The Republican war on women is more than just cutting off access to reproductive rights, health care, and birth control. Now it's becoming more and more clear that every platform they push is in some way an assault on women's lives and ability to raise their families.
Even in the GOP proposal to "reform" food stamps.
Judy Molland reported earlier in April about the Ryan budget plan's plank to turn food stamps into a block grant that would be handed to the states, opening them up to the possibility of reallocating the funds to places other than their original purposes: feeding the hungry. With states struggling to make ends meet and gutting basic services for the poor like health care and unemployment payments in an effort to balance budgets, to think that they might reallocated these funds as well isn't much of a stretch.
But not as examined is the fact that reallocating food stamp funds would disproportionately harm women.
As WomensENews reports:
If nutritional programs are left to the states it's easy to predict who'll win and that women, in particular, will lose out.
The children who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are roughly 50-50 boys and girls--not that there's anything to celebrate in gender-equitable child hunger. Among adults, however, women dominate: 65 percent of SNAP participants are women.
There are 9.3 million non-elderly female adults helped by SNAP, compared to 5.3 million non-elderly male adults. Fully twice as many elderly women are in the program: 1.8 million compared to 0.9 million elderly men.
Households with children receive 76 percent of all benefits, and of these 33 percent are headed by a single parent. You can guess the sex of the vast majority of them. That's right, women.
Frankly, it's not a surprise that yet another Republican effort is underway to hurt women. From the obvious war on women regarding eliminating equal coverage under health care reform to stripping Title X funding for affordable birth control and reproductive screenings, to an obsession with ending collective bargaining rights for unions that are predominately female employed, and fighting against paid sick leave so women won't be hurt when they need to take a day off for a sick child, it seems more and more clear every day that Republican priorities are protect the rich at the expense of women. Read more: womens rights
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