Yerbolat Dosbayev
ENG-101-402
Ms. Kelley
15 December 2003
Women tax.
"Blessed are you, Lord, our God,
ruler the universe
who has not created me a woman."
– Jewish morning prayer.
(
Let us face
it – the world belongs to men today. Men dominate the economy, and “they still
own the vast majority of the world’s wealth – the currency, the minerals, the
timber, the gold, the stocks, the amber fields of grain.” (Angier 769) Men buy
and sell, earn and spend, build and demolish. What is a women’s place in
today’s economy and what is the value they create? As Marilyn Waring shows in
her book Counting for nothing, that value is seldom assessed. Women who
are housewives wash, cook, clean, and do almost all the work in a household.
Calculated with the market prices for such services, the rough estimate would
be over half the declared Gross National Product of the
The declared
Gross National Product does not include the underground economy of the
marketable activities such as crime, corruption, drug abuse, or pornography -
the profit generating industries employing mostly men. (Waring 7) Even the
legitimate industries can be harmful to the society – depletion of the world’s
resources endangers lives of the future generations, heavy pollution of the
environment endangers our own lives. Those are the works of men, who are
considered economically active simply because they generate profit.
Some women
engage in this unfair economy. They choose to study and seek employment.
However, those women are often discriminated when they compete with men.
Despite the affirmative action, “in the United States the possession of a
bachelor’s degree adds $28,000 to a man’s salary but only $9,000 to a woman’s.”
(Angier 769) The majority of the employed women hold low-paying jobs such as a
server or a housemaid. Even that would have been impossible if feminist
activists had not struggled for women’s rights.
The economic
injustice causes social distortions. If women are not allowed to earn money,
they have no choice but to sell themselves. Many girls from poor families end
up as strip dancers or prostitutes. Recent achievements of medicine made
possible for women to sell their eggs or rent their wombs for as low as several
thousand dollars (Mead 903). No one knows about possible consequences of such
deals to the health of the donors but we know that one of the main reasons why
they do it is money. Some women prefer to sell their whole bodies – “one out of
every five new recruits in the
Many women
still choose traditional ways of life, that is, they get married. While it is
hard to underestimate the social value of a legitimate marriage, the economic
efficiency of the latter is still questionable. No one could better explain the
burden of marriage than Judy Brady did in her “I want a wife”. In addition to
her housework, a wife donates free eggs and a womb, provides free sex services,
raises kids, and does much more. Most of the women still need to hold full-time
jobs, too. “More than one-third of all two-parent families with children would
be poor if both parents didn’t work.” (Coontz 661) On the other hand, a working
mother, who, at the same time, does all the household work, can rarely provide
her kids with the attention the kids deserve. Everyone would want to be raised
in a family where a mother would bring up her kids, educate them, and look
after their health and personal development.
This current
situation hurts everyone, or almost everyone. There needs to be a solution, a
new order. It is necessary for the well-being of the society that women should
no longer be slaves but become masters. The time has come for the world to
change hands. If the economic injustice has led to the social injustice, then
the latter should be corrected by economic methods. The nation’s wealth should
be redistributed through the introduction of a “women tax” where the men would
pay taxes to the women. Such tax should include everything that is left after
regular taxes such as federal, state, and social security. The collected tax
will then be distributed evenly among all the females in the
The effect
will be immediate. Women will never have to worry about their future. Most of
the women will quit their low-paying jobs and start enjoying happy lives. From
birth to death, each female will dwell in pleasure and self-fulfillment. Each
newborn girl will be cherished as a great treasure. Her happy parents will
never try to get rid of her. They will see her dearest simply because she will
be a new source of income for the family. Much attention will be paid to her
health and mental and personal development. As she grows up, she will either
study in the best universities of her choice and pursue a bright career, or
become a head of a household and a mother. Everyone will approve of teenage
pregnancy, especially if young mothers will be bearing baby girls. The current
situation, where “of the one in forty teens who became an unwed parent, 85
percent were poor” (Coontz 662), will change. Men will humbly compete for the
right to be named a groom and baby’s father. The girl will not hesitate to
select the best candidate.
The existing
families will change, too. Unwed mothers will have enough time to take care of
their kids. The kids will be safe and fed, and brought up to be better
citizens. Married couples will change their relationships. Men will depend on
women as a source of well-being and will have to significantly reduce spending.
Reckless driving, boundless drinking, useless fishing, gambling, raking and
harmful smoking will sink into oblivion. Instead, men will turn to be model
fathers taking better care of kids. Women, who have a proven record of finding
better use of money, will beautify their houses and buy better clothes and
better food for the kids. The relations between men and women in families will
definitely improve because women will be appreciating men’s personal qualities
such as high morals, beauty, intellect, or benevolence, rather than seeing men
as money-bags.
