Feminists don’t believe in feminism either
Conn Carroll
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Feminist activist Gloria Steinem may not have coined the phrase, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” but she did popularize it. And Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reeves correctly identifies the sentiment as “the goal of that wave of the women’s movement.” But just how independent of men do most women really want to be?
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As Reeves recounts on a recent podcast promoting his new book Of Boys and Men, even feminists want men to support them.
Reeves’s admission came after Progress Network podcast co-host Emma Varvaloucas noted that women aren’t really readapting to a world where most childless women actually earn more than the average man.
“There was this stat in your book that was really striking,” Varvaloucas said. “I think it was something like 80% of women, and please correct me if I’m wrong, still want a partner that makes more money than them. So it’s actually — the renegotiation is not completely happening on both sides. And I’m not sure if women are also really doing as much renegotiation as they think they are doing.”
Reeves agreed, citing research from Harvard University’s Claudia Goldin showing that those women with the most options, women that make the most money and have the most advanced degrees, are also more likely to exit the workforce when they become mothers to care for their children if they have a husband who can support them.
“I remember having this argument at Brookings once and talking about how women still wanted men who were earning well and so on,” Reeves recounted. “It was the liberal white women that were like, ‘yeah, it’s still a problem.’ And actually, there was a young black colleague, a young female black colleague, who suddenly burst out and said, ‘Black women would love it if we had guys who could look after us for a bit while we raised our babies, right?’”
“And it was just like the silence among the white liberal women that followed that statement was really quite something to behold,” Reeves continued. “Because they were like, ‘uh, hold on. I thought we were all feminists. What’s going on?’”
What’s going on is that despite some seven decades of propaganda to the contrary, women still have a strong biological desire to be protected and provided for by a man while they are raising their infant children.
This doesn’t mean women shouldn’t pursue careers and help provide for their families. From hunting-gathering times through the dawn of agriculture and sedentary civilization, women have always helped provide for their families. But they have also always needed the help and support of men to start and raise those families. And the dependence goes both ways. I know of no man who can start a family without a woman.
So good ole Gloria Steinem was wrong. Women very much do need men. Both sexes need each other.