#libertarian feminism
Over the last 200 years, economic progress has helped to bring about both dramatically better standards of living and the extension of individual dignity to women in the developed world. Today the same story of market-driven empowerment is repeating itself in developing countries.
Competitive markets empower women in at least two interrelated ways. First, market-driven technological and scientific innovations disproportionately benefit women. Timesaving household devices, for example, help women in particular because they typically perform the majority of housework. Healthcare advances reduce maternal and infant mortality rates, allowing for smaller family sizes and expansion of women’s life options. Second, labor market participation offers women economic independence and increased bargaining power in society. Factory work, despite its poor reputation, has proven particularly important in that regard.
In these ways, markets heighten women’s material standard of living and foster cultural change. Markets promote individual empowerment, reducing sexism and other forms of collective prejudice.
Women’s empowerment in many developing countries is in its early phases, but the right policies can set women everywhere on a path toward the same prosperity and freedom enjoyed by women in today’s advanced countries.
The new Cato 2018 Paid Leave Survey of 1,700 adults finds that nearly three-fourths (74%) of Americans support a new federal government program to provide 12 weeks of paid leave to new parents or to people to deal with their own or a family member’s serious medical condition. A quarter (25%) oppose establishing a federal paid leave program. Support slips and consensus fractures for a federal paid leave program, however, after costs are considered.
The survey found 54% of Americans would be willing to pay $200 a year in higher taxes, a low-end estimate for a 12-week federal paid leave program. However, majorities of Americans would oppose establishing a federal paid leave program if it cost them $450 a year in higher taxes (52% opposed) or $1,200 a year in higher taxes (56% opposed), the mid-range and high-range cost estimates respectively.
These low-, mid-, and high-range cost estimates are based on the most high-profile federal paid leave program proposed to date: The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act).
The survey also did not ask questions about what paid leave policies Americans would like to see offered at private companies. Instead, the Cato 2018 Paid Leave Survey focuses on what people think about establishing a government-provided paid family leave program at the federal level.
