A Controversial Thesis [Part 3]

I said I would. Here it is.

There’s little point in referencing a controversial thesis, let alone siding with its author, if you decline to address significant arguments raised against it. Helen Andrews’ “The Great Feminization”, has generated considerable online debate. Her thesis is essentially “Women Equals Woke”. Our DEI woes on the job, she says, are all due to increasing numbers of women in the workforce.

Now, blaming everything that’s gone wrong on women sounds sexist, nasty and mean, even when it’s a woman doing it. But that’s not really where Andrews was going. Her critics disagree, and we’ll look at some of their objections today.

Let’s start with this general observation: Andrews’ article is not about critiquing women for being women or praising men for being men. She is simply observing that a feminine problem solving style is terminally unsuited to leading or positively influencing institutions. That is not where it works best. She writes:

“The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.”

I agree. Andrews’ thesis cannot be reduced to “men are better than women”, as her critics are all doing. That’s insulting, overly simplistic and just plain wrong.

In the Beginning

Let’s come at it from a Christian perspective, going right back to Genesis. God created Adam first. Eve was nowhere to be seen. Next, God gave him a job and instructions about what to do and what not to do. After putting Adam through the exercise of ruling this new world as a solo act so he would come to recognize his need of a partner, God finally gave Adam an appropriate helper, one who corresponded to his need in the role for which God had designed him. Eve was not created to do a different job from Adam, or to self-actualize in the world. She was created to help him do his God-given job better than he could’ve done it by himself.

Now, there is no suggestion in the text that Eve was a mere afterthought in creation. Her role was absolutely necessary to the completion of humanity as God envisioned it. But it is also evident man’s role in the world came first and that woman was created to better enable him to fill it. So long as Eve did what God had designed her to do — helping Adam do his job — all was well with our world. The moment she began to act independently of Adam and in defiance of God’s will and design, things went horribly south.

New Testament Reinforcement

I’m not reading something esoteric or novel into the Genesis account. The pattern established in God’s design for humanity at the very beginning — a husband acting and working at the direction of God and his wife acting and working at the direction of her husband in order to help him fulfil his role — is reinforced repeatedly for the Christian in the New Testament teaching of the apostles. Paul writes Titus, “Train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands.” The apostle counseled young widows to marry, bear children and manage their households.

The NT wife was not a doormat. She had genuine agency and full control of the home environment, but her role in life was to manage home and children in order to free up her husband to do the job of serving God by providing and caring for his family.

David French Objects!

With that in mind, let’s look at the biggest objections by Andrews’ critics to her thesis that more women in the workforce and politics is a very bad thing. This New York Times article by fake conservative (and wildly liberal) professing Christian David French nicely sums up the worst of the worst. He starts with a clickbait title that says the precise opposite of what he is claiming, following it with the standard few paragraphs of feigned agreement over non-controversial aspects of Andrews’ thesis, before stomping all over her with hobnailed boots. This was, of course, his entire point in writing.

Criticism #1: The Threat is Overblown

French argues that we had problems when males led society too, and we had ’em by the bucket load. Yes, men hold grudges too. (“It was a male-dominated world during the Hundred Years’ War, and the Thirty Years’ War, and any number of protracted conflicts throughout world history. Women aren’t responsible for the endless carnage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”) Agreed. He finishes by claiming the political right also engages in cancel culture, so therefore it can hardly be a problem related to feminization. His point is (I presume, because he doesn’t come anywhere near making it explicit), that the impact of introducing female modes of interaction and problem solving into institutions cannot possibly be any worse than some of the male-inflicted injustices of our past.

Firstly, Andrews is addressing a problem that is specifically Western, so introducing Palestine is a giant red herring. The Muslim world has a different set of problems entirely. Moreover, Andrews says next to nothing about war except as a metaphor; she’s writing about how Western society has become increasingly conflict-averse and consensus-driven, which she argues is a product of feminization. French is far off point here.

