America is in the midst of an unemployment crisis, and women are bearing the brunt of the problem.  The number of women out of work is the highest it has been in 25 years.  On top of this, employment levels for women are down 2.9% since the beginning of the recession.

Many women are finding it increasingly difficult to find work, with one study revealing that the actual number of women employed in the United States in May 2012 was about 83,000 lower than it was in January 2009.

While women have made huge strides in joining the workforce over the past several decades, the recession of the past four years is threatening to erode those gains.

Please share this infographic if you believe that we need to implement pro-growth economic policies that help create good paying jobs for American women! (For a full size version of this infographic, click here, or click the graphic above.)

Nearly all Americans have been hard hit by the recession, but women have been hit the hardest. A shocking 17 million women are now in poverty on President Obama’s watch, and almost 7.5 million women are in extreme poverty.

And reports of financial woes continue to rise. According to one study, 84% of women experience difficulty paying a bill on time, and 75% are having trouble making their rent or mortgage.

Share this infographic if you agree that it is time for our elected officials to recognize the real economic hardships American women are facing instead of propagating their false version of the “War on Women.”  (For a full-size version of this infographic, click here or on the graphic above.)

President Obama promised us that his health care reform would lower costs for women, but in reality, the law raises insurance premiums by $900 per year and imposes 21 new or higher taxes, increasing health care spending by 6.1%!

Everyone agrees that our health care system is broken, but President Obama’s health care law is just not the solution we need.

Share this infographic if you believe American women deserve real reform that reduces costs and increases the quality of American health care.  (For a full-size version of this infographic, click here.)

Millions of American girls dream of going to college. And now-a-days, that dream is a reality for the 15 million women in college. However, the cost of college has increased by thousands of dollars each year, and as women outnumber men in college, they are feeling the brunt of these tuition hikes.

President Obama’s “student loan relief” plan promised hope, but it’s turned out to be an election-year mirage that doesn’t even attempt to tackle the real problem of soaring tuition costs, not to mention helping the millions of recent graduates who are unable to find work in the dismal economy of the last four years.

Instead of President Obama’s current policies — we need sound, free-market solutions that will create jobs for college graduates and lower the cost of college for women and men.

Share this infographic if you want to see America’s college graduates find good-paying jobs when they graduate! (For a full-size image, click the one above.)

Recently, President Obama and fellow Democrats have been accusing conservatives of waging a “war on women.” Well here’s the funny thing, there really is a war on women going on — and it’s called the economy of the past four years.

To bring this stark fact to life, we have created seven different graphics showing how the current economic malaise is hurting women.

We’ll release one graphic a day for the rest of the week, starting today: Under President Obama there are 780,000 more unemployed women, an increase of eight percent.

To turn our economy around, we must support elected officials who will oppose job-killing regulations and wasteful government spending, and instead implement pro-growth economic policies that will create good-paying jobs for American women and men.

Please take a minute to share today’s graphic with your friends and family to help spread the word about the REAL war on women.  (The full-size version is available by clicking the graphic above.)

Many were shocked when President Obama said to an audience in Roanoke, Virginia this Sunday that, “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” But why the surprise? Didn’t the Obama campaign already show its opposition to individual success when it unveiled “Julia,” a picture presentation of how women are better off thanks to President Obama’s policies.

In a slideshow spanning her whole lifetime, Julia comes off less as a successful woman than as a poster child for big government bureaucrats who’d rather have a say in who succeeds and who fails. For every part of her life, there’s no question that someone else makes things happen.

It’s an insult to women everywhere. The campaign stands by their story line. The question is: why does the Obama campaign paint every American with the same brush? Does he think we’re all equally in need of his assistance?

So here’s a little story about the time I blushed, well, fifty shades of red.  You can’t miss the smash hit, Fifty Shades of Grey.  You see women reading it on every bus, subway, and in every hair salon.  So what’s a girl to do?  Read the book to see what all the hype is about, right?  Sure, I thought.  So I flipped through a couple of pages to check it out.

Yeah.  Instant regret.

Two pages in, I had to put the book down and ask God for forgiveness!  Talk about “mommy porn.”  I thought books like this were only found in some women’s homes on a hidden book shelf next to covers of Fabio, a horse, and some buxom beauty. Put a glossy new cover on it, and it’s a best seller?

