The feminist revolution, as it relates to women, has roots at least in the 19th century, but gathered noticeable momentum in developed countries with the civil rights movement of the 1960s near the beginning of the information age, leveling the differences between men and women, transforming the basis of their relationships from hierarchy and power to equality and mutual self-serving cooperation. This leveling of hierarchy and decentralization of authority is a corollary characteristic of the diametric reorientation in society’s adolescent restructuring, we will find. Household appliances liberated women from housework, while education and career opportunities opened the outside world to them. Garry Becker[1] observed that before the feminist revolution, men and women were locked into their respective traditional roles by economic necessity. Women needed men to bring in an income and men needed women in order to maintain the home. But now both men and women earn incomes and take care of the home and the leveling of economic differences has undermined stereotypical gender roles, with the result that domestic relationships are chosen more freely and single parents families, sequential marriages, and shared family units have become more the rule than the exception. The equalizing of men and women with respect to money, knowledge, power and responsibility diametrically reorients gender roles, and all at once restructures a sizeable portion of human relationships. The equalization is far from complete, but the direction and irreversibility of the trend are apparent. Hanna Rosin, in “the end of Men and the Rise of Woiman”, 2012, argues that women are already ahead, not only educationally but increasingly professionally and socially, at least in America, where societal evolution’s leading edge can be placed.
The Great Feminization, Helen Andrews : https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/ “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.Other writers who have proposed their own versions of the Great Feminization thesis, such as Noah Carl or Bo Winegard and Cory Clark, who looked at feminization’s effects on academia, offer survey data showing sex differences in political values. One survey, for example, found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite….
he Great Feminization is truly unprecedented. Other civilizations have given women the vote, granted them property rights, or let them inherit the thrones of empires. No civilization in human history has ever experimented with letting women control so many vital institutions of our society, from political parties to universities to our largest businesses. Even where women do not hold the top spots, women set the tone in these organizations, such that a male CEO must operate within the limits set by his human resources VP. We assume that these institutions will continue to function under these completely novel circumstances. But what are our grounds for that assumption?
he Great Feminization is truly unprecedented. Other civilizations have given women the vote, granted them property rights, or let them inherit the thrones of empires. No civilization in human history has ever experimented with letting women control so many vital institutions of our society, from political parties to universities to our largest businesses. Even where women do not hold the top spots, women set the tone in these organizations, such that a male CEO must operate within the limits set by his human resources VP. We assume that these institutions will continue to function under these completely novel circumstances. But what are our grounds for that assumption?…
A lot can be inferred from the way that feminization tends to increase over time. Once institutions reach a 50–50 split, they tend to blow past gender parity and become more and more female. Since 2016, law schools have gotten a little bit more female every year; in 2024, they were 56 percent female. Psychology, once a predominantly male field, is now overwhelmingly female, with 75 percent of psychology doctorates going to women. Institutions seem to have a tipping point, after which they become more and more feminized.
That does not look like women outperforming men. It looks like women driving men away by imposing feminine norms on previously male institutions. What man wants to work in a field where his traits are not welcome? What self-respecting male graduate student would pursue a career in academia when his peers will ostracize him for stating his disagreements too bluntly or espousing a controversial opinion?…
I was apprehensive about putting forward the Great Feminization thesis in such a public forum. It is still controversial, even in conservative circles, to say that there are too many women in a given field or that women in large numbers can transform institutions beyond recognition in ways that make them cease to function well. “
Gary Becker, in “A Theory of Marriage” (1973), argued that up until around the 1950s economic necessity dictated that in typical domestic partnerships the woman ran the home and the man brought in the money, but that this necessity then began to fade away. Gender relationships began to shift away from a hierarchical patriarchy in the direction of parity.
[1] Becker, Garry, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)’
Masculine qualities: stoicism, competitiveness, aggression, vs feminine qualities: intuitive, creative, compassionate, nurturing, cooperative, communicative, sensitive, caring.
Is there a crisis of masculinity? Do worries over masculinity obscure real problems for men? Economist, 051223 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/10/excerpt-from-career-and-family-by-claudia-goldin/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Gazette%2020231018%20(1)
“It is open to men to debate whether economic progress is good for men or not, but for women to debate the desirability of economic growth is to debate whether women should have the chance to cease to be beasts of burden, and to join the human race.” W. Arthur Lewis, The Theory of Economic Growth (1955)
“Gender equality and economic development share a synchronous existence. Gender equality is a spur to economic development, particularly where the well-being of children is concerned, and economic development, as the head-note graphically suggests, fosters gender equality.” Claudia Golden, “The U-Shaped Female Labor Force Function in Economic Development and Economic History”, xxxx