“Most women just don’t want to be liberated from home, husband, family, and children.” So said Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly more than 30 years ago. Two articles published recently confirm Phyllis’s wisdom when it comes to what women want.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article by an Australian social scientist entitled, “Why Are Girls Less Likely to Become Scientists?” with a sub-headline declaring that, “Closing the gender gap in STEM jobs has proved difficult, perhaps because it has more to do with the priorities of men and women than with sexism.” Two days later, The Free Press published “How I Became a Wife,” by Larissa Phillips who tells how when she was in the sixth grade her mother gave her a poster of the Gloria Steinem quote ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.’ The feminist messages she was fed as a young woman made her swear off “the idea of ever becoming a wife.” But, she says, “after 25 years of marriage, I couldn’t disagree more.” Too bad her mother didn’t give her a subscription to the Phyllis Schlafly Report instead!
William von Hippel, in his piece in the Wall Street Journal, tries to explain why, despite decades of programs to increase the number of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) there still appears to be a “gender gap” in these high paying and fast-growing fields. He seems to agree with those who claim “women are victims of structural inequities, such as biased hiring practices and unequal parenting demands,” although he offers no proof. He laments the fact that efforts to push more women into these professions are unlikely to “yield the desired effects” because, in his words, “sexism is surely a problem, but it may not be the main problem.”
What is the ‘controversial’ (in his words) explanation? “There’s growing evidence that girls and women aren’t pursuing STEM careers because they’d simply prefer not to. That is, that sex differences in the STEM workforce may largely be a product of sex differences in interests and priorities.” Exactly the point Phyllis Schlafly made decades ago when she said that feminists have “taken on an impossible task in trying to change human nature and the eternal differences between men and women.”
Research shows that women with more economic security — in more developed countries — are less likely to enter STEM fields because they do not need to trade their passions for money. STEM fields, he says, pay more and so women from poorer countries who are talented in math and science are more likely to choose them for financial stability. “Women in relatively rich countries can afford to pursue less lucrative careers without risking a life of poverty.”
Why do women in richer countries not pursue STEM at rates the feminists and sex-equity proponents would like? Von Hippel concludes it is because of “the inherent attractiveness of different fields to men and women.” Women prefer careers that involve caring and communication, like nursing and teaching while men prefer “manipulating objects.”
It was just these types of inherent preferences that Larissa Phillip’s “activist” parents tried to shield her from as a child of the 1970s. “They both adhered to the blank-slate idea: that differences between men and women were socially constructed, and a little tweaking would solve the problem of disparate outcomes,” she tells us. The message she internalized as a young woman was “marriage was a trap” that made women sad, overwhelmed, repressed, and miserable, at least until they got divorced. And in her experience, “Everyone got divorced.” In her view, shared by most of her enlightened college friends, “being a wife seemed small and backward and insignificant.”
Reality began its assault when Ms. Phillips fell in love with Chris in her mid-20s. Both children of divorce, shared reservations about marriage even though they both desired the “stability of monogamy.” She and Chris moved in together, despite her trepidations that she would lose her independence. “I was right to worry,” she confesses, “It turned out I loved living together. I loved it so much it made me a little uneasy.” Soon, she and another young professional woman made the taboo admission that they both liked making meals for their boyfriends — sometimes even more than their dreary day jobs! What a violation of feminist principles!
For years, she and Chris “avoided regressive gender roles” by “following the roommate model” and splitting chores and bills. They even did their laundry side-by-side at the laundromat. But that all changed when, still unmarried, they became parents. While she planned to go back to work after her son was born, it felt wrong to leave the “soft little creature . . .who burrowed his face into [her] neck and slept against [her] chest as if he belonged there” just to earn just enough money to pay for childcare. She spent the next several years discarding most of the feminist tropes on which she was raised. “I wanted to provide for this baby what he needed, which was me; to do that, I needed Chris,” she concluded.
They soon realized that building a family was difficult and seeking more structure, they married when their son was two years old. But it wasn’t until years later when they decided to move their now family of four to a hobby farm upstate, that the folly of the feminists became apparent. There is too much work on a farm to worry about who does what. “Any kind of successful partnership relies on finding who does what best and then giving them leave to do it,” she reminds us. “The fact that many jobs sort automatically into classic sex roles — by virtue of biology or preference — is simply reality.” She readily admits that the work she does is hard, but physically, her husband is “significantly stronger, . . . and more willing to do grueling tasks.” And that’s okay!
Of course, women can be doctors, lawyers, and STEM professionals but the reality is that most women prefer to make family a priority. Ms. Phillips came to realize, “getting married, being a wife, being a mother, is not a step back in time, or surrendering of ground. It’s actually the best part of my life.” As Phyllis Schlafly said in 1994, “The family is the proven best way for men and women to live together on this earth.”
