I am a woman. Am I “feminine”?
What even is “feminine”?
These questions, among many others, flew through my mind as I watched the New York Times’ Interesting