Personal, Luddite-esque aversions to technology can still couple with the Trump administration’s plans to lead on artificial intelligence. It is a needed reconciliation, yet it is hindered by the “women’s issues” that lead every cultural and political conversation.
AI dominates national concern right now. While the Trump administration aims to lead the sector “to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security,” media voices at the other end promote an AI boycott. States like Virginia wrestle with whether to regulate AI and “impose transparency requirements, mandate impact assessments, and enable safeguards against algorithmic discrimination.” That third example hits a particular problem: The obvious target for AI regulation is child safety and human wellbeing, but the mention of family concern is either omitted or circumvented in favor of different, often equity-based, trajectories.
The problem is not so much that “women’s issues” take up the front of the line but the mindset that thinks they belong there. Yes, liberalism has a big hand in this, and it certainly is the mind virus I reference, but there is a simpler view of the culprit: People do not believe the data, especially when their implications are clear. That explains women’s relationship with social life and influences how we approach AI.
As it is, liberal women are unhappy. This assertion has held for a long time, notably in 2020, and it remains true today. A report this past February from the Institute for Family Studies found that “young conservative women are three times as likely to report being very satisfied with life compared to young liberal women.” On top of that, the report confirms corresponding data points on marriage and religious attendance. Less than one-third of liberal women are likely to be married, while the same category sees over half of conservative women. Weekly religious attendance falls at 55% of conservative women and 12% of liberal women. The flip side, seldom attending religious services, describes 65% of liberal women and 19% of conservative women.
This is despite political efforts being directed primarily at women’s issues for years. Girls surpass boys in grade school and college, and women seem to be populating the white-collar workforce at higher rates. Abortion, alongside other sectors of “healthcare” bound up with sexual freedom, has been marketed as the issue of all issues for women’s rights. Former Vice President Kamala Harris staked her entire 2024 campaign on abortion access, though it failed to capture voters’ interests. Now, in vitro fertilization is among the women-related products around which all other policies — tax, research, or otherwise — must tiptoe.
It’s clear that the individualistic, women-treated-as-men avenues that modern American society has pursued have fallen flat in terms of fulfillment. Women are unhappy, but the consensus on a pro-woman agenda is strictly opposed to the objective solutions: promote marriage and unsecularize. Both of these items hinge on the family unit to pass down, exemplify, and stabilize the human experience.
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Still, in this “better off” versus “happy” mode of thought, every other issue is considered, not least because of women’s issues’ monopoly on the cultural sphere. Women and the rest of the world are black and white, and everything ends up gray. I have no doubt that the conversation surrounding AI regulation will soon lapse into overt, left-leaning objectives. For now, the AI question remains black-and-white: Ditch it or let it have full reign? And yet, even for the anti-tech-inclined, it is easy to see what benefits the internet has had for public knowledge, even through its many downsides. And technological innovation, overall, cannot be denied.
Issues such as these need a versatile form to advance any actual policy governing them. Family policy is that versatile form, while the current mold of women’s issues has proved insular. Every difference between seemingly “happy” and “unhappy” women fits into the more versatile category of family issues; what is needed is an adaptation of the perspective. Even more, every bit of politics affects the family. That, and the administration’s own call for “human flourishing,” asks for it.