it being done?  In fact, isn’t it possible that Obama is doing his country a disservice by passing up superior managers because his little band of advisors consists of a bunch of adolescent minded Wonkette readers? But I digress.

Robinson points out that during recessions and depressions, women suffer disproportionately and frequently don’t benefit from stimulus packages which focus on infrastructure jobs:

Women typically suffer greater hardship than men in times of economic downturn. More women in government means more support for issues that affect women, according to the UNIFEM report released this Fall. For this reason, Obama should appoint a woman to replace Bill Richardson, who has withdrawn as U.S. Secretary of Commerce-designate.

…

This week in the Greensboro News Record, Eileen Boris, Lisa Levenstein and Sonya Michel looked at the parallels between Obama’s economic stimulus plan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the latter of which neglected to provide for women. In their article “Obama’s stimulus plan must include jobs for women, too,” they wrote:

Women make up 46 percent of the labor force, and they’re almost as likely as men to be the principal supporters of their families.

However, women are not likely to be hired for jobs rebuilding infrastructure. Therefore some women, they argue, ought to be trained and hired for “nontraditional” employment, ie. “men’s work.” Nevertheless, they say, his won’t be sufficient to ensure women get equal support:

[E]ven if the stimulus package guarantees women an equal chance at the new jobs, it still won’t address the occupational sectors in which most female wage-earners are concentrated, such as education, child care, social work, health care and care for elders and those with disabilities.

There are really two problems going on here but they are systemic.  Women dominate the “pink economy” and these jobs frequently pay less and provide fewer benefits.  And yet we are still not seeing a push in our public schools to encourage girls in math and science.  Oh, sure, it’s better than it was 30 years ago but not by much.  I’ve seen it happen to my Brook who has been effectively cut out of the higher level math programs regardless of her stellar test scores and interest in the subject.  Her middle school upper algebra class consists of 14 boys and 7 girls in spite of the fact that recent studies show that girls are just as capbable of doing higher level math as boys.  The split that takes girls on the path to the pink economy happens in middle school.  Maybe the problem is that we need a female trained in the hard sciences to run the education department.

In any case, the Robinson and Siskind make a lot of good points about keeping an eye out for women’s interests in the new adminstration and Congress.  And as we have heard before, once women make up 30% of the elected government, the prospects for society in general improve.  Even Wonkette readers would benefit.

Just another reason to vote for The Confluence for Best Liberal Blog at the 2008 Weblog Awards.

Finally, we’ve been recommending other worthy blogs for your votes and I have another recommendation this morning.  Actually, I think this blog is in the wrong category.  It’s called Cake Wrecks and it’s been nominated for Best Food Blog.  The blog consists of cake disasters.  Well,  not all of them are disasters.  Some of the cakes are works of art in fondant.  But as in many areas of life, the number of poorly executed cakes and mispelt greetings outnumber the beautiful and literate.  Warning: Do not drink coffee while viewing this site if you value your keyboard.

*Our Credo pre-dates the PUMA movement.  The Confluence has been in business since January 2008.