Over the last 50 years, America has witnessed the cultural devastation of femininity and motherhood. When women fall, an entire way of life and civilization itself are not far behind. In order to reverse this state of affairs, a profound change in attitudes and prevailing mores is necessary. It’s not a question of returning to a former time, such as the 1950’s or the Victorian era, but of returning, as Richard Weaver put it, to the center of things, to the essence of who we are.
Attitudes are not all. We need ultimately to reverse existing laws and practices. First and foremost, we should restore customary economic discrimination in favor of men. America’s businesses and institutions should be free once again to favor men over women in hiring. If they are not, family life will never return to a reasonable state of health; the happiness of women and children will continue to decline; and men will fail to flourish and prosper.
It will take many years to recover the sensibility that sanctions a form of discrimination that was once common. It’s important to begin laying the groundwork. The essential foundation of change is a renewed understanding of ideas and practices that were once so basic and unspoken we did not feel the need to make them explicit or to defend them. Let’s begin this task together by clarifying the issue.
What is customary discrimination?
Customary discrimination, in relation to the sexes, is the voluntary and informal practice of favoring men over women in hiring. It is not encoded in law or enforced by regulation. It exists as a result of a common understanding that men must support families and cannot adequately do so if they compete with large numbers of women, a form of competition that lowers their wages and reduces their marketability. The relative stagnation of men’s wages in the last 50 years proves the point.
Why and when did customary discrimination end?
Customary discrimination came to an official end with the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made discrimination against women in hiring unlawful, and its subsequent enforcement by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. At the time the 1964 legislation was adopted, there was not widespread agitation for a change. The bill was the work of a relatively small minority. However, given the subsequent change in attitudes regarding sex roles, this radical experiment in social change was inevitable. It wasn’t dissatisfaction with home life so much as the novelty of the unknown and the romantic fantasies of the minority of feminists temperamentally unsuited to domesticity that convinced impressionable women to pour into the market for careers.
Businesses have profited from the end of discrimination as it opened up the pool of available labor and provided a check on wages.
Why would American businesses and government ever voluntarily return to a state of affairs that is not in their interest?
Though businesses profit from a larger labor pool, they also suffer costs due to more women working. Women, over the course of their careers, have higher absentee rates; are more easily distracted because of family duties and greater sociability; require expensive services such as day care; and file costly discrimination and harassment suits. Men are naturally more suited to competitive work and a collegial atmosphere. In many fields, the working environment would be more collaborative, focused, and placid due to smaller numbers of women, especially women who are unstable or unhappy due to the conflict between work and home.
Obviously, women would still be present in some numbers in all fields, especially at lower levels. With the removal of anti-discrimination laws and a renewed sensitivity toward the obligation of businesses to reinforce family life –similar to the awareness they now hold regarding the natural environment – the economy would gradually arrive at a smaller and reasonable number of women in the workforce.
Does a return to customary discrimination mean women never hold jobs?
No. Women even remain a majority in certain fields, such as education, low-level office work, psychology and nursing. These fields are suited to the interruptions of family life, to the years before marriage, and to the natural skills of women. Business and institutions would be as free to favor women as they were before, but would violate an unwritten code if they favored anything but exceptional women in lucrative fields.
Especially gifted and ambitious women, generally those who will not have families, will still be exceptions in all fields, as they were before the feminist era. There will still be women doctors, lawyers and professors, just far fewer of them. Ambitious women will not find it as easy to make their way as they do today.
America needs the labor of women. We cannot afford to go back in a global economy.
Competition in the world economy is not the first and most vital task of the American market. Given its size, the American economy has vast potential for serving itself and Americans alone. In any event, our economy requires a healthy, moral and educated workforce. It also requires a large number of consumers within its own borders. Consumers are born, and raised, not manufactured.
America cannot have this adequate workforce without healthy families. The dramatic increase in divorce, the decline in the health and literacy of children, the increase in unethical business practices are all directly related to the departure of women from their main function in the home. The dramatic drop in fertility is a result of this loss of function. Fewer children mean fewer consumers. We face economic crisis because of an end to customary discrimination, not the other way around.
Doesn’t this mean poverty among women will increase as those who are divorced or single won’t be able to support themselves or their families?
Divorced women would still receive the support of their husbands. However, parallel changes in divorce law are necessary to make for less incentive for women to divorce. Women should generally face the loss of child custody and a serious decline in income if they initiate divorce, except in the event of proven malfeasance on the part of the husband. Single women will still be able to find jobs and receive help from fathers and extended family. Most of them will not be rich.
Why would women ever accept a return to discrimination?
The end of customary discrimination was never in the interests of women. It has forced the majority to help support their families while raising their children and managing a home. The experiment was tried. The apple was eaten. Women now see that careers come with personal costs and that many jobs are not as thrilling as feminists claim. They are ready to embrace discrimination again.
Won’t there be fierce competition among women for high-earning men? And, won’t women become obsessed with men’s careers?
There is competition for high-earning men now. They have always been desirable mates for some, not all, women. Most women will be able to find what they cannot find now: a man who can support them and their children in reasonable comfort for many years.
It’s true that when women are not focused on career, they focus more on the careers of their mates and prospective mates. In some, this focus becomes excessive and neurotic. Such is the price to pay for a return to sanity for many. Though they won’t be caught up in building their own careers, women will find much that is satisfying to absorb their minds and express their varied interests. The rewards of larger families, domestic crafts, volunteer work, artistic pursuits and vigilance toward the elderly will be rediscovered. Instead of being openly disparaged by our opinion-shaping institutions, these will be embraced and publicly celebrated.
Won’t American families always be tempted to increase their incomes, and thus their buying power, by sending wives out to work?
With a greater awareness that the short-term luxuries purchased with a second income come with long-term costs, this practice would decline. Also, prices would eventually return to a one-income standard. To arrive at this event, there would be an inevitable period of sacrifice, perhaps a lengthy one. Would men and women accept this burden? Americans have accepted and endorsed many changes in recent years to protect the natural environment, having realized the consequences of not protecting it would be catastrophic. The same change in awareness could occur regarding family life and the culture at large. People could come to admit what they already know: that a country and an entire culture are quickly decaying. If we continue as we are, it’s not a question of if but of when we will not possess the luxury of turning back.
(more…)
