DESPITE generous state subsidies, including subsidies for dawn-to-dusk schooling that renders motherhood all but insignificant, French women are the victims of a pervasive macho culture that keeps them from rising to the heights of corporate and political leadership, according to this article in The New York Times.

Katrin Bennhold suggests that the average French man is a creature of Napoleonic arrogance who is responsible for the exhaustion of the average French woman, apparently because he does not do enough at home. (Have you ever read a single article in the mainstream press about how exhausting life is for men?) Yet, as Bennhold explains, women want to do household tasks because it is important to their feminine identity. The real oppressor then seems to be the cultural expectation, a holdover of two world wars, that women have children (France’s birth rate, at a mere two children per woman, is higher than the rest of Europe).

But, wait, French women actually seem to want children. So who is the culprit? Something or someone is to blame.

The truth is, French feminists are among the unhappiest women in the world not because they have too little but because they have too much. Feminism is absolutist in its intentions. It will not rest until every woman on earth is perfectly content and has no complaints. Since this is an impossibility, feminism will not rest. It will ceaselessly agitate, searching for sinister designs against women. This non-stop war will not end until feminism’s most basic premises are shown for what they are: lies.

                                                     — Comments —

Jesse Powell writes:

Margaret Maruani, a sociologist interviewed at the end of the video segment accompanying the article linked to above, said “Thirty, twenty years ago when women started to have more degrees than men, one would have thought that the situation was going to change through time. But today, nothing has changed. We have enough hindsight to say time is not the issue and that there is no natural tendency towards equality. If there is no political will, and if no strong action is taken, nothing will happen.” 

A feminist herself said this! Now the point she was making is that strong action in favor of equality needs to be taken, strong governmental action. However, her admission is startling. She is blatantly saying that “there is no natural tendency towards equality” between men and women in the workplace and political realms. If the government doesn’t impose an artificial equality of outcomes for men and women, meaning if government doesn’t force women into high political office or leadership positions in corporations, “equality” in those positions will never come about through the voluntary choices of individuals. Finally, a feminist speaks the truth! 

What I found most bothersome about the article was the total disregard for the well being of children shown. The well being of children really didn’t seem to matter at all to the author of the article. The social problems in France weren’t mentioned at all, as if they were irrelevant issues. The divorce rate in France is 50 percent, the out-of-wedlock birth ratio is 50%, more than one third of newly formed relationships between men and women are PACS [civil unions], not marriages, but this is not mentioned at all. Instead, free government-supported daycare is lauded. As the article states, “La Flèche houses the oldest école maternelle in France. At 8:30 a.m., parents drop off toddlers as young as two. Classes end at 4:30 p.m. but a free municipal service offers optional childcare until 6:30 p.m.” 

So, as a child born in France, it’s 50-50 that your parents will be married to each other when you’re born, it’s 50-50 that they will stay together and not get divorced, and you can look forward to institutionalized daycare from 8:30 in the morning until at least 4:30 in the afternoon, if not until 6:30, certainly starting at the age of three, maybe even as young as two years old. This is what “women’s liberation” means for the children of France.

Laura writes:

This arrogant disregard for children and men is typical of these news pieces on the status of women. Notice this outrageous statement from one of the women interviewed:

Child No. 4 wasn’t “planned,” Ms. Cohen said, but it doesn’t change all that much: Instead of three children, she now takes four on the Metro in the morning and drops them at the public school and subsidized hospital nursery. She joked that children are probably the best way to reduce your tax bill. Irrespective of income, parents get a monthly allowance of €123, or about $170, for two children, €282 for three children and an additional €158 for every child after that. Add to that tax deductions and other benefits, and the Cohens pretty much stopped paying tax after baby No. 3.

Now imagine this “Child No. 4” thirty years from now reading these words, as he looks back on his joyless childhood. His mother told a newspaper that his existence “doesn’t change all that much.” He is just one more body to be shuttled back and forth to a state-subsidized institution on a Metro. And his parents see his entry into the world as a boon to their tax bill. And, this is in an article purporting to judge the fairness of society.

By the way, this is not a poor woman, but a full-time physician. She does later say that she wouldn’t consider her life complete if she didn’t cook for her children. But she admits to working late at night and to shopping on Saturdays. When does she spend time with her children? How can she and her husband possibly convey any meaningful lessons to their children or get to know them personally when they are so little part of their lives? The truth is, they don’t.

Jeff W. writes:

I am reminded of a quote from Mother Teresa: “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

The argument for both the welfare state and feminism is that they will produce greater wealth, greater freedom, and diminish poverty. But by ignoring or even denying the existence of love they both serve as instruments of impoverishment.

Brendan writes:

It is indeed scandalous what has been written in that article about French women and family life. And very reflective of where urban American liberal elites in NYC, DC and SF would like to take the United States. What a disaster that would be for our already-beleagured children.

But I wonder why the article rather glaringly omits the contrast to the Islamic birth rate and marriage rate in France. I do not believe that official statistics are released on the basis of religious affiliation, as France views this, officially, as a not-meaningful designation. But anecdotal evidence strongly suggests both higher marital rates, lower divorce rates, and higher birth ratios among Muslim French than among non-Muslims in France.

This bodes ill. Women in France are complaining about equality, but they are not looking beyond the crook of their own classically Gallic noses to see the real threat: fecund, durable Islamic marriages that create a groundswell of Islam in France … something that is orders of magnitude more hostile to any feminist notion of “equality” than anything happening under the current (rightist/social) democratic regime at the Palais de l’Elysee.

Laura writes:

Feminism can only take root in a culture that does not care about its own survival.

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