Working women no longer exist in the eyes of the Bush administration.

I knew things would get bad, but not quite this bad. The Department of Labor (DOL) has announced that as of 2005, it will discontinue researching information on women.

Yeah, you heard me right. No more stats on how women fare in the workplace. And where did I find this insanely vital piece of info? Not someplace widely publicized, that's for damn sure. The DOL apparently thinks a two sentence mini-release on their website is sufficient to explain the exemption of women from labor research:

Following the release of preliminary December 2004 data in February 2005, estimates for women workers will no longer be produced by the Current Employment Statistics program (establishment survey) in an effort to reduce respondent burden.

Data for women workers and other demographic information related to employment from the Current Population Survey will continue to be available at http://www.bls.gov/cps/. (emphasis added)

Reduce respondent burden?

The "respondents," meaning businesses, will still have to provide stats concerning the race and age of workers, so is providing gender info really that much of a fucking "burden?"

I guess this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise considering the Bush administration's past attempts to shut down the DOL's Women's Bureau and remove information concerning women from government websites.

But completely disregarding working women? You have to wonder what's going to be next...