The Familists organization, which lobbies for strengthening traditional family values, took issue Sunday with the demand by the Women's Lobby that the National Insurance Institute (Bituach Leumi) break down its poverty statistics by gender. The Familists said the demand is "based on a perception without any scientific basis that women are somehow like 'a separate nation' within the population, and that this group is suppressed by men."
They said that it is very common for families in which the man earns more money than the woman to spend more of that money on the woman than on the man, thus rendering moot the Women's Lobby claim of "female poverty" based on the sexes' relative average earning power. The group added that "in real life, marriage is based on love and the unification of two individuals into 'one flesh,' in accordance with Torah spirit, and not on the endless competition that typifies 'gender studies' thought."
The Familists pointed out that the Women's Lobby is a non-elected private organization and that "gender studies" programs in universities are bases of the extreme Left that fight to weaken the nuclear family.