Radical feminists like to pretend that the only people who care about the rights of women are the socialist and Marxists that have dominated their movement for too long. But a 1998 article published in, of all places, the US Army War College Quarterly Parameters highlights the fact that in many ways how successfully societies integrate women into daily life — especially the workforce — is also a good marker as to how successful such societies will be.
Writer Ralph Peters insightful article, Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States, looks at an issue of ongoing debate — what makes some countries and cultures succeed while relegating others to poverty and instability. The second factor on Peters’ list of things that hold back societies– closely behind the failure to inculcate the free flow of information — is the subjugation of women.
Peters attributes much of the success of the U.S. economy to the rising status of women thanks to the early feminist movement. Peters writes,
Vying with informational abilities as a key factor in the reinvigoration of the US economy has been the pervasive entry of American women into the educational process and the workplace. When the stock market soars, thank Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the suffragettes, not just their beneficiary, Alan Greenspan. After a century and a half of struggle by English and American women, the US economy now operates at a wartime level of human-resource commitment on a routine basis.
Ironically, as a number of critics of radical feminism have noted, it was sexual discrimination that at its heart was socialist in nature. Growing up I often remember hearing relatives and others complain that if feminism succeeded, then women would end up taking men’s jobs, as if individual men had some sort of lifetime right to a guarantee of a job free from competition from a woman.
Eliminating sexual discrimination, as Peters notes, has been a capitalist gold mine, allowing talented people to pursue their goals regardless of their sex and in the meantime enrich us all. As Peters notes,
The math isn’t hard. ANy country or culture that suppresses half its population, excluding them from economic contribution and wasting energy keeping them out of the school and workplace is not going to perform comfortably with us [the United States].
Peters then goes on to offer this advice, primarily directed at people considering investing money in foreign countries but equally applicable to all sorts of decisions,
The point isn’t really the fear that women will steal jobs in Country X. Rather, it’s a fundamental fear of women — or of a cultural caricature of women as incapable, stupid, and worrisomely sexual. If, when you get off the plane, you do not see men and women sitting together in the airport lounge, put your portfolio treat on the next flight home.
It is difficult for any human being to share power already possessed. Authority over their women is the only power many males will ever enjoy. From Greece to the Ganges, half the world is afraid of girls and gratified by their subjugation. It is a prescription for cultural mediocrity, economic failure — and inexpressible boredom. The value added by the training and utilization of our female capital is an American secret weapon.
Ironically, it is the radical feminists in the United States today who would most like to overturn this 20th century revolution by moving feminism away from its individualistic, equal opportunity roots and toward the sort of socialist, group think that so hampers Europe’s economy.
Source:
Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States. Ralph Peters, Parameters, Spring 1998, pp.36-47.
Thanks to Andrew Hofer for bringing this article to my attention.
