What helped women more? Feminism or Capitalism?
Here's something that I read that kind of changed the way I look at feminism. The standard standard story is that women were oppressed for centuries and feminism came and improved women's lives. Bryan Caplan offers a different explanation. According to him, it is improvement in technology and markets that improved lives, not feminism. Here's how he puts it -
"Why the Standard History of Gender is Wrong
A. My take on the standard history of gender: Throughout human history, males arbitrarily forced women into a subordinate role. At long last, feminist thinkers began "raising awareness" of the plight of women. Through great struggle, women are at last - like men - able to pursue their dreams and ambitions, though of course full equality is still a long way off.
B. Why it's wrong:
- The dating and marriage market has always been competitive. The only historical change involves ownership: Does a women own herself, or does her father own her?
- Yes, women used to have very hard lives. But so did men!
- The traditional family structure was technologically necessary for most of human history assuming women wanted to have children. An overwhelming majority did.
- Family structure changed because technology reduced the burden of household production, and because families decided to reduce their number of children.
- Technology also narrowed the male-female ability gap by de-emphasizing physical strength.
- This for the first time made it feasible for women to have both careers and children.
- Women broke into the business world quite rapidly considering the size of the change. Supposed "discrimination" reflected and continues to reflect real group differences.
- Except for women who forego child-bearing, differences will persist until reproductive technology radically changes.
- Women probably do face some statistical discrimination, but in the absence of regulatory burdens, women could contract around these. For example - penalty clauses for pregnancy enable women focused 100% on work to show how serious they are.
- Feminist norms function as price controls in the marriage and dating market. "Raising awareness" has often been counter-productive insofar as it matters at all.
C. Note: We may be moving to a world where women are noticeably more successful than men. Productivity and competition provide better explanations than “reverse sexism.”"
I believe there are many factors, market economy being one of them. Both social movements like feminism and pure economic benefit drive the change. The current world shows that the richest societies are the most equal. Equality helps people rise up in society, serving as motivation for innovation. It is a fact that women have been forbidden to do things like vote or become candidates for political positions. However, entrance of women to working life has had a great effect on gender equality. During the world wars there was a lack of workers on the civilian side, which allowed women to take jobs in factories and so on. Having the possibility to work in previously forbidden places has created a feedback loop which continues to increase gender equality.
By the way, why did you choose to put the numbered facts inside small windows with scroll bars? Now it is quite hard to read and especially compare the items on the list. Perhaps you could consider changing the list to a more conventional format.
Fixed.
Nice!