Many women,
relieved of their full-time jobs, will start new activities – hobby clubs or
other non-profit, cultural and social organizations. Ambitious women will take
up men’s jobs because companies will prefer women to men. Obviously, men will
loose the incentives to work hard, thus giving way to more interested female
colleagues.
Many men
will have to flee from their wives to men’s mothers, aunts or other female
relatives. The great repartition of men will occur, according to men’s real
values and not incomes. Companies will have to provide primitive housing and
food for their newly unsettled male employees. The government will have to open
shelters for new bums. Eventually, companies will hire those new bums to fill
low-paying jobs left by women.
From birth
to death, men will have to depend on women to sustain men’s lives. A newborn
baby boy will be a significant burden to a family and will have to fight for
survival. Boys will have to learn many things to be successful in a hard life
of a man. Boys will learn how to behave themselves, how to respect their
mothers and their sisters, and, first, how to be good husbands. It is a fortunate
marriage and the art of courting that will be the main task and means every
male will have to learn if he will want to leave the warm embrace of maternal
love. His mother will help her son succeed, teaching him of what it takes to be
a perfect husband, and then using social connections to find him a good wife.
There will
be schools for perfect husbands. Men will learn the arts of cooking, cleaning,
sex, and many others. Men will learn how to stay slim and fit, and how to be
handsome and athletic. Some men will turn blond or use make-up to be more
attractive. Men will learn good manners and learn how to be submissive, caring,
and forgiving. A man will have to be very sociable and ready to remarry again
if his wife decides to throw him out. Some men will profess their new virtues
to such a degree that their wives would try to forbid them any work, just to
have them at home all the time. In this case, special laws and affirmative
actions will be necessary to allow men to work, although the economic benefit
of a working man for the family will be zero. Some of the working men,
exasperated by their sullen existence within the families, will become truly
devoted to non-profit work, to the great surprise of their high-paid female
colleagues.
Some men
will be lucky to inherit property by getting a divorce or by becoming widowers.
However, selling that property will not be a good move, as it will be accounted
as taxable income. Such person will be able to sustain himself living on his
own fat or, if he owns a land, be able to farm the land or raise animals just
to have food. If he is lucky, he will be able to sell his goods on the black
market.
Given the
fact that all men’s income will be one hundred percent taxed, not so many
things will the man, deprived of his production tools, be able to sell on the
market. With one exception – he will be able to sell himself. Though the
majority of women will be almost perfect in terms of morals and judgement,
there will be those willing to pay much for the illegal earthly pleasures that
most proficient men will be eager to deliver. Those outlaw drones will keep
their dirty cash to themselves, of course, spending it on raggery, coiffures,
or improvements to their “means of production”.
Such new
order will possibly lead to the total extinction of the male human species. In
fact, this process is already happening naturally – men kill each other in
wars, die of alcoholism and car accidents and commit suicides. Women should
hope that, before the men have completely disappeared from the face of the
Earth, the men will devise a way for women to reproduce themselves without men.
One chance for men’s survival would be if they invent a way to conceive from
women and bear babies. We already have egg market, surrogate mothers, sperm
donors and first clones, so, with the medical technologies advancing at a fast
pace, either opportunity seems quite feasible.
However, the
first step towards the reforms should be the economic liberation of a woman
through the introduction of a woman tax. Such change should not and cannot
happen shortly. Even though the majority of the voters are women, and the new
law would be easily passed, the quick about-face is too drastic a measure.
First, the immediate effect of such tax on men would be so devastating, that
they would rage and riot. Second, women would be so much spoiled by the easy
money that they would forget their nurtured dreams and cherished hopes for a
better world.
That is why
the implementation of the plan should take place in incremental steps - introducing
a one percent tax first, and then constantly increasing it each year by just
one percent. This scheme will provide for the gradual transition of roles,
property ownerships, and responsibilities, as well as for the smooth
transformation of social institutions. Female voters hold the majority now, and
will prevail even more each year. About one hundred years ago, the situation
was much worse than now, describes Elizabeth Stanton in her “Declaration of
sentiments”, but then it radically changed with women’s suffrage in 1919. Less
than ninety years ago, it was a first step in the new history of Womankind. The
next step should be taken now.
Works cited
Angier, Natalie. “Men, women, sex and
Darwin”. The
Brady, Judy. “I want a wife”. The
Coontz, Stephanie. “Blaming the family for
economic decline”. The
Mead, Rebecca. “Eggs for sale”. The
Quindlen, Anna. “Uncle Sam and aunt
Samantha”. The
Stanton,
Waring, Marilyn. Counting for nothing:
What men value and what women are worth.