Ah, 1930. Mickey Mouse first appeared in newspapers. Betty Boop and “Looney Toons” appeared on screen for the first time. The Great Depression launched late the previous year was gearing up to bring economic woe to America and most of the world for another decade.
Does any of that make you nostalgic? Well, your president is here to help: Joe Biden brings enough cartoonish behavior to the White House to satisfy any fan of Bugs and Daffy, and while his administration’s easy-money policies may not (yet) have ushered in a new recession, he’s clearly all over the whole economic malaise thing.
Women, however, might be feeling like this administration’s policies have indeed propelled them back to 1930.
In 2022, women are having trouble getting their hands on tampons and related products. Ninety-two years ago, in 1930, they had a similar problem — because the modern tampon hadn’t been invented yet.
Of course, it could be worse, right? Women could feel thrust back to, say, the pre-Civil War era, before baby formula was invented in the mid-19th century.
Oh, wait. Maybe it is worse.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden devoted an entire page — and not a short one — of his website to “The Biden Agenda for Women.”
The 11,000-word screed is pretty much what you’d expect. It’s long on promises that Biden has not kept, including some that are impossible on the face of them, and short on details.
Nowhere in his discursive vow to “further women’s economic and physical security and ensure that women can fully exercise their civil rights” does Biden mention anything about returning American women to the days of yore they longed for, i.e., the Great Depression or the Civil War. In fact, most of his discourse sounds positively forward-looking.
Has Biden made life better for American women?
Let’s take his five main points in order.
His first promise was to “improve economic security” in part by “fighting for equal pay.” Yet being unable to go to work due either to a lack of food for a young child — which means Mom may have to stay home to nurse — or inadequate personal care product availability doesn’t sound like it’s improving anything. The effect, one would assume, is exactly the opposite of the promise.
Moreover, when women can find these products at all, prices are up because supply is down. That’s how the market works. One Reddit user quoted by CNN said, “I’ve been ordering my tampons on Amazon and have been getting price gouged.”
“The fact that women will keep trying to find tampons, even if the shelves are empty and prices are rising, has allowed companies to increase the prices of feminine care products,” Time reported.
“Procter & Gamble said in April 2021 that it would increase prices on baby care, feminine care, and adult incontinence products. Then, in April of this year, it said it would again raise prices on its feminine care products. P&G posted its biggest sales gain in decades in the most recent quarter, and the amount of money it made from sales in its feminine care division was up 10%.”
So, under Biden, women find it more difficult to work and more difficult to pay for what they need to go to work. That’s the Joe Biden definition of “economic security,” apparently.
Second, Biden promised to “expand access to health care and tackle health inequities,” because it was 2020 and no Democrat can hope to get elected in this country without claiming to believe that health care access is inadequate and that he knows how to fix it.
Does Biden not consider period products health care? I guess he mustn’t, even though the FDA has designated them Class II medical devices. (The regulations regarding the production of Class II devices have contributed to their shortage, Time suggested.)
Next, he promised to “help women navigate work and families.” I guess not going to work at all makes it easier to navigate, right? And if you’re staying home from work, you get more time with your young children — your very hungry young children, maybe, but at least you’re home with them.
Fourth, Biden promised — and I swear that this is an accurate quotation — to “end violence against women.”
This has nothing to do with tampons or baby formula, but, gee, I feel like we should have done this a long time ago. Biden knows how to end violence against women but kept it secret for the 40 years he spent in public office prior to 2020? That’s just inexcusable.
Finally, Biden’s fifth promise was to “protect and empower women around the world.”
Yeah, great — protected from everything but starving children, discomfort and stained clothing. Awesome job there, Mr. President.
No one seems to be talking about how Biden’s “protection” of the American people through his administration’s mask mandates — which even The New York Times now admits protected no one — used up an awful lot of the cotton and other raw materials needed to make, you guessed it, tampons and other feminine products.
So this shortage isn’t just a problem the Biden administration hasn’t fixed yet — like the formula shortage, it’s a problem the Biden administration caused.
And the Biden administration won’t fix it. The best the government can do in this case is get out of the way and let the market solve the supply chain issues, which it always does in time if left alone.
In the meantime, I guess women forced to stay home by the effects of Biden’s policies can party — like it’s 1929.
