The feminist movement promised women many things. Women, so the narrative went, were economically and socially repressed and deserved their shot at the reins of power. This thinking ushered in a wave of social change in the 60′s and 70′s known as the feminist revolution. The lasting effects of this revolution are clearly evident. In a recent Time magazine article entitled, The State of the American Woman, reporter Nancy Gibbs documents,
“In 1972 only 7% of students playing high school sports were girls; now the number is six times as high. The female dropout rate has fallen in half. College campuses used to be almost 60-40 male; now the ratio has reversed, and close to half of law and medical degrees go to women, up from fewer than 10% in 1970. Half the Ivy League presidents are women, and two of the three network anchors soon will be; three of the four most recent Secretaries of State have been women.”
With such wonderful returns on investment, American women should be the most happy, fulfilled, and content sector of our society, but are they? Not according to renowned feminist matriarch Susan Faludi who recently made this candid statement,
“The woman’s movement wasn’t about happiness.”
Ms. Faludi’s is more correct than she may realize. In fact in the same article cited above Nancy Gibbs also points to research that documents an alarming trend trend toward unhappiness among American women. In as study entitled The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers reveal that while in the 70′s women polled much higher than men in overall subjective well-being but over time that data has completely reversed.
This article and the studies that it cites must give pause to feminists and to all American women. They stand in the best position to be the judge of whether feminism delivered what it has promised. From an outsiders perspective, it would appear that the great feminist revolution may have won women power but it caused women lose their proverbial souls.
HT: Dr. Al Mohler
The word tradition conjures up many images in our minds. One such image may be of the lovable Tevye from the musical Fiddler on the Roof (pictured on the left). Humble Tevye is a simple milkman who is charged with providing for his family and raising his girls to be good Jewish young ladies who will attract and marry nice Jewish men. He sings the beloved song, Tradition that explains what his life is all about.
