"Women's Figures"

Diana Furchtgott-Roth has authored a wonderful resource for conservatives: Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America.

"Conventional wisdom holds that women suffer from discrimination in the workplace that leaves them economically worse off than men," the author writes. "Yet compared to men, women in twenty-first century America live five years longer; face a lower unemployment rate; earn a substantially larger share of high school diplomas, associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees; and face lower rates of incarceration, alcoholism, and drug abuse. When women and men in the same jobs and with the same experience are compared, the wage gap disappears. In other words, contrary to what AAUW, NOW, and many other women's groups would have Congress believe, women are doing well."

The 140 graphs, charts and tables confirming women's progress will be great visuals for conservative students and activists who battle liberal/feminist women-as-victim myths on campus and in the public policy arena.


Video: Diana discusses the book at the Conservative Women's Network, a monthly event co-hosted by the Luce Institute and The Heritage Foundation:

Tax Those Oil Companies! Oh, wait, no...

"Who really owns oil companies?, asks Diana Furchtgott-Roth. Probably you, if you have any kind of retirement account, public or private.

Contrary to popular belief, only about one percent of the shares of the five major oil companies are held by officers and directors of these companies. The rest is held by institutional investors and individual Americans, mostly in retirement accounts.

One example: Oil and gas accounted for 21% of the investment returns to the New York State Employees' Retirement System and the Public School Employees' Retirement System.

See her Manhattan Institute issue paper for a list of the real owners of the largest 5 oil companies, and think twice about proposals to single them out for higher taxes. The one hurt could be you.

Raising taxes on a large and productive industry such as oil and natural gas would have widespread effects throughout the economy. It is not just the sticker shock for motorists who already recoil from $5 per gallon gasoline prices. Higher taxes on oil and gas will reduce investment in the industry, lessen economic activity and employment. Even those who do not work or invest directly in the oil and gas industries would be adversely affected. 

Did Feminism Really Free Women?

“Women are from Venus, men are from Hell” – these were the words used by Christina Hoff Sommers, moderating a Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute panel, to describe the sort of ‘textbooks’ she was required to teach from as a college philosophy professor. A self-confessed former liberal, Sommers began the conversion to more conservative ideas after being “excommunicated” from the feminist movement for attempting to balance the coursework in her classes. By offering her students some alternatives to radical feminism, Sommers put herself squarely in the cross hairs of the single-minded mentality of the Left. This is an all-too-familiar experience for conservative students speaking out on their college campuses but, according to Sommers, the tide is changing. The veil is being lifted on the liberal feminist lies and conservative women are leading the fight.

Sommers was joined by Hudson Institute senior fellow economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, healthcare expert and Galen Institute president Grace-Marie Turner, and National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, whose recent article inspired this panel entitled “Freedom from Feminism.”