When you think of the communist Soviet Union, what do you think of? The gulags? The bread lines? The corruption? If you answer that question with “the gender equality,” you might be President Joe Biden’s Comptroller of the Currency. The comptroller has the job of regulating national banks, so a keen insight into monetary policy seems like it would be a prerequisite. However, Biden nominated Saule Omarova for this position with full knowledge that in 2019 she posted a tweet that reads, “Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’”
Omarova was born and raised in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, which is present-day Kazakhstan. After that, she went to Moscow State University on a scholarship called the “Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship” before coming to the United States. One would think that her firsthand knowledge about communism would make her its biggest detractor. Instead, she thinks communism should be praised for treating women just as poorly as it treated men.
Phyllis Schlafly was an expert on both feminism and communism, so no American knew more about this than she did. Certainly, women in the Soviet Union made the same amount of money as men, but they were also forced out of their homes and into the workforce just like men. Also like men, Russian women did not get to choose whether they took on a job in an air-conditioned office or a job collecting trash. All of their rights to make economic decisions were stripped away as communist principles demand. To say that these women were somehow better off than American women who have the choices that come with the free market is positively laughable.
The earnings gap is nothing more than a feminist talking point, not a fact found in economic science. On average, men bring in more money than women because they work more hours and take jobs in different fields. Women often choose to prioritize family, and I honor their right to make that choice. True worth is not a dollar amount.
