Writing for The Times, Angela Merkel has kindly explained what the G7 is actually for. An explanation was sorely needed because some cynics have expressed doubts that these occasional get-togethers actually serve a useful purpose.
Turns out they do, and Angie explained what’s what with her usual, and usually earnest, lucidity. The mission the G7 has undertaken is to make sure that every woman in the world is in gainful and equitable employment.
One would think it’s not immediately clear how, say, Germany and France or even the almighty United States can ensure that every wife of some aboriginal sultan goes to an office every morning, rather than serving her lord and master. Or, if she does go to the office, that she is treated as fairly as her male colleagues.
Come to think of it, her hubby-wubby the sultan could possibly achieve this end more quickly and effectively, if ever so slightly more violently.
But Angie’s faith in the omnipotence of international organisations is boundless, and she knows what she’s talking about. So I’ll let her speak for herself, with my comments enclosed in square brackets.
“In talking about work, we also need to talk about the possibilities open to women around the world to establish their independence and ensure their advancement through safe and skilled labour.”
[By way of illustration here’s one hypothetical example of a woman who did just that. At first her ‘safe and skilled labour’ was vouchsafed to the East German Young Communist League, in which she advanced to a nomenklatura position. That involved working hand in glove with Stasi, but that was the way of opening the possibilities.
Then, when neither East Germany nor Stasi was any more, the hypothetical woman’s safe and skilled labour was rerouted into West German, and eventually international, politics. In that arena she advanced as far as it’s possible to go without an unstoppable panzer force.
Of course, family life had to be sacrificed to the safe and skilled labour. Our hypothetical woman was rather tasty, as anyone who has seen her youthful nude shots on the net can testify. Hence she had no difficulty attracting men, with or without the benefit of marriage. But in both her marriages she clearly couldn’t find time to produce children. After all, birth labour is neither safe nor skilled.]
“All the statistics show a reduction in poverty and inequality when more women play an active part in economic life.”
[No doubt. But do the statistics also show who brings up the children of, say, a successful woman lawyer working 90-hour weeks, when she’s not particularly busy? How much moral, spiritual and cultural guidance is she able to offer her offspring?
Statistics, you see, show all sorts of things. For example, in Western countries, where most women work, over six million abortions have been performed since 2008. This stands to reason: children tend to make safe and skilled labour a bit more difficult.]
“However, only about 50 per cent of all women are currently in gainful employment.”
[What a tragedy. But how about the children of working women who aren’t successful lawyers and therefore can’t afford nannies? Who’s going to look after them?
Marx, Angie’s countryman, gave an unequivocal, and the only logical, answer: the state. His prescription was that children should be taken away from their mothers and raised as wards of the state. Is this the ideal Angie sees in her mind’s eye? After all, she was intellectually weaned on Marxism.]
“Worse still, in many developing countries the vast majority of those women who do work are employed under precarious or informal arrangements.”
[How about the men in those same countries? Do they all draw their expense accounts in air-conditioned offices? Or do they do the kind of back-breaking, lung-blackening, blood-poisoning jobs that denizens of G7 countries will no longer do? Angie is a great champion of globalisation based on outsourcing, which turns ‘developing countries’ into vast suppliers of cheap, and often slave, labour – not the safe and skilled variety.]
“The G7 therefore wants to aim to give more girls and women in developing countries the chance of vocational training.”
[How? By conquering those countries and replacing their governments? Presumably not. I get it: Angie wants G7 members to spend more on foreign aid, even though most of it is guaranteed to end up in the Swiss bank accounts of the aboriginal sultans.
Never mind that there’s a vast dearth of usable vocational training in the G7 countries themselves, regardless of the sex of those in need of such education. Angie is dead-set on making sure that those developing ‘girls and women’ cherish the myth of safe and skilled labour, while ignoring the reality of their children opting for short but rewarding careers as suicide bombers.]
One hates to generalise, but the propensity to hector others on how they should live isn’t very low on the list of salient German characteristics. Add to this national trait Angie’s personal attainment in bossy demagoguery, and what do you get?
A perfect Times article.