Modern tax policy including the social security system reinforces the patriarchy and disproportionately negatively impacts women
Murti 21 – (Kat Murti is a libertarian, feminist, and activist, working to make the world a better, freer place, one day at a time. She is the co-founder and executive director of Feminists for Liberty, an anti-statist and anti-sexist organization that promotes gender equality without abandoning classically liberal ideas.) 5-3-21, “HOW GOVERNMENT CODIFIED PATRIARCHY”, America’s Future, https://americasfuture.org/how-government-codified-patriarchy/ //mish
Even today many supposedly gender neutral policies disproportionately negatively impact women. The widely-used system of joint filing taxes was instituted in 1948 to incentivize women who had joined the workforce during World War II to relinquish their jobs to returning soldiers and go back to homemaking instead. Despite the normalization of dual income households over time, modern tax policy continues to push married women at virtually every income level to work fewer hours than they otherwise would, or to stay out of the labor force entirely—a major contributing factor to the gender pay gap. The Social Security system is similarly structured to reward women who stay home rather than those who work, and working women who are married may find themselves paying the full 12.4% Social Security tax without collecting any more benefits than married women who don’t work. Throughout American history, many of the major wins for feminism have involved women gaining access to markets and then using that access to push for further equality and acknowledgement of their individual and civil rights. Women benefit—not just financially, but in all facets of their lives—from having the freedom to work, choose their professions, start businesses, own property, and the like with minimal state interference. According to the Economic Freedom of the World report, co‐published annually by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and more than 70 free market think tanks around the world, “the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions is key to economic and social progress.” In 2017, when the report began accounting for disparities in economic liberty granted to men and to women, 20 countries fell notably in the rankings, indicating that in many countries, there’s still significant progress to be made. The shameful legal and cultural history of patriarchal policies like coverture continue to reverberate in America today, and the more roadblocks to economic liberty are put in place, the more sexism women will continue to face.