Secondly, Andrews is not arguing that male-led institutions are always moral, nor is she arguing that male-led institutions have always been historically successful. Manifestly, they are not. We live in a fallen world. The abuses that occurred and still occur under male leadership are wretched, sinful and deplorable. Andrews’ point is that, as bad as they may be or have been, the flaws in male-led institutions were not existential. Historically speaking, businesses thrived and businesses died, but those that stuck to the core purpose for which they came into being generally did the former rather than the latter. Societies survived; economies survived; people ate, drank, owned houses and managed to make a living, even if they didn’t always like their jobs. We are still here to talk about it as their descendants.

What we are seeing now is institutions subverting their own best interests and those of shareholders and taxpayers in the cause of so-called social justice, which is simply the conferring of favored status on those previously disfavored, and the conferring of disfavored status on the previously-favored in a manner equally or more unjust than anything that preceded it. As I write, companies that make social justice values their highest priority are failing financially, going bankrupt and ceasing to exist. It’s hardly unreasonable to suppose that nations following the same unsustainable path will eventually meet the same fate.

France, anyone?

Thirdly, the political right engages in cancel culture for the same reason both the Ukraine and Russia are using drones in warfare: whenever one side introduces a new weapon or tactic to the battlefield, they force the other side to do the same or else be defeated. Bible students understand such things. When the Amalekites break out the swords, the answer is not generally national prayer and the corporate decision to lie down and quietly die. The question Andrews has set herself to answer is “Where did cancel culture come from in the first place?” She answers it. The fact that both sides are now using this new and exceedingly unpleasant weapon is as irrelevant as the rest of French’s critique.

Criticism #2: Things Are Getting Better, Not Worse

“As the workplace has become more inclusive, Americans have become more prosperous. As women have gained more political power, our nation has become more just.”

Presumably David French wrote these two sentences with a straight face. I cannot see how.

The “more prosperous” allegation is hilariously false. French links to statistics about rising household income, entirely ignoring the fact that these “households” now require two incomes to sustain, a situation almost unheard of prior to WWII, and that most of their apparent wealth is debt-driven, with the marker shortly coming due. A 1913 American dollar had the purchasing power of twenty-six of today’s dollars. French is simply and embarrassingly wrong. Yes, we all have more stuff today, but more people are working way more hours to earn it. In reality, the more inclusive workplace destroys wealth, as the younger generations who will never own homes are now discovering.

The “more just” allegation is even crazier. French writes of “immense and positive social changes in the United States since women won the right to vote in 1920”, without mentioning any specifics and without citing any supporting evidence at all. Since women won the right to vote, America has seen over sixty million abortions, out of control immigration, the sexual revolution, the welfare state, innumerable foreign wars, educational decline, the disintegration of the nuclear family, the near-bankruptcy of almost all social programs, a weaponized LGBTQ movement, and increases in drug abuse, divorce, child abandonment, single motherhood, female depression, male suicide, and myriad other social ills. Not all these negatives are directly attributable to the feminization of the electorate, and certain aspects of working life have definitely improved with more women in the workplace (civility, for one), but it’s impossible to argue cogently that the female leadership in US institutions has made things better overall for either American men or women. Certainly, it’s impossible to argue it from a Christian or even a moral perspective. French does not even try. He asserts it and runs away.

Out of Our Lanes

That’s it, that’s all, that’s everything French can throw at Andrews. I find his gloss incredibly insubstantial, unresponsive and in some cases factually in error.

Back to that Christian perspective. It’s evident both men and women have great value to God and should have great value to one another. Let’s not fall for the straw man that sets one against the other. But it should also be screamingly obvious to Christians that the sexes were created to do different things well. The average woman doing what she was designed to do will do it much better than the average man. Likewise, the average man doing what he was designed to do will do it much better than the average woman. Of course there are exceptions and outliers, but we are speaking generally.

Knowing this is the teaching of scripture, no Christian should find Andrews’ analysis of the workforce and governance problems that Western societies are currently experiencing shocking. They are exactly what we should expect when both sexes have gotten out of their lanes: women by leading men in large numbers, and men by either meekly following along or abandoning entirely any effort to be productive and useful.

The problem is not sinful women, it’s sinful people. Our society not only encourages us to take on roles for which we are unsuited and in which we are minimally competent and incapable of enjoying the blessing of God, it absolutely insists on it. That’s wrong for women, and it’s wrong for men.