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Jared Whitley
Utah is the best-run state in America — at least according to a holistic, top-to-bottom evaluation by US News and World Report released in May. We top the charts in almost every metric, including economy (No. 1), fiscal stability (No. 1), infrastructure (No. 4) education (No. 5) and health care (No. 7).
Theirs isn’t the only study that recognizes our achievements. Utah keeps garnering plaudits, whether it’s Bloomberg saying that we keep the American dream alive, The Economist saying Latter-day Saint culture is good for the economy or Gallup saying that Utah is just the best place to live. Our state boasts so many superlatives I even wrote a whole piece about it in December.
And now we get to add one more: we’re the worst for gender equality.
At least that’s according to WalletHub, which synthesized its diagnosis from a variety of governmental and other sources. They say we’re at or near the bottom for political empowerment, income disparity and educational outcomes.
Woe-is-me studies about modern, Western women are not uncommon these days, most of them ignoring that the current generation of women are the most empowered in human history — at least in North America and Western Europe. Life here for ladies is a little different than in, say, China, where sexually harassed girls get victim blamed or the nightmare of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Indeed, Western women are more likely than men to graduate college, own property and live longer. WalletHub and others left those facts out — because admitting success does not incite transformative action.
The WalletHub study ranked Utah at 50th in “Education and health,” with very few details about what that actually means. A different study found Utah’s post-high school educational rates are the third-best in the country.
On education, the math about women in education is always a bit fuzzy. Meanwhile, there’s a paradox that the more gender equality a society achieves, the fewer women go into STEM. Muslim countries produce the highest rates of female scientists while giving out gender-equality awards only to men.
Frequently, rankings about female health are really just evaluations of abortion access, and funded in one way or another by groups that profit from abortion. Trying to put together an actual picture of sex-based health is more complicated. The World Health Organization found Utah is the eighth best in the U.S. for prenatal care, fifth best for breast cancer and absolute lowest for cancer deaths.
Oh, and LDS women live five years longer than other women on average.
Meanwhile, where actual, concrete metrics about health are concerned, most gender inequality studies ignore the brutal reality many men face. We’re much more likely to be a victim of a violent crime, get killed at work, become homeless, commit suicide and even get struck by lightning.
Gender studies also ignore that all this progress is making everyone miserable: depression rates have skyrocketed, especially among women. The one group inured against all this progressive pain is conservative women, the happiest segment of society.
Maybe conservative women have figured out the controversial truth that “fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.”
Meanwhile, selling a generation of women on the myth of childless happiness has created — unsurprisingly — a childless generation. Birth rates worldwide have reach catastrophically low levels, with even Utah now below replacement levels. “Equality” advocates who promise that we can “make progress” if we give them more attention (and money) have brought society on the path to extinction.
Gender “progress” isn’t progress. It’s suicide with extra steps.
Evolutionary biology doesn’t care about manipulative definitions of “fairness” — it only cares about survival of the fittest. And survival is very, very sexist. Well-behaved women rarely create history … because they’re too busy creating the future.
Utah is the best-run state in America. Earlier this year, Provo was called the fifth best-run city in America by — surprise, surprise — WalletHub, the same group calling us horrible. And success does not incite transformative action.
So please, save your progress for somewhere else — we’d rather survive.
Jared Whitley is an award-winning columnist and longtime politico, having worked in the U.S. Senate, White House and defense industry.
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