In late November of 2020, the EU’s European Commission announced that by 2025, 85% of its foreign aid projects will focus on empowering girls and women.
The aim?
To ensure that recent gains in gender equality don’t get “wiped out” by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Probably uncoincidentally, the statement was made on November 25 – International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
EU Foreign Aid Is Not About Equality
According to a Euronews article titled EU Vows to Put Gender Equality at Heart of its Foreign Aid:
Just under 65%.
Or put another way, almost 2/3s of the money the EU already spends has gender equality as an objective.
Before moving on, ask yourself if women and girls make up 65% of the world’s population. Ask if they suffer the majority of deaths from global crisis, the majority of illness and death from global poverty, or the majority of homelessness in most countries around the world.
The answer for every question is a resounding “NO.”
So is the EU really after equality, or is there something else going on?
What is Equality?
It’s such a simple concept that Merriam-Webster only needs seven words to sum it up –
Equal.
An article from Our World in Data first published in 2019 states that –
“The sex ratio – the share of the population that is female – varies across the world. And globally in 2017 the share of women in the world was 49.6%.”
For argument’s sake, let’s round that up to 50% and say that the world is composed of half males and half females.
The article also claims that on average –
- About 105 males are born for every 100 females worldwide
- Women live longer than men
The following graph from Eurostat (the EU’s statistics office in Luxembourg) shows European population percentages by gender:
By their own admission, women outnumber men in the EU by about 11 million.
So how can the esteemed institution claim with a straight face that equality is its true aim?
It can’t, because if it were, at least by Merriam-Webster’s definition –
- 51% of the EU’s international aid should go toward empowering women and girls
- 49% should go toward empowering men and boys
At least a little less than half would go toward improving male lifespan in impoverished countries. Or curbing the growing problem of homelessness in every country in the world – the majority of which are made up of men.
That would be true equality – and parity.
The EU Is Deceptive About Gender Issues
Sadly, the EU is a notorious user of doublespeak, which is defined by Dictionary.com as –
“Evasive, ambiguous language that is intended to deceive or confuse”
Or perhaps it’s just that the EU doesn’t recognize Merriam-Webster’s perfectly innocuous definition of “equality.”
Maybe they just plain prefer a more Orwellian interpretation.
Something like:
“The quality or state of being unequal, which is really the same as being equal, as long as it’s women and girls (not men and boys) who get a larger percentage of scarce resources than their population size warrants.”
In bizarre times like these, it’s remarkable how George Orwell quotes continually bubble to the surface like methane through a tarpit.
Like this one from Animal Farm –
“All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”
Or translated into the lingo of the contemporary “gender equality” movement –
“All people are equal, but some like women and girls are more equal than others like men and boys.”
Shame on you EU.
Doublespeak 2.0
In yet another attempt (be it deliberate or subconscious) to make things as nebulous as possible, the official website of the European Commission makes the following statement:
“While there has been some significant but uneven progress achieved in advancing women’s and girls’ rights, no country in the world is on track to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030.”
First, consider the adjectives in bold:
- Some
- Significant
- Uneven
Taken together they might be construed as contradictory.
In fact they could mean anything, everything, or nothing at all.
So which is it EU?
Has some progress been made?
Has significant progress been made?
Or has progress been uneven at best?
Can Gender Inequality be Eradicated by 2030?
In short – no.
There’s little doubt that in many parts of the world, including some in the EU, women and girls face serious health, safety, employment, education and inequality issues that men and boys don’t.
However in other areas of the world, including some in the EU, men and boys face serious health, safety, educational, welfare, and institutional bias and inequality issues that women and girls don’t.
But let’s consider the portion of the commission’s statement that deals with the inability of countries to achieve gender equality by 2030.
Let’s assume that gender inequality:
- Does exist in all the nefarious and pervasive forms organizations like the EU and UN say it does
- Has existed since the beginning of time
That said, should we be surprised that, according to them, not a single country is on track to eradicate it by an arbitrarily set date less than a decade away?
Of course not, because artificially associating random dates with immeasurable outcomes and unattainable goals is a classic tactic used by nefarious ideologues intent on perpetuating largely debunked myths for political and economic purposes.
Period.
Are Advances Being Made in Gender Equality?
Yes, but for some reason the EU habitually focuses on the negatives.
Thankfully, despite the prevalence of ominous statistics purporting to prove that the position of women and girls is tenuous at best and dire at worst, there’s plenty of contradictory data out there as well.
Eurostat’s own statistics claim that in 2018 –
- Life expectancy at birth in the EU was more than 5 years higher for women than men
- The employment rate for men was 78.3% and 66.5% for women
But what they probably don’t want you to know is that as recently as the early 1990s, the employment rate for women in Europe was just 38%.
To put that into perspective, in 1896 and 1921 the rates were 35 and 36% respectively.
Now at 66.5%, it’s twice what it was just 30 years ago.
Sure, some women (and men) can’t find jobs.
That’ll always be the case, but it’s possible and even likely that of the 33.5% not in the workforce, many are where they are by choice.
Women Have More Choices
Truth be told, for some more traditional women spending time in the home raising children is more appealing than being in an office, a factory, or the cab of a truck. And they have the freedom, both from social stigma and from poverty itself, to make that choice.
Who can blame them, and in most respects their families are usually better off for it.
Yes, women and girls often work as hard (or harder) than men and boys (when they choose to work), and they face a host of challenges, that if left unchecked have the potential to derail significant gains made in equality in recent decades.
But the challenges facing men and boys are no less serious or imposing, they’re just commonly downplayed and marginalized. Or completely ignored, especially by organizations like the EU.
In summary, when organizations like the EU bombard us with propaganda aimed at convincing us that women and girls have never had it worse, it doesn’t do anybody any good.
