Feminism Is Confusing
I am likely as against the RedPill / Male Power movement as I am against mainstream feminism, but I still picked up a book by one of the proponents of this ideology to do a bit of research. I generally like to keep quotes from books I read, but these don’t really make sense to keep as quotes – so without further ado, the highlights of Warren Farrell’s book, of the many other stats showing why exactly feminism is a flawed theory of inequality:
Today when the successful single woman meets the successful single man, they appear to be equals. But should they marry and consider children, she almost invariably considers three options:
- Option 1: Work full time
- Option 2: Mother full time
- Option 3: Some combination of working and mothering.
He considers “slightly different” options:
- Option 1: Work full-time
- Option 2: Work full-time
- Option 3: Work full-time
Mothers are 43 times more likely than fathers to leave the workplace for 6 months or longer for family reasons. In most cases; this leaves him not just working full-time, but working overtime or working two jobs. Ironically then, it is his success that makes her more equal to him – that gives her three options while he has none.
On why women make less, Farrell lists 25 reasons, summarized here:
1. Choose careers that pay more. Because of supply and demand, you’ll earn more by choosing a job that:
- is in an unpleasant environment (prison guard vs. childcare worker)
- requires harder-to-attain skills (hard science vs. liberal arts)
- requires longer work hours (executive vs. administrative assistant)
- is unrewarding to most people (tax accountant vs. artist)
- demands financial risk (commission-based sales vs. government job)
- is inconvenient (traveling salesperson vs. teacher)
- is hazardous (police officer vs. librarian).
Many more men than women are willing to accept such jobs, even when women are paid more. For example, women sales engineers earn 143% of their male counterparts’ salary.
2. Put in more hours. That’s obvious but key. For example, Farrell cites research that “Fortune 1000 CEOs typically paid their dues with 60-90-hour workweeks for about 20 years. Yet women are less than half as likely as men to work more than 50 hours a week. And women are less likely to agree, every few years, to uproot themselves and their families to far-flung places to get the necessary promotions.”
Why? Because women, on average, are more involved in childrearing and other domestic activities. So, if a woman (or man) expects to rise to high-paying jobs, she may need to push harder to get hubby more involved in those activities, pay for childcare and domestic services, or decide not to have children.
I asked Farrell, “But shouldn’t workplaces not expect a woman (or a man) to work so many hours that family life is undercut?” He responded, “Yes, absolutely, but we must be gender-fair. If a male corporate manager chose to take care of his children, we’d applaud him but not expect the workplace to promote him as quickly. Yet when women do the same, women’s advocacy organizations often expect just that. Both men and women must accept the consequences of their choices.”
3. Be more productive in the hours you do work. If women produce as much as men, the good news is they will likely be rewarded. For example, women’s advocacy organizations complain that female professors earn less than male professors, but Farrell cites research that among professors who produce an equal number of journal articles, “men were likely to be paid the same or just slightly less than women.”
