November 12, 2025 • 25 mins
“Did women ruin the workplace?”
This was the question that was put forward in a New York Times podcast that - no surprises here - quickly went viral.
The main thrust of the argument was that women are gossipy and overly emotional, and so, as we take over more and more businesses, we are a threat to the pursuit of truth and innovation.
To say that women from the across the globe shot back is an understatement.
Today, senior writer Jacqueline Maley on so-called “conservative feminism” and the political and cultural forces that have led us to this moment. And the hilarity - and danger - wrapped up in this conversation.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Seelinger Morris. It's Thursday,
November 13th. Did women ruin the workplace? This was the
question that was put forward in a New York Times
podcast the other day that no surprise here quickly went viral.
(00:24):
The main thrust of the argument was that women are
gossipy and overly emotional. And so as we take over
more and more businesses, we're a threat to the pursuit
of truth and innovation. To say that women from across
the globe shot back is an understatement.
S2 (00:40):
What do you mean women have ruined the workplace? All
that we are asking is to not get sexually harassed
or assaulted in the workplace.
S3 (00:47):
New York Times I'm so glad you decided to help
the impending death of Legacy media with this kamikaze of
a piece.
S4 (00:53):
Honestly, I think I could ruin more things. Is this
a dare.
S1 (01:00):
Today senior writer Jacqueline Maley on so-called conservative feminism and
the political and cultural forces that have led us to
this moment, and the hilarity and danger wrapped up in
this conversation. Okay. Jack, I'm so excited to be with you,
(01:22):
just in general, but on this topic specifically.
S5 (01:26):
Yeah, I know. And we were just saying I'm wearing
as if proving the case for the feminisation of the workforce. Exactly.
I am wearing a bright pink shirt. Yeah.
S1 (01:34):
I'm assuming it was deliberate.
S5 (01:35):
No, it actually wasn't. But I'm glad I'm nailed my
colours to the mast. You really have let there be?
No doubt. Yeah.
S1 (01:41):
Well, let's get into it. Tell me about the argument
that was put forward on this podcast. It, of course,
has blown up over social media. What were the main
points that really riled people up?
S5 (01:52):
Well, to go back to the original source material. So
a woman named Helen Andrews, who is a conservative commentator
in the United States, wrote an essay for Compact Magazine
called The Great Feminization, and in this essay she argues
that the increasing participation of women in the workforce and
in various sort of high profile or important professions, like
(02:13):
she singles out the legal profession in particular, and other
things like medicine, academia, even the staff of the New
York Times have become, if not 50% female, then maybe
a little bit more. Although in the legal profession, that's
absolutely not the case, particularly in the judiciary. But she
makes that case and says that that has coincided with
what she calls wokeness.
S6 (02:32):
I started by observing our institutions in all the ways
that they seem very clearly, self-evidently broken and not working
the way that they're supposed to in ways that you
could sum up in the word wokeness.
S5 (02:44):
Um, and she says the rise of wokeness and the
rise of the feminisation of the workforces has come in tandem. Therefore,
she basically says feminization has caused wokeness. Wokeness is a
terrible thing. Wokeness is basically, she does say, a threat
to society, to society, to civilization. And she particularly thinks
that this is going to be a threat to the
(03:05):
rule of law.
S6 (03:05):
We should always be clear sighted about the problem that
we're trying to solve. And in this case, the particular
problem that I'm worried about is wokeness. Um, because the
reason why I think the great Feminisation thesis is important
to talk about is because I see a lot of
people walking around right now thinking that wokeness is over.
(03:26):
They say the the vibe shift is here. We don't
need to worry about it anymore. But I'm saying that
if it's the result of structural forces and demographic feminisation,
then we cannot be so complacent because wokeness is here
to stay if that's the case.
S5 (03:42):
And so this kind of has been like a bit
of a viral essay, and people have been talking about it,
particularly in the United States online. And then Ross Douthat, who's, um,
you know, a conservative commentator who's quite a famous New
York Times columnist, and he picked it up for his podcast,
got her on, and also got another sort of conservative.
I think she called herself a conservative feminist other woman, which.
S1 (04:02):
We'll.
S5 (04:02):
Get into. So she had they had a he had
a conversation that he was moderating between these two women,
and it was called originally the title of the podcast
was Are Women Ruining the Workplace? Which apparently didn't go
down so well.
S1 (04:14):
Um, funny.
S5 (04:15):
That, and caused a lot of blowback on the New
York Times and on Ross Douthat in particular. So the
title of the podcast we note has been changed to
Has Liberal Feminism Ruined the workplace?
S1 (04:28):
That's right, that's right. And let's get into how women
the world over have responded. Like, were there any particular
hot takes that really got your attention and what did
you think of it?
S5 (04:37):
Yeah, I mean, look, the thing, the thing that I
found most befuddling and strange about all of this was
just that the essay, in my opinion, is very poorly
argued and relies on wild assertions and stereotypical assertions which
are not borne out in fact. So, you know, Helen
Andrews sort of says that as workplaces have become increasingly feminized,
(05:01):
men have been sidelined, basically, and marginalised. A lot of this,
she says, is because of sex discrimination law and sort
of sexual harassment law, which she calls a thumb on
the scale, which has favoured women over men. So the
increasing feminisation of the workforce, which is absolutely observable phenomenon,
which we've seen, you know, even in our working lives. Um, hallelujah.
(05:21):
She says that that is not a result of the
sort of the playing field being levelled for men and
women and, you know, and therefore meritocracy, um, being allowed
to evolve and women getting into higher positions or getting
into great numbers in various workplaces because they're good at
their jobs. And before men didn't have to compete with
them and now they do. She says it's because there's
(05:41):
a thumb on the scale, which is sex discrimination law.
So she makes sort of wild non-factual or unfactual assertions
like it is now illegal to employ fewer women than men.
and that, I mean.
S1 (05:54):
I don't know where that is.