American women are in dire straits. Our country’s national debt is sky rocketing; women account for 92% of the jobs lost under this administration, and our children’s and parents’ health care is in dire jeopardy of being run by Washington bureaucrats obsessed with taking away our right to “shop” for this commodity.  It’s no wonder women need an escape, but while Fifty Shades of Grey may seem like a simple “escape” from the real world, it’s more like jumping from the frying pan into a nuclear reactor.

And what’s it going to get us?  Nothing.  It’s erotica, sexually themed fantasy, quasi-intellectual word candy that’ll rot our brains … and maybe our souls.

Christian women, we need to wake up!  This country needs us. It needs our passion, our intensity, our desire to defend ourselves and our families.  It needs the $22.50 we spent on “Fifty Shades of Grey” to be invested in a cause or campaign in which we believe (click here for a good place to start).

But women everywhere are politically and spiritually asleep, lulled into a cultural obsession with Christian Grey, an abusive therapist who seduces a college senior.  And some men are even buying it on the advice of women as a lesson book for what women like.  I recently heard a male bus driver say he wants to get this book on audio!  (I’ll bet you do, ya perv!)

Is this what we’ve come to: Women — Christian women — flocking to bookstores in droves to buy morally reprehensible tripe?

Why are we falling headlong into this grey area, where Hollywood tells us that all we should care about is stepping outside of reality and filling our heads with hormone-driven daydreams of men to whom we are not married?

Do you remember being afraid of the dark as a child?  (Ninety degree turn, I know.  But stay with me.)  Do you remember the day you stopped being afraid?  It was probably when you learned that darkness is simply the absence of light.  Have you thought about that?  While we can study light, we can’t study darkness.  Why not?  Well, how do you measure how dark a room is?  You measure the amount of light present.

Now let that sink in for a moment. What in your life is dark? What is light? We can only measure darkness in our lives by looking at how much light is in it.

And somewhere, in this struggle between light and dark, we have the annoying issue of “grey,” that fuzzy middle ground in which we find such a false refuge from condemnation, but which in reality God hates so very much.  And we need to ask ourselves, “What is grey for me? Facebook? The music I listen to? The movies? What about the books I read? What about Christian Grey?”

Sisters and fellow Christians, if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that Fifty Shades of Grey is merely a pornographic pleasure for our minds, and, as we know, the Bible commands us to guard our hearts, for everything we do will flow from it (Proverbs 4:23).  By investing our energy in smut, we are tearing down these walls of protection around our hearts.

The Lord has given us a clear, black-and-white example of true love.  The images that are depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey are full of lust and give a false perspective on how men and women should present themselves.

While Christians are still to be a part of the world, we must not conform to its patterns. Anne Frank once said, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” Ironically, sometimes we have to be that candle. Let us choose to defy and define darkness in our lives. It just may shine light on a grey area in your life and maybe in the life of another.

Let us resolve to keep our eyes, our money, and our time away from morally questionable pursuits, and, instead, let us focus on the God of true love, who is fifty shades of great.  Let those of us who are single resolve to wait for a man who knows our value is not in how much you can service him, but how much we can serve the Lord.  Let us wait for a man who knows that true love is black and white, not shades of grey.

Today’s guest blogger is actually two women. This piece was authored by Alison Howard, Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Executive Assistant to the CEO, and Amy Clemenson, an intern with CWA’s Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program.

The hoopla surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision was nothing less than expected.  Passions were bound to run high on both sides of the issue.  It was expected that some would be celebrating while others would be disappointed.  What was shocking and completely inexcusable was a tweet by the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Patrick Gaspard, just after the decision was announced: “It’s constitutional. bi – - – - es.”

Yet, this comment got nary a word in the media.  Contrast that with the media’s complete pillaging (rightly so) of talk show host Rush Limbaugh.  On February 29, Rush made his comment about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law student, being a “slut.”  Three weeks later, that story still had legs, despite Rush’s apology.

After Rush’s comment about Sandra Fluke, the National Organization for Woman called for Clear Channel to take him off the air.  President Obama personally called Sandra Fluke to give her a boost, and White House spokesman Jay Carney called Limbaugh’s remarks “reprehensible and inappropriate.” He added, “It is disappointing those kinds of personal and crude attacks could be leveled against someone like this young law-school student who was simply expressing her opinion on a matter of public policy, and doing so with a great deal of poise.”

Strangely, after Patrick’s tweet, President Obama remained as quiet as a church mouse, especially since Patrick is not just any staffer.  He is the executive director of the Democratic National Committee and former Director of the Office of Political Affairs (the same position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). According to the DNC’s own website, its purpose is to work to elect Democrats at all levels of government and to help enact the president’s agenda.

And, what about the Democrat women in Congress who were extremely vocal in their reaction to Rush’s comment?  Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) said, “If the far right can attack people like Sandra Fluke, women are going to be afraid to speak because they’re going to be called terrible words.” Does she think the same about Patrick’s comment?  No one knows for sure, because she hasn’t made any public statements criticizing him.

According to Democrat Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), “Rush called her a slut. A slut. And now I’m sorry, I know he apologized, but forgive me if I doubt his sincerity given that he lost at least six advertisers. And the bottom line is that the leading candidate on the Republican side for president couldn’t even bring himself to call Rush Limbaugh’s comments outrageous and call him out and ask him to apologize.”

Yet her only reaction to Patrick Gaspard’s tweet according to an article in the Washington Times was to tell the reporter to “have a nice day.”  Where is the outrage?  The silence is deafening!   It’s a tad hypocritical that not one of these women leaders in the House has called for Patrick’s resignation yet they demanded Rush be kicked off the airwaves.  The so-called “war on women” only exists in these Democrats’ minds when it’s a politically expedient tool to use to bludgeon Republicans.

As women, we cannot condone derogatory remarks like those made by Rush and Patrick from either Republicans or Democrats.  It is not wrong to be passionate and to argue zealously for a particular issue.  However, insults have no place in the public forum.  Women leaders should quickly condemn all offensive statements regardless of whether the messenger is conservative or liberal.  By picking and choosing which women can be denigrated, women will never be fully respected, and votes on so-called women’s issues like the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Violence Against Women Act will continue to be coarse jokes in the halls of Congress.

Are American women — and some men, too — turning to Jane Austen for dating advice? If the spate of books recently released or coming out soon is any indication, the answer is “Yes.”

A recent Time article lists three of these books and summed up the necessity of the quest: “We’re no longer content to watch fictional characters find true love: we want Jane Austen to help us out, too.”

Perhaps the need for advice comes from our lack of relationship rules and structure in today’s society. If “reality” television accurately portrays today’s dating scene, morality is irrelevant and an “anything goes” attitude is prevalent.  Does that lack of values lead to compatibility, security, and commitment? (Hint: No, it doesn’t.)

The Washington Post runs a weekly column in their Sunday magazine called “Date Lab.” It is almost the same story each week: two people who were matched through the Post’s database of applicants go on a blind date; upon seeing the other person they each usually tell the interviewer the person isn’t their normal type but are cute/good-looking; the couple talks for several hours, finding common interests and experiences; the two usually remark separately that time flew by, they had a good time, rate the date pretty high and then say, “but there was no chemistry,” or “I didn’t feel a spark.” That’s the end of the story, on to the next date.

Jane Austen’s novels would be a pretty quick read if the characters based their future prospects on their initial reaction to someone. Judging compatibility after only one meeting would not have led to Mr. Darcy marrying Elizabeth Bennet. Almost 200 years after its publication, Pride and Prejudice still has women dreaming of finding their own Mr. Darcy, but they won’t find him if they follow current dating trends.

And that is perhaps because they are going out (sometimes not even on a “date,” just a “hook-up” with no supposed strings attached) without getting to know each other, much less view the other person or evaluate the other as a prospect for marriage. When a couple views each other as a potential life-long mate and companion, their perspective is necessarily deeper and more thoughtful than merely judging on appearance. Obviously, such deeper considerations are in stark contrast to couples eyeing each other only for a casual sexual encounter.

As I say in my new book, Marriage Matters, the truth is simple. To love deeply and with greater enthusiasm, we must be highly discriminating about our relationships with the opposite sex.

That’s a lesson that Jane Austen taught 200 years ago — and it is still useful today.