Today President Obama addresses the graduating class of Barnard, the distinguished women's college, at their commencement. I wonder if he will be honest about the dire economic future they face. In this election year, the president's supporters have tried to use the concerns of women as political wedge issues. This divisive and inflammatory approach not only ill-serves the American people; it puts women at a particular, and potentially devastating, disadvantage. It deliberately ignores the issue that poses the gravest threat to their well-being, now and in the future: a weak, dysfunctional economy that is headed straight over a fiscal cliff as of 2013.

Women have suffered in the job market of the past four years. Fewer of them are employed today than when President Obama first took office. Of the 572,000 jobs lost since his inauguration, 567,000 were held by women. Millions of women struggle to find work, while others have given up looking altogether. And Americans who do have jobs are working harder and getting paid less for it. The human toll of the weak economy is alarming. Last year, the poverty rate among women was the highest in 17 years, and more women than men are living in poverty.

Adding to the miseries of shrinking or disappearing paychecks, the cost of living and doing business in our Hudson Valley becomes ever harder to bear. One conspicuous example: the 2010 health law has resulted in a significant increase in premiums for health insurance, which is disproportionately difficult for small businesses to afford. The large number of women who choose to run their own small businesses, so that they can better balance work with family life, have been done no favor by this misguided attempt to let the federal government run their health care.

Read more here:  http://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/14/the_ultimate_wom...