S5 (05:55):
I don't, I don't I don't know where it is
that companies or organizations or institutions in the United States
or indeed anywhere, are being taken to law because they
don't have enough women in their workforces. In fact, there's
I mean, you could cite countless examples, particularly in upper management.
She's very concerned with the rule of law. So she
says that women or female feminine virtues. So empathy, compassion,
(06:19):
feelings and, you know, all all sort of what we
would now call woke virtues. So, you know, the favoring
of safety over risk and the favoring of feeling over rationality, um,
you know, that's sort of female versus male virtues, in
her opinion. And wokeness favors the female virtues. We've seen,
(06:41):
you know, wokeness kind of come in and ruin workplaces.
And I just think there's so many there's so many
sort of irrationalities and factual. I mean, you can't even.
of like, they just completely wrong assertions that are being
made that it's kind of hard to unpick them all
and hard to take the essay seriously on its merits. Actually,
(07:02):
there's things in there that you probably could argue for. Yeah.
One of the precepts, which are sort of underlying the
whole thing, is that she talks about me, too, as
being the sort of the high water mark of wokeness
and everything that wokeness that is wrong with wokeness. Right?
And you could say that there. Absolutely. There were excesses
in the Me Too movement. Absolutely. There were times when,
(07:22):
you know, the rule of law or the principles of
the rule of law were overlooked or overturned in favour
of other, other things or other principles. But, um, that's
a different conversation.
S1 (07:33):
And so how were they arguing in this podcast that,
that the, the feminisation of the workplace is actually ruining
the workplace? Because we know that in Helen Andrews, um,
in addresses that she's given and in her initial source
material like she, she really sort of argues quite broadly
that the feminisation of the workplace is almost an existential threat.
She said that, you know, immigration is something she really
(07:54):
cares about. And she says, well, the problem there is
that we have all these laws on the books that
will help us with our borders, but we're not allowed
to enforce any of them if they're going to make
someone feel bad. Right. So basically.
S5 (08:03):
She argues, I mean, this is kind of I think
one of the main threads of her argument is that
women are women are emotional creatures. Yes. Something that I
would absolutely dispute on the facts. And I could like,
debate very strongly. Women are human. Humans are emotional creatures.
Men and women definitely express emotion differently and have different
(08:23):
ways of dealing with it. Different, but I would say
broadly equal. So she says that because women favor emotion, compassion, empathy,
that kind of thing, and they don't like the other
thing that she says, and this is a this is
an oldie but a goodie.
S1 (08:36):
We don't like conflict.
S5 (08:37):
Well, we we do. We wage conflict in a sneaky, undermining, backhanded, gossipy,
gossiping behind other people's backs kind of way. Like not
openly the good clean way like men do. So she's
saying that women, they won't wage war openly like men.
So she says men have evolved tribally and prehistorically. So
(08:58):
a lot of this is a sort of primatologist type
view of, of, of sex relations or gender relations. But
men have evolved to wage war openly and then to
settle it. Right. I would say, again, I don't see
a lot of conflicts that have been well settled. I,
I see examples of conflicts that have been waged, waged
(09:19):
by men that are not at all settled. And I
think the worst and, you know, one of the most
horrific examples of modern history is ongoing in Gaza and
Israel now. Right.
S1 (09:27):
And in multiple regions, one one could argue.
S5 (09:29):
Right, right. I mean, if men knew how to settle
wars cleanly and get it over with and done, then
we wouldn't have war anymore, presumably genocide.
S1 (09:35):
I mean, there are countless examples.
S5 (09:37):
Yeah, there are a few examples. But she says that
women women, on the contrary, are more likely to do
it covertly and in a sort of undermining kind of way.
That just doesn't really end. I think that's the argument.
S1 (09:48):
Yes.
S5 (09:49):
So that's not a good way to run a business,
I don't know.
S1 (09:53):
Right.
S5 (09:53):
I don't know what she's saying. Yeah. She says she's
most she's most frightened about the field of the law,
because the rule of law will not survive the legal
profession becoming majority female, because the rule of law is not,
you know, judges, take note. The rule of law is
not just about writing rules. Rules down.
S1 (10:13):
No, she says, I do not want judges who are
more interested in context and relationships than in what the
law says.
S5 (10:18):
Yeah. So she says that the rule of law is
not just about having the rules. You've actually got to
follow them, even when they yield an outcome that tugs
at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense
of which party is more sympathetic. So she's basically saying
that female judges in particular, and she's saying, okay, we
don't have a majority female judges in the United States,
or indeed, I would hazard anywhere in the world at
(10:40):
the moment. But given that most law graduates now are
females in the United States, also the same in Australia
as they work their way through the system. Eventually we'll
get a majority female courts or judges on the courts
and women. Female judges will not will basically respond to
the law or respond to cases not according to the law,
(11:00):
but according to what tugs at the heartstrings. So that's
a kind of a crazy assertion.
S1 (11:05):
Crazy. I mean.
S5 (11:06):
It's deeply insulting to women and I would say just
not bound at all by any basis in fact.
S1 (11:12):
No. Um, and some of the takes are I mean,
a lot of people, I guess, have responded with almost
hilarity or just making fun of it because they feel
like it's just almost too stupid to be contemplated. Like
when you look at the fact that, you know, men,
of course, have been in power for, you know, arguably millennia.
S5 (11:29):
They've done a great job of it. I don't think
I think I mean, that's uncontested.
S1 (11:32):
Inarguable. Yeah.
S5 (11:33):
You haven't made any mistakes.
S1 (11:35):
No, no, no, no, that's right.
S5 (11:36):
Everything's been fine.
S1 (11:37):
That's right. I mean, on that point of.
S5 (11:39):
They haven't ruined anything.
S1 (11:40):
Nothing has been ruined. And, you know, we were talking
just before recording that, um, Sophie Gilbert pointed out in
The Atlantic. As for emotions running wild, cabinet members brawl
in public like rhesus monkeys on HGH. And she pointed
out that in September, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, reportedly
told the Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte I'm
(12:02):
going to punch you in your effing face.
S5 (12:04):
But that's not him displaying emotion. No, no.
S1 (12:07):
It's not.
S5 (12:08):
Him.
S1 (12:08):
Being unsettling things openly, because apparently this had happened because
Bessent had heard that Bill had been talking to Trump
about him behind his back.
S5 (12:15):
He's been displaying some feminine vices here, as Helen Andrews
would say, bitching about someone behind their back. There is
no doubt in my mind that there is a difference
between the sexes, and there is no doubt that women
and men behave in different ways and have different strengths. Right. And,
you know, there's a lot of studies and a lot
of research that bears that out. Not to mention human observation,
(12:35):
but emotion in this context seems to be sort of
shorthand for the kind of emotional lability that is more,
probably more common to women. So emotional, you know, signs
of emotional distress. Crying in the workplace, I would. I
would definitely bet that more women cry in the workplace
than men cry in the workplace. Open distress. You know,
worry and anxiety, those kinds of things. But when we
(12:57):
talk about emotion, we somehow discount male expressions of emotion,
which tend to tend to perhaps towards rage, anger, open hostility, violence, bullying,
tantrum throwing. These are all things that I, I mean,
I've been in the workplace now in this workplace I
think for like two decades, which makes me feel very old.
(13:19):
But I remember when workplaces were much less feminized. And
I remember, like Jack.
S1 (13:26):
I recall too, but I'm just interested in your recollection.
S5 (13:29):
Um, sexual harassment was rife. Male aggression, open male aggression,
displays of open aggression were common and deeply upsetting and
difficult to work with. And I would say that this
is this is something that men would also complain of
or observe alongside women. I think the feminisation of the workforce,
(13:50):
for whatever you make of it, has made for a
more peaceful and civil workforce, and the kinds of things
that Helen Andrews doesn't like, you know, sex discrimination legislation,
anti-sexual harassment laws are exactly the things that have made
workplaces much more civil, much more decent, run in a
much more orderly way that actually allows for greater productivity
(14:11):
and allows for, you know, risk taking is one of
the things that she says is a great masculine, um, virtue.
And she says the feminisation of the workforce is basically
hampering the natural sort of male tendency towards risk taking.
I think it's absolutely true that men are bigger risk takers.
That's completely verifiable in research. You see it with little boys, um,
(14:33):
and you see it all the way through to men.
And that's probably why more men are entrepreneurs or in
the tech industry or whatever, arguably. Right. But she conflates
risk taking with exposure to risk. So I would say
anti-discrimination law, all of that stuff that we've got, all
of that infrastructure we've got now to keep us broadly
safe in the workplace. The lessening of exposure to risk,
(14:54):
particularly for women who no longer have to contend so
much with being grabbed at work, being sexually harassed at work, and, yeah,
even being sexually assaulted at work, which has happened a lot,
that exposure to risk is much less now, which I
would argue actually opens us up and kind of helps
us relax in a way that makes us much more
(15:15):
productive and much more, um.
S1 (15:19):
Prone to innovation.
S5 (15:21):
Yeah, it would. It allows all of those wonderful, innovative
capitalist virtues to thrive.
S1 (15:29):
We'll be right back. Let's get into what conservative feminism is,
because I think the second woman who was on this podcast,
her name is Leah Libresco Sargeant. She wrote a book
called The Dignity of Dependence, and I believe she sort of, uh,
affiliates with that term conservative feminism. Now, have I been
(15:51):
asleep at the wheel for the last few decades? Because I, I.
S5 (15:54):
Don't think it's really look, I as a student of feminism,
I don't think it's a really strong tradition that it's
certainly not one where I could name any great thinkers. Yeah,
I think she actually made much more sense to me,
the conservative, feminist, self-confessed conservative feminist on that podcast. Yes,
she's talking about the fact that women in their roles
as carers are always going to be at certain points
in their life, more dependent, and that a workplace basically
(16:16):
has to be able to fit in around that. Yeah,
that's what I took her argument to be. But she
also said, like, there are certain workplaces which are not
going to fit in around that and they can't. And
so maybe women shouldn't go into those workplaces. That's arguable.
But what what she didn't seem to have clocked and
also the host of the podcast, the moderator, the the fella,
Ross Douthat, who's now being absolutely slain on the internet.
S1 (16:38):
Like Monstered Monstered. Instead, I'll get into some of those
takes soon because they're some of the funniest. But wow.
S5 (16:43):
For for putting this title on his podcast.
S1 (16:45):
About.
S5 (16:46):
Women ruining the.
S1 (16:46):
Workplace, he'd have to be hiding.
S5 (16:48):
Yeah, he's having he's having a tough week. Ross, what
they seem to not have clocked or realized exists is
third wave feminism, which, as far as I understand it,
is based on the idea that we should embrace female difference.
So it's not, you know, second wave feminism was much
more like, well, women can be as good as men.
(17:09):
Women can be just like men, women, you know.
S1 (17:11):
We can work as just as hard. We can.
S5 (17:13):
We can, we can.
S1 (17:14):
You.
S5 (17:14):
Know.
S1 (17:14):
So it's kind.
S5 (17:15):
Of, yeah, we can hustle. We can, we can be
bosses to etc.. Third wave feminism was like, no, actually
women are kind of different. And that's okay. And we
shouldn't prioritize or honor one type of being or one
gender or one, you know, one stereotypical gender role over another.
And we should embrace the caring, nurturing, whatever other feminine
virtues that women have or more likely have, the men have,
(17:39):
but that society should change and evolve. Patriarchy should be
smashed so that women can be themselves and not be
disadvantaged as a result of their caring roles or their
nurturing natures, etc..
S1 (17:52):
And so do you think that this podcast, uh, these
three people that have argued this idea, do you think,
do you think that they have they got any traction?
Or is this just.
S5 (18:03):
We're talking about it. The New York Times is talking
about it, and it's now infiltrated its way into the, the,
the internet with like countless kind of, you know, hot
take feminists who are kind of absolutely raking Ross Douthat
over the coals. You should read some of them out, because.
S1 (18:19):
I'm going to read some of them out.
S5 (18:21):
I mean, but they're funny.
S1 (18:21):
Yes, they are. I mean, let's just warn the listeners here. Um,
today I begin work on my liberal feminist children's book
titled oh, The Places You'll Ruin like that one. But, um. Oh,
one woman said. One woman said, honestly, I think I
could ruin more things. Is this a dare quite like that.
I quite felt myself in that one. I can hear
(18:42):
his sleep apnea from here. That was people just.
S5 (18:45):
Being mean about wrong.
S1 (18:46):
Yeah, being real mean one about Ross and and. Yeah.
So like you say I mean it has really people
have gone wild about it with their takes.
S5 (18:52):
Well, I mean, the most obvious one is like, um,
you know, men have men have drilled a lot of stuff.
I mean, they they waged a lot of wars. That's right.
They've committed a lot of assaults or, you know.
S1 (19:04):
Yeah. Sophie Gilbert put it. Or at least the person
that wrote the write off in The Atlantic. No, women
aren't the problem. America is rapidly becoming the manosphere. But sure,
let's go after the feminization of culture.
S5 (19:14):
Yeah. I mean, particularly in the American context in that article,
the Sophie Gilbert article in The Atlantic kind of lays
out so beautifully.
S1 (19:21):
In.
S5 (19:21):
A well-argued and, you know, beautiful prose.
S1 (19:24):
Yes.
S5 (19:25):
America at the moment feels like it is just being
kind of like supercharged with testosterone. I mean, we obviously
have Trump in the white House. We have him destroying, um,
you know, literally kind of bulldozing the east wing.
S7 (19:38):
It's about $300 million. It's set to do many, many things,
including meetings of foreign leaders, including the honoring of foreign leaders.
You can see this.
S5 (19:47):
There's going to be like a UFC fighting wrestling ring,
I think, set up outside the white House for some
sort of celebration. Yes, we have Ice agents, masked Ice agents,
ripping women, children, undocumented male immigrants off the street and
huddling them into hustling them into vans.
S1 (20:05):
It's apocalyptic. I mean, it's visual.
S5 (20:07):
I don't think you could say that. You know, they've
changed the name of the Ministry of Defense to the
Ministry of War.
S8 (20:14):
Yeah, that this name change is not just about renaming.
It's about restoring. Words matter. It's restoring. As you've guided
us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory
and clarity as an end state, restoring intention.
S5 (20:32):
I mean, I don't think we we have seen in
modern times a more heightened masculine culture in the United States.
And it's sort of spreading, I suppose, through the internet
across the world. So it does seem like a strange
thing to focus on at this particular moment.
S1 (20:46):
I mean, it does seem bizarre, but I was wondering
whether this is perhaps the culmination of a growing wellspring
of conservative thought in the US in particular. I mean, obviously,
we've seen the rollback of reproductive rights. Do you think
this is just a reflection of that, like maybe we
haven't noticed it?
S5 (21:01):
Yeah. Look, I think it's really easy to laugh at.
It is easy to dismiss because as I said, I
just don't think it's a very serious piece of work
on its intellectual merits. And I'm here for conservative feminism. Like,
I suspect I'm a conservative feminist myself in some respects,
in that I think family is very important. Like, I
think that women should be supported to be mothers if
(21:23):
that's what they want to do, and families should be supportive.
But I'm here for interesting, well founded rational civil debate
around feminism, right? Or even the feminisation of the workforce.
But what I think this is because Helen Andrews herself
says that she has no solution to this so-called problem.
And she says it's a problem, a risk, a threat,
(21:43):
like it's a very catastrophic essay. It is. And she says,
at no other time in history has a society allowed
women to control major institutions and major companies like, it's
really like, you know, you just tighten. Well, you substitute
another group for women, you substitute Jews, black people, whatever
(22:05):
you like. It doesn't sound so good, right? Like it's
a very, very sort of it's a very catastrophic tone
that she puts in there. And I think that it
is loosening. It's moving the Overton window. So it's kind
of like loosening up the debate for, well, do we
really want women in these positions of power? Aren't they
just going to prejudice feelings over over facts? And aren't
(22:27):
they just going to make decisions based on their vibes
rather than on the law? So I think it's kind
of it's making those ideas more mainstream, and we're arguably
doing that by even hosting this podcast, I don't know. Yeah. Um,
but also I don't I think that in a, in
a world particularly in the United States, where reproductive rights
are being rolled back, what her big bugbear in this
essay is, um, is sex discrimination law and sexual harassment law.
(22:49):
So workplace legislation that has, um, evened up the scales for,
for men and women. And I think that this kind
of debate opens up ground for people to roll back
those protections. And those protections have been, I would say,
one of the greatest advances that we have made in
the 20th and 21st century, because they have allowed and
(23:12):
made it safe and feasible for women to enter the
workforce in the numbers that we have. So we've achieved
parity in most workplaces, I suppose. And why is that important? Well,
it's important because it improves living standards, because, you know,
you're unlocking enormous amounts of human potential. So, you know,
(23:33):
GDPs go up, productivity goes up. You know, you have
a huge resource, 50% of the population that was previously untapped,
that is now, you know, being economically productive. But more importantly,
it increases human satisfaction and increases, I would say overall
human happiness and the happiness of families, happiness of men
and women, because we're participating in a more equal society
(23:56):
where everybody gets to do what humans are supposed to do,
which is have fulfilling work. And that doesn't mean you
don't always have to do that in workplace. You can
do it from home as well. But I think we
all know that human beings need something. Most human beings
need something outside the home and outside of themselves to
feel really fulfilled and like they're living a full life
(24:16):
and to give their lives meaning. So that's the stakes.
S1 (24:24):
Well, you know how much I love being able to
speak to you about, uh, difficult and controversial subjects that
sort of need to be ironed out, or at least
made somewhat clear. So thanks, Jack.
S5 (24:34):
Thanks for having me.
S1 (24:41):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
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From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Seelinger Morris. It's Thursday,
November 13th. Did women ruin the workplace? This was the
question that was put forward in a New York Times
podcast the other day that no surprise here quickly went viral.
(00:24):
The main thrust of the argument was that women are
gossipy and overly emotional. And so as we take over
more and more businesses, we're a threat to the pursuit
of truth and innovation. To say that women from across
the globe shot back is an understatement.
S2 (00:40):
What do you mean women have ruined the workplace? All
that we are asking is to not get sexually harassed
or assaulted in the workplace.
S3 (00:47):
New York Times I'm so glad you decided to help
the impending death of Legacy media with this kamikaze of
a piece.
S4 (00:53):
Honestly, I think I could ruin more things. Is this
a dare.
S1 (01:00):
Today senior writer Jacqueline Maley on so-called conservative feminism and
the political and cultural forces that have led us to
this moment, and the hilarity and danger wrapped up in
this conversation. Okay. Jack, I'm so excited to be with you,
(01:22):
just in general, but on this topic specifically.
S5 (01:26):
Yeah, I know. And we were just saying I'm wearing
as if proving the case for the feminisation of the workforce. Exactly.
I am wearing a bright pink shirt. Yeah.
S1 (01:34):
I'm assuming it was deliberate.
S5 (01:35):
No, it actually wasn't. But I'm glad I'm nailed my
colours to the mast. You really have let there be?
No doubt. Yeah.
S1 (01:41):
Well, let's get into it. Tell me about the argument
that was put forward on this podcast. It, of course,
has blown up over social media. What were the main
points that really riled people up?
S5 (01:52):
Well, to go back to the original source material. So
a woman named Helen Andrews, who is a conservative commentator
in the United States, wrote an essay for Compact Magazine
called The Great Feminization, and in this essay she argues
that the increasing participation of women in the workforce and
in various sort of high profile or important professions, like
(02:13):
she singles out the legal profession in particular, and other
things like medicine, academia, even the staff of the New
York Times have become, if not 50% female, then maybe
a little bit more. Although in the legal profession, that's
absolutely not the case, particularly in the judiciary. But she
makes that case and says that that has coincided with
what she calls wokeness.
S6 (02:32):
I started by observing our institutions in all the ways
that they seem very clearly, self-evidently broken and not working
the way that they're supposed to in ways that you
could sum up in the word wokeness.
S5 (02:44):
Um, and she says the rise of wokeness and the
rise of the feminisation of the workforces has come in tandem. Therefore,
she basically says feminization has caused wokeness. Wokeness is a
terrible thing. Wokeness is basically, she does say, a threat
to society, to society, to civilization. And she particularly thinks
that this is going to be a threat to the
(03:05):
rule of law.
S6 (03:05):
We should always be clear sighted about the problem that
we're trying to solve. And in this case, the particular
problem that I'm worried about is wokeness. Um, because the
reason why I think the great Feminisation thesis is important
to talk about is because I see a lot of
people walking around right now thinking that wokeness is over.
(03:26):
They say the the vibe shift is here. We don't
need to worry about it anymore. But I'm saying that
if it's the result of structural forces and demographic feminisation,
then we cannot be so complacent because wokeness is here
to stay if that's the case.
S5 (03:42):
And so this kind of has been like a bit
of a viral essay, and people have been talking about it,
particularly in the United States online. And then Ross Douthat, who's, um,
you know, a conservative commentator who's quite a famous New
York Times columnist, and he picked it up for his podcast,
got her on, and also got another sort of conservative.
I think she called herself a conservative feminist other woman, which.
S1 (04:02):
We'll.
S5 (04:02):
Get into. So she had they had a he had
a conversation that he was moderating between these two women,
and it was called originally the title of the podcast
was Are Women Ruining the Workplace? Which apparently didn't go
down so well.
S1 (04:14):
Um, funny.
S5 (04:15):
That, and caused a lot of blowback on the New
York Times and on Ross Douthat in particular. So the
title of the podcast we note has been changed to
Has Liberal Feminism Ruined the workplace?
S1 (04:28):
That's right, that's right. And let's get into how women
the world over have responded. Like, were there any particular
hot takes that really got your attention and what did
you think of it?
S5 (04:37):
Yeah, I mean, look, the thing, the thing that I
found most befuddling and strange about all of this was
just that the essay, in my opinion, is very poorly
argued and relies on wild assertions and stereotypical assertions which
are not borne out in fact. So, you know, Helen
Andrews sort of says that as workplaces have become increasingly feminized,
(05:01):
men have been sidelined, basically, and marginalised. A lot of this,
she says, is because of sex discrimination law and sort
of sexual harassment law, which she calls a thumb on
the scale, which has favoured women over men. So the
increasing feminisation of the workforce, which is absolutely observable phenomenon,
which we've seen, you know, even in our working lives. Um, hallelujah.
(05:21):
She says that that is not a result of the
sort of the playing field being levelled for men and
women and, you know, and therefore meritocracy, um, being allowed
to evolve and women getting into higher positions or getting
into great numbers in various workplaces because they're good at
their jobs. And before men didn't have to compete with
them and now they do. She says it's because there's
(05:41):
a thumb on the scale, which is sex discrimination law.
So she makes sort of wild non-factual or unfactual assertions
like it is now illegal to employ fewer women than men.
and that, I mean.
S1 (05:54):
I don't know where that is.
S5 (05:55):
I don't, I don't I don't know where it is
that companies or organizations or institutions in the United States
or indeed anywhere, are being taken to law because they
don't have enough women in their workforces. In fact, there's
I mean, you could cite countless examples, particularly in upper management.
She's very concerned with the rule of law. So she
says that women or female feminine virtues. So empathy, compassion,
(06:19):
feelings and, you know, all all sort of what we
would now call woke virtues. So, you know, the favoring
of safety over risk and the favoring of feeling over rationality, um,
you know, that's sort of female versus male virtues, in
her opinion. And wokeness favors the female virtues. We've seen,
(06:41):
you know, wokeness kind of come in and ruin workplaces.
And I just think there's so many there's so many
sort of irrationalities and factual. I mean, you can't even.
of like, they just completely wrong assertions that are being
made that it's kind of hard to unpick them all
and hard to take the essay seriously on its merits. Actually,
(07:02):
there's things in there that you probably could argue for. Yeah.
One of the precepts, which are sort of underlying the
whole thing, is that she talks about me, too, as
being the sort of the high water mark of wokeness
and everything that wokeness that is wrong with wokeness. Right?
And you could say that there. Absolutely. There were excesses
in the Me Too movement. Absolutely. There were times when,
(07:22):
you know, the rule of law or the principles of
the rule of law were overlooked or overturned in favour
of other, other things or other principles. But, um, that's
a different conversation.
S1 (07:33):
And so how were they arguing in this podcast that,
that the, the feminisation of the workplace is actually ruining
the workplace? Because we know that in Helen Andrews, um,
in addresses that she's given and in her initial source
material like she, she really sort of argues quite broadly
that the feminisation of the workplace is almost an existential threat.
She said that, you know, immigration is something she really
(07:54):
cares about. And she says, well, the problem there is
that we have all these laws on the books that
will help us with our borders, but we're not allowed
to enforce any of them if they're going to make
someone feel bad. Right. So basically.
S5 (08:03):
She argues, I mean, this is kind of I think
one of the main threads of her argument is that
women are women are emotional creatures. Yes. Something that I
would absolutely dispute on the facts. And I could like,
debate very strongly. Women are human. Humans are emotional creatures.
Men and women definitely express emotion differently and have different
(08:23):
ways of dealing with it. Different, but I would say
broadly equal. So she says that because women favor emotion, compassion, empathy,
that kind of thing, and they don't like the other
thing that she says, and this is a this is
an oldie but a goodie.
S1 (08:36):
We don't like conflict.
S5 (08:37):
Well, we we do. We wage conflict in a sneaky, undermining, backhanded, gossipy,
gossiping behind other people's backs kind of way. Like not
openly the good clean way like men do. So she's
saying that women, they won't wage war openly like men.
So she says men have evolved tribally and prehistorically. So
(08:58):
a lot of this is a sort of primatologist type
view of, of, of sex relations or gender relations. But
men have evolved to wage war openly and then to
settle it. Right. I would say, again, I don't see
a lot of conflicts that have been well settled. I,
I see examples of conflicts that have been waged, waged
(09:19):
by men that are not at all settled. And I
think the worst and, you know, one of the most
horrific examples of modern history is ongoing in Gaza and
Israel now. Right.
S1 (09:27):
And in multiple regions, one one could argue.
S5 (09:29):
Right, right. I mean, if men knew how to settle
wars cleanly and get it over with and done, then
we wouldn't have war anymore, presumably genocide.
S1 (09:35):
I mean, there are countless examples.
S5 (09:37):
Yeah, there are a few examples. But she says that
women women, on the contrary, are more likely to do
it covertly and in a sort of undermining kind of way.
That just doesn't really end. I think that's the argument.
S1 (09:48):
Yes.
S5 (09:49):
So that's not a good way to run a business,
I don't know.
S1 (09:53):
Right.
S5 (09:53):
I don't know what she's saying. Yeah. She says she's
most she's most frightened about the field of the law,
because the rule of law will not survive the legal
profession becoming majority female, because the rule of law is not,
you know, judges, take note. The rule of law is
not just about writing rules. Rules down.
S1 (10:13):
No, she says, I do not want judges who are
more interested in context and relationships than in what the
law says.
S5 (10:18):
Yeah. So she says that the rule of law is
not just about having the rules. You've actually got to
follow them, even when they yield an outcome that tugs
at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense
of which party is more sympathetic. So she's basically saying
that female judges in particular, and she's saying, okay, we
don't have a majority female judges in the United States,
or indeed, I would hazard anywhere in the world at
(10:40):
the moment. But given that most law graduates now are
females in the United States, also the same in Australia
as they work their way through the system. Eventually we'll
get a majority female courts or judges on the courts
and women. Female judges will not will basically respond to
the law or respond to cases not according to the law,
(11:00):
but according to what tugs at the heartstrings. So that's
a kind of a crazy assertion.
S1 (11:05):
Crazy. I mean.
S5 (11:06):
It's deeply insulting to women and I would say just
not bound at all by any basis in fact.
S1 (11:12):
No. Um, and some of the takes are I mean,
a lot of people, I guess, have responded with almost
hilarity or just making fun of it because they feel
like it's just almost too stupid to be contemplated. Like
when you look at the fact that, you know, men,
of course, have been in power for, you know, arguably millennia.
S5 (11:29):
They've done a great job of it. I don't think
I think I mean, that's uncontested.
S1 (11:32):
Inarguable. Yeah.
S5 (11:33):
You haven't made any mistakes.
S1 (11:35):
No, no, no, no, that's right.
S5 (11:36):
Everything's been fine.
S1 (11:37):
That's right. I mean, on that point of.
S5 (11:39):
They haven't ruined anything.
S1 (11:40):
Nothing has been ruined. And, you know, we were talking
just before recording that, um, Sophie Gilbert pointed out in
The Atlantic. As for emotions running wild, cabinet members brawl
in public like rhesus monkeys on HGH. And she pointed
out that in September, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, reportedly
told the Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte I'm
(12:02):
going to punch you in your effing face.
S5 (12:04):
But that's not him displaying emotion. No, no.
S1 (12:07):
It's not.
S5 (12:08):
Him.
S1 (12:08):
Being unsettling things openly, because apparently this had happened because
Bessent had heard that Bill had been talking to Trump
about him behind his back.
S5 (12:15):
He's been displaying some feminine vices here, as Helen Andrews
would say, bitching about someone behind their back. There is
no doubt in my mind that there is a difference
between the sexes, and there is no doubt that women
and men behave in different ways and have different strengths. Right. And,
you know, there's a lot of studies and a lot
of research that bears that out. Not to mention human observation,
(12:35):
but emotion in this context seems to be sort of
shorthand for the kind of emotional lability that is more,
probably more common to women. So emotional, you know, signs
of emotional distress. Crying in the workplace, I would. I
would definitely bet that more women cry in the workplace
than men cry in the workplace. Open distress. You know,
worry and anxiety, those kinds of things. But when we
(12:57):
talk about emotion, we somehow discount male expressions of emotion,
which tend to tend to perhaps towards rage, anger, open hostility, violence, bullying,
tantrum throwing. These are all things that I, I mean,
I've been in the workplace now in this workplace I
think for like two decades, which makes me feel very old.
(13:19):
But I remember when workplaces were much less feminized. And
I remember, like Jack.
S1 (13:26):
I recall too, but I'm just interested in your recollection.
S5 (13:29):
Um, sexual harassment was rife. Male aggression, open male aggression,
displays of open aggression were common and deeply upsetting and
difficult to work with. And I would say that this
is this is something that men would also complain of
or observe alongside women. I think the feminisation of the workforce,
(13:50):
for whatever you make of it, has made for a
more peaceful and civil workforce, and the kinds of things
that Helen Andrews doesn't like, you know, sex discrimination legislation,
anti-sexual harassment laws are exactly the things that have made
workplaces much more civil, much more decent, run in a
much more orderly way that actually allows for greater productivity
(14:11):
and allows for, you know, risk taking is one of
the things that she says is a great masculine, um, virtue.
And she says the feminisation of the workforce is basically
hampering the natural sort of male tendency towards risk taking.
I think it's absolutely true that men are bigger risk takers.
That's completely verifiable in research. You see it with little boys, um,
(14:33):
and you see it all the way through to men.
And that's probably why more men are entrepreneurs or in
the tech industry or whatever, arguably. Right. But she conflates
risk taking with exposure to risk. So I would say
anti-discrimination law, all of that stuff that we've got, all
of that infrastructure we've got now to keep us broadly
safe in the workplace. The lessening of exposure to risk,
(14:54):
particularly for women who no longer have to contend so
much with being grabbed at work, being sexually harassed at work, and, yeah,
even being sexually assaulted at work, which has happened a lot,
that exposure to risk is much less now, which I
would argue actually opens us up and kind of helps
us relax in a way that makes us much more
(15:15):
productive and much more, um.
S1 (15:19):
Prone to innovation.
S5 (15:21):
Yeah, it would. It allows all of those wonderful, innovative
capitalist virtues to thrive.
S1 (15:29):
We'll be right back. Let's get into what conservative feminism is,
because I think the second woman who was on this podcast,
her name is Leah Libresco Sargeant. She wrote a book
called The Dignity of Dependence, and I believe she sort of, uh,
affiliates with that term conservative feminism. Now, have I been
(15:51):
asleep at the wheel for the last few decades? Because I, I.
S5 (15:54):
Don't think it's really look, I as a student of feminism,
I don't think it's a really strong tradition that it's
certainly not one where I could name any great thinkers. Yeah,
I think she actually made much more sense to me,
the conservative, feminist, self-confessed conservative feminist on that podcast. Yes,
she's talking about the fact that women in their roles
as carers are always going to be at certain points
in their life, more dependent, and that a workplace basically
(16:16):
has to be able to fit in around that. Yeah,
that's what I took her argument to be. But she
also said, like, there are certain workplaces which are not
going to fit in around that and they can't. And
so maybe women shouldn't go into those workplaces. That's arguable.
But what what she didn't seem to have clocked and
also the host of the podcast, the moderator, the the fella,
Ross Douthat, who's now being absolutely slain on the internet.
S1 (16:38):
Like Monstered Monstered. Instead, I'll get into some of those
takes soon because they're some of the funniest. But wow.
S5 (16:43):
For for putting this title on his podcast.
S1 (16:45):
About.
S5 (16:46):
Women ruining the.
S1 (16:46):
Workplace, he'd have to be hiding.
S5 (16:48):
Yeah, he's having he's having a tough week. Ross, what
they seem to not have clocked or realized exists is
third wave feminism, which, as far as I understand it,
is based on the idea that we should embrace female difference.
So it's not, you know, second wave feminism was much
more like, well, women can be as good as men.
(17:09):
Women can be just like men, women, you know.
S1 (17:11):
We can work as just as hard. We can.
S5 (17:13):
We can, we can.
S1 (17:14):
You.
S5 (17:14):
Know.
S1 (17:14):
So it's kind.
S5 (17:15):
Of, yeah, we can hustle. We can, we can be
bosses to etc.. Third wave feminism was like, no, actually
women are kind of different. And that's okay. And we
shouldn't prioritize or honor one type of being or one
gender or one, you know, one stereotypical gender role over another.
And we should embrace the caring, nurturing, whatever other feminine
virtues that women have or more likely have, the men have,
(17:39):
but that society should change and evolve. Patriarchy should be
smashed so that women can be themselves and not be
disadvantaged as a result of their caring roles or their
nurturing natures, etc..
S1 (17:52):
And so do you think that this podcast, uh, these
three people that have argued this idea, do you think,
do you think that they have they got any traction?
Or is this just.
S5 (18:03):
We're talking about it. The New York Times is talking
about it, and it's now infiltrated its way into the, the,
the internet with like countless kind of, you know, hot
take feminists who are kind of absolutely raking Ross Douthat
over the coals. You should read some of them out, because.
S1 (18:19):
I'm going to read some of them out.
S5 (18:21):
I mean, but they're funny.
S1 (18:21):
Yes, they are. I mean, let's just warn the listeners here. Um,
today I begin work on my liberal feminist children's book
titled oh, The Places You'll Ruin like that one. But, um. Oh,
one woman said. One woman said, honestly, I think I
could ruin more things. Is this a dare quite like that.
I quite felt myself in that one. I can hear
(18:42):
his sleep apnea from here. That was people just.
S5 (18:45):
Being mean about wrong.
S1 (18:46):
Yeah, being real mean one about Ross and and. Yeah.
So like you say I mean it has really people
have gone wild about it with their takes.
S5 (18:52):
Well, I mean, the most obvious one is like, um,
you know, men have men have drilled a lot of stuff.
I mean, they they waged a lot of wars. That's right.
They've committed a lot of assaults or, you know.
S1 (19:04):
Yeah. Sophie Gilbert put it. Or at least the person
that wrote the write off in The Atlantic. No, women
aren't the problem. America is rapidly becoming the manosphere. But sure,
let's go after the feminization of culture.
S5 (19:14):
Yeah. I mean, particularly in the American context in that article,
the Sophie Gilbert article in The Atlantic kind of lays
out so beautifully.
S1 (19:21):
In.
S5 (19:21):
A well-argued and, you know, beautiful prose.
S1 (19:24):
Yes.
S5 (19:25):
America at the moment feels like it is just being
kind of like supercharged with testosterone. I mean, we obviously
have Trump in the white House. We have him destroying, um,
you know, literally kind of bulldozing the east wing.
S7 (19:38):
It's about $300 million. It's set to do many, many things,
including meetings of foreign leaders, including the honoring of foreign leaders.
You can see this.
S5 (19:47):
There's going to be like a UFC fighting wrestling ring,
I think, set up outside the white House for some
sort of celebration. Yes, we have Ice agents, masked Ice agents,
ripping women, children, undocumented male immigrants off the street and
huddling them into hustling them into vans.
S1 (20:05):
It's apocalyptic. I mean, it's visual.
S5 (20:07):
I don't think you could say that. You know, they've
changed the name of the Ministry of Defense to the
Ministry of War.
S8 (20:14):
Yeah, that this name change is not just about renaming.
It's about restoring. Words matter. It's restoring. As you've guided
us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory
and clarity as an end state, restoring intention.
S5 (20:32):
I mean, I don't think we we have seen in
modern times a more heightened masculine culture in the United States.
And it's sort of spreading, I suppose, through the internet
across the world. So it does seem like a strange
thing to focus on at this particular moment.
S1 (20:46):
I mean, it does seem bizarre, but I was wondering
whether this is perhaps the culmination of a growing wellspring
of conservative thought in the US in particular. I mean, obviously,
we've seen the rollback of reproductive rights. Do you think
this is just a reflection of that, like maybe we
haven't noticed it?
S5 (21:01):
Yeah. Look, I think it's really easy to laugh at.
It is easy to dismiss because as I said, I
just don't think it's a very serious piece of work
on its intellectual merits. And I'm here for conservative feminism. Like,
I suspect I'm a conservative feminist myself in some respects,
in that I think family is very important. Like, I
think that women should be supported to be mothers if
(21:23):
that's what they want to do, and families should be supportive.
But I'm here for interesting, well founded rational civil debate
around feminism, right? Or even the feminisation of the workforce.
But what I think this is because Helen Andrews herself
says that she has no solution to this so-called problem.
And she says it's a problem, a risk, a threat,
(21:43):
like it's a very catastrophic essay. It is. And she says,
at no other time in history has a society allowed
women to control major institutions and major companies like, it's
really like, you know, you just tighten. Well, you substitute
another group for women, you substitute Jews, black people, whatever
(22:05):
you like. It doesn't sound so good, right? Like it's
a very, very sort of it's a very catastrophic tone
that she puts in there. And I think that it
is loosening. It's moving the Overton window. So it's kind
of like loosening up the debate for, well, do we
really want women in these positions of power? Aren't they
just going to prejudice feelings over over facts? And aren't
(22:27):
they just going to make decisions based on their vibes
rather than on the law? So I think it's kind
of it's making those ideas more mainstream, and we're arguably
doing that by even hosting this podcast, I don't know. Yeah. Um,
but also I don't I think that in a, in
a world particularly in the United States, where reproductive rights
are being rolled back, what her big bugbear in this
essay is, um, is sex discrimination law and sexual harassment law.
(22:49):
So workplace legislation that has, um, evened up the scales for,
for men and women. And I think that this kind
of debate opens up ground for people to roll back
those protections. And those protections have been, I would say,
one of the greatest advances that we have made in
the 20th and 21st century, because they have allowed and
(23:12):
made it safe and feasible for women to enter the
workforce in the numbers that we have. So we've achieved
parity in most workplaces, I suppose. And why is that important? Well,
it's important because it improves living standards, because, you know,
you're unlocking enormous amounts of human potential. So, you know,
(23:33):
GDPs go up, productivity goes up. You know, you have
a huge resource, 50% of the population that was previously untapped,
that is now, you know, being economically productive. But more importantly,
it increases human satisfaction and increases, I would say overall
human happiness and the happiness of families, happiness of men
and women, because we're participating in a more equal society
(23:56):
where everybody gets to do what humans are supposed to do,
which is have fulfilling work. And that doesn't mean you
don't always have to do that in workplace. You can
do it from home as well. But I think we
all know that human beings need something. Most human beings
need something outside the home and outside of themselves to
feel really fulfilled and like they're living a full life
(24:16):
and to give their lives meaning. So that's the stakes.
S1 (24:24):
Well, you know how much I love being able to
speak to you about, uh, difficult and controversial subjects that
sort of need to be ironed out, or at least
made somewhat clear. So thanks, Jack.
S5 (24:34):
Thanks for having me.
S1 (24:41):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
(25:07):
and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive
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and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
morning edition. Thanks for listening.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
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