Romney has been fighting back over the Democratic charge that Republicans are engaging in a “war on women.”
“The real war on women has been waged by the Obama administration’s failure on the economy,” Romney said at a town-hall meeting in Delaware in April.
The Romney campaign has sent out e-mails highlighting how women and families have suffered in the Obama economy – everything from jobs lost to homes foreclosed upon to the doubling of the price of gas since Obama’s inauguration.
In April, the nonpartisan FactCheck.org asked the Romney campaign to state specifically which Obama policies amounted to a “war on women.” Ms. Saul, the campaign spokeswoman, responded:
“While women were losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands, President Obama chose to focus on an agenda of more taxes, more regulations, and more expensive energy that only made our economy weaker,” Ms. Saul said.
“When Obamacare discourages employers from hiring and raises taxes on innovative medical companies, women are hurt. When Dodd-Frank [financial reform] prevents banks from making loans to small businesses, women are hurt. When EPA regulations drive up electricity prices and the Department of Interior prevents oil drilling, women are hurt.”
FactCheck.org also investigated a frequent Romney assertion that “over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women.” It’s true, the group found, that between January 2009 and March 2012, there has been a net decline of 740,000 jobs total, and a net loss of 693,000 jobs among women. But that’s selective use of statistics. Men actually took a bigger hit than women, with the decline in jobs for men beginning much earlier, FactCheck finds.
The bottom line is that women have suffered under Obama in the employment market, especially in the loss of public-sector jobs, which are disproportionately held by women. And if job growth continues to be sluggish heading into Election Day, all Obama’s policies aimed at women may not be enough to save his own job.
