Volume > Issue > Note List > Why (Most) Women Will Never Again Be Happy

Why (Most) Women Will Never Again Be Happy

Throughout almost all of human history, women who bore children actually took care of their own children. Imagine that!

But thanks to feminism — and capitalism — that’s changed. When America went from a manufacturing to a service economy in the 1970s, the idea of a family wage (or a just wage) for the man of the house went out the window. The husband’s (real) wages declined, and the wife was forced to enter the labor market. Fortunately for capitalism, feminism came along at just the right time. Feminists pushed contraception and abortion, and denigrated child-rearing and homemaking, telling homemakers who had no idea they were oppressed that indeed they were oppressed, and that liberation could be found in becoming glamorous wage slaves. The herd instinct kicked in, and soon women went massively into the labor force. Had feminism not coaxed women into the labor force, thereby supplementing their husband’s income, there probably would have been a proletarian revolution.

According to free-market laws, the (almost) doubling of the labor supply will reduce wages to (almost) half. And so it was. While hubby’s wages declined and the wife’s wages were even less, the capitalists could have two laborers instead of one at essentially the same price. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

Not surprisingly, the ratio of pay between a CEO and an ordinary worker went from 25 to one in the late 1960s, to 42 to one in 1980, to 419 to one in 2002. As you can see, feminism has been a great boon to the capitalist class, and it’s no wonder that the power elite has promoted feminism assiduously.

Moreover, feminism has greatly exacerbated the vast discrepancies in income and wealth. To simplify: If a professional-class man makes, say, $100 an hour and a working-class man makes $20 an hour, the professional man is making $80 more per hour. Professional-class men usually marry professional-class women, and working-class men usually marry working-class women. So with women in the work force, if the professional man’s wife is making $90 an hour and the working man’s wife is making $15 an hour, the professional man’s family is now making $155 more per hour. That’s almost double! So the “haves” have even more.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Why the Frathouse Boy With the Adam Smith Tie Doesn't Look So Smart These Days

Champions of the global economy accepted a trade-off: a richer world but with a good many poorer Americans.

With the Down & Out in Waterbury

Wendell Berry has writ­ten of "the real work of planet saving," that it will be "small, humble and humbling." Dorothy Day faced the problem "one small life at a time."

The Right to Unionize & Defense of the Poor

The tradition of Catholic social teaching has roots in Abra­ham, Moses, the prophets, and in the very life and message of Jesus himself.