By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
One of the most significant revolutions of the last century was the Women’s Rights Movement. The Western world will never be the same.
In the 1800s, Elizabeth Blackwell wanted to become a doctor, but every medical school rejected her application.
The one college that accepted her did so as a joke. When she showed up, the joke was on the school. The faculty tried to flunk her out, but failed.
She graduated at the top of her 1849 class. In 1965, only about one in ten U.S. medical school enrollees was a woman.
In 2022, women accounted for 54.6 % of all medical school entrants. There are now over 460,000 women doctors in the U.S. compared to 645,000 male doctors. In only three years, the number of female doctors is expected to exceed the number of male doctors.
The same trend exists for lawyers. The first women lawyer in America was licensed in 1879. Today 40% of all lawyers are women and the number is expected to be over 50% in 4 years.
Women now make up over 60% of all college students. Over 70% of all high school valedictorians are women.
Studies consistently show women possess superior verbal and reading skills. 60% of all books sold are bought by women. Close to 80% of all fiction tomes are bought by women, and women now author over half of all published books.
Many positions, such as for scientists and university professors, advertise “women and minorities strongly encouraged to apply.”
Most females now want to earn degrees and enter careers that pay well. I have a wife, a sister, a daughter, and 8 female grandchildren, thus I am supportive of women’s progress.
Women tend to marry up (nurses marry doctors, high school teachers marry college professors). This leaves a lot of women at a disadvantage in the marriage market.
Worse, many women now often put off marriage until they complete their education, and their career is established, often requiring six or more years. Then, my students bemoaned, “all the good men are taken.”
When an biology professor colleague married the school custodian her parents were very concerned that the nine-year difference in their education would be a major issue.
She explained to them that she was at the age where she wanted a family and reasoned that she and her boyfriend were very compatible.
They had several similar interests, such as their love of horses, so married. After having two children, they divorced, citing incompatibility.
Another major economic problem is American women are not birthing the essential replacement level of babies. Replacement-level fertility is the level at which the population replaces itself from one generation to the next. One reason is abortion.
According to the latest data, in the US 1,037,000 abortions (excluding miscarriages) occurred in 2023, an increase of 11% from 2020. This is 18% of all pregnancies.
More than half of all U.S. abortion patients were in their 20s, and unmarried women accounted for 86% of all abortions.
Kamala Harris made free access to abortion her chief priority in her campaign for President.
In America, the replacement-level fertility level is close to 2.1 children per family. Until recently, the average American family had 2.5 children. In 2022, the United States average was 1.94 children.
Furthermore, one-child families have also been on the increase over the last two decades. As a result, we are now well below replacement level, a disparity projected to continue moving downward.
This disparity is a major economic concern. One problem is that Social Security is not a savings account, but a tax. The money of those paying in each month is used to pay for those now on Social Security.
As the population over 65 increases, and the population below 65 shrinks, the government will not be able to take in enough money to pay those on Social Security.
Furthermore, too few young people are working and paying enough Social Security to fund the large number of people over 65.
One solution is to make eligibility for Social Security, not at age 65, but age 70. Another solution is to drastically increase the income tax rate on young people to support those on Social Security.
Or we could print more money, which backfires because it triggers inflation, which is now a major problem due to the enormous number of give-away government programs.
A third suggested solution is to encourage money payments to young couples to have larger families, such as is done in Europe.
This is enormously expensive and cannot last forever, as most entitlements tend to. Most Western European countries have a “universal child benefit,” going only to families with children. France’s program is paid only to families with two or more children.
Japan is one of the most rapidly aging nations in the world. The average citizen in Japan is 49 years old – the second highest in the world.
The population peaked 14 years ago, at 128 million inhabitants. Since then, it has been steadily falling due to the nation’s birth rate of only 1.3 children born per woman, far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.
Unlike Europe, the United States is on the bottom end of the tax scale compared to other Western nations. Denmark, France, Belgium, and Italy tax in excess of 40% of the gross national product.
The few countries with a lower tax-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio than the U.S. include Turkey, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. Our most important legacy is not our property or our creative achievements, but our children.
Children are the future of the world, the leaders of tomorrow. This problem must be addressed if we are to survive as a nation.
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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries.