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Speaking at the Women's Leadership Forum last year, President Barack Obama said, "The economy as a whole has an enormous impact on women and everything that women are doing to hold families together during extraordinarily rough times." While he argued that his administration was "making some progress" in addressing the barriers women face, he acknowledged, "we've still got a long way to go."

Now, here we are, 3 1/2 years into Obama's administration, and we still have quite a way to go. Unfortunately, in spite of his continued platitudes, the president's rhetoric doesn't square with the grim realities women face across the country every day.

The numbers speak for themselves. Under Obama, the unemployment rate for women has jumped from 7% when he took office in January 2009 to its current level of 8%. The latest jobs report shows that a whopping 5,785,000 women were unemployed in June 2012, a significant increase from 5,005,000 when Obama assumed the presidency. Call it what you like, but that's not progress.

These statistics represent more than numbers. They are women struggling to find jobs and to keep their homes. They are women scraping together just enough spare change to buy their child a birthday present. For these women, work-life balance is little more than an oxymoron. In every way, their lives feel unbalanced.

It doesn't matter if these women are small-business owners, factory workers or receptionists. In the Obama economy, the middle class is being squeezed, and women disproportionately bear the burden.

Even in the face of these facts, however, Obama believes that the private sector is "doing fine." But that's only because his friends and political allies function in a completely different reality.

For them, the economy isn't doing just fine - it's booming. They know that the key to success in the Obama economy is simple: You just need to know the right people. The president's major campaign contributors have been copiously rewarded, cashing in to the tune of billions in taxpayer dollars.

But it seems he's conveniently forgotten the middle-class Americans who continue to suffer under the weight of his administration's anti-business policies.

Indeed, at a recent campaign rally, Obama took his latest rhetorical swipe at the free enterprise system. "If you've got a business," he said, "you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Perhaps that statement is true of the president's cronies, whose companies have profited from government giveaways. But for the rest of America - and especially for women juggling work and family - it's insulting.

What's more, Obama's policy of picking winners and losers may be a way of keeping donors happy, but it's not a strategy for moving this economy "Forward," as he so often suggests. It's not a solution to the 23 million Americans who are looking for full-time employment. It's not relief for the families losing their homes to foreclosure.

Obama has had his chance to lead, and he has failed. Four more years of the same policies won't bring about a different result.

Rebecca Kleefisch is Wisconsin's lieutenant governor.