Why are women still struggling to survive?

According to the Ohio State University fact sheet, about 13.7% of the total U.S. population can be said to be poor. Of that, 57.2% are females and 42.7% are males. That's a whopping difference of 14%. Why is that? Why are there more poor women then poor men?

This fact sheet attributes the disparity to single family households where the mother is the sole provider for the children. Education levels are not as high for women as for men which contributes to only being able to obtain low level skilled jobs. But, in addition to that, women make only 60 cents for every dollar that a man makes due to bias within our society toward male "breadwinners."

I do not know how current this study is, but the challenges that women face today are no different now than in the last few thousand years. We are expected to care for the children which limits our ability to work outside the home. We can hire nannies, if we make enough money, but if we don't we face some very hard choices about how our children are to be cared for and what jobs we can do so that they are not abandoned or neglected while we choose to work.

Personally, I think this data is outrageous and something needs to be done. We can't wait for government to step in and help us. They are too busy fighting wars and sending our children to die in them. It's okay for us to struggle to raise them as long as they make it to eighteen so they can be shipped to Iraq or some other flavor of the day war. We can't wait for the employers to cough up an equal pay for equal work, simply because most of them are headed by men with corporate boards dominated by men. We don't need to ask permission from husbands, lovers, or whomever we have been taught may be an authority over our lives. We can see just from the data that they don't give a fig about what is happening to women all over the U.S.

We must learn to help ourselves. We, women, must learn what it takes to make the world a hospitable place for us. We must band together and network and we must "take back the night." This blog is for all the women out there struggling to survive. I hear you, sisters.