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More Feminist Myths

Summary:
It’s quite straightforward: gender quality is an article of faith of modern Third Wave Feminism, and so is the cult-like demand for all professions to be 50% male and 50% female.Of course, we all know that the feminist fanatics strangely do not seem to be demanding gender equality in trades like construction workers, garbage collectors, deep sea fishermen, mechanics, etc., because these trades are dirty, difficult and sometimes dangerous, and most women – generally speaking – have neither the type of bodily strength nor interest to do such work.But, at the same time, there are plenty of professions largely dominated by women, for example, secretaries, administrative assistants, housekeepers, house cleaners, flight attendants, nurses, receptionists, or workers in women’s beauty salons (e.g., see here).So would we really want these latter professions to be 50% men as well? The answer is: no, the very idea is stupid and unrealistic. The reason? It’s simple male psychology: most men would find such work demeaning, humiliating, emasculating, and devaluing them as men. The modern feminist cult of gender equality can’t realistically work here, even if some minority of men do work in these professions and don’t mind the work (and I am not trying to bash such men).

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It’s quite straightforward: gender quality is an article of faith of modern Third Wave Feminism, and so is the cult-like demand for all professions to be 50% male and 50% female.

Of course, we all know that the feminist fanatics strangely do not seem to be demanding gender equality in trades like construction workers, garbage collectors, deep sea fishermen, mechanics, etc., because these trades are dirty, difficult and sometimes dangerous, and most women – generally speaking – have neither the type of bodily strength nor interest to do such work.

But, at the same time, there are plenty of professions largely dominated by women, for example, secretaries, administrative assistants, housekeepers, house cleaners, flight attendants, nurses, receptionists, or workers in women’s beauty salons (e.g., see here).

So would we really want these latter professions to be 50% men as well?

The answer is: no, the very idea is stupid and unrealistic.

The reason? It’s simple male psychology: most men would find such work demeaning, humiliating, emasculating, and devaluing them as men. The modern feminist cult of gender equality can’t realistically work here, even if some minority of men do work in these professions and don’t mind the work (and I am not trying to bash such men).

Another point is that the ability to earn a decent salary and have at least a respectable trade or profession is one of the most important advantages a man can have in attracting a wife. But modern feminism and neoliberalism seem intent on savagely attacking the ability of men to do this, and the male ability to attain a high-wage, secure employment by which he – as the only household breadwinner – could support a wife and family.

So what happens when men are forced into emasculating professions through desperation or poverty and women out-earn men and are increasingly pushed into higher-earning professions with gender quotas and obviously unfair hiring practices?

The answer: men are going to become *increasingly unattractive to women* (for some data in support of this, see here). Women like higher-earning husbands and alpha males, not men working for miserable wages as nurses or receptionists:

“One indicator of women’s lifestyle preferences is found in patterns of educational homogamy: whether women choose husbands with equal levels of education, or prefer a better-educated and higher-earning spouse.

Women’s aspiration to marry up, if they can, to a man who is better-educated and higher-earning, persists in most European countries. The Nordic countries share this pattern with all other parts of Europe. Women thereby continue to use marriage as an alternative or supplement to their employment careers. Financial dependence on a man has lost none of its attractions after the equal opportunities revolution. Symmetrical family roles are not the ideal sought by most couples, even though they are popular among the minority of highly educated professionals. It is thus not surprising that wives generally earn less than their husbands, and that most couples rationally decide that it makes sense for her to take on the larger share of childcare, and use most or all the parental leave allowance. This is just as true of the Nordic countries as elsewhere.”
Hakim, Catherine. 2011. Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine: The Flawed Thinking behind Calls for Further Equality, Centre for Policy Studies, London, p. 24.
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/36488/

I also doubt that many men really feel a sense of self-respect, self-esteem and masculinity in a household where a woman is the sole breadwinner.

But, to sum up, all this would suggest that pushing gender equality to the ridiculous extremes now demanded by the cultural left will have horrible effects on family formation, marriage, and the birth rate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hakim, Catherine. 2011. Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine: The Flawed Thinking behind Calls for Further Equality, Centre for Policy Studies, London, p. 24.
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/36488/








Lord Keynes
Realist Left social democrat, left wing, blogger, Post Keynesian in economics, but against the regressive left, against Postmodernism, against Marxism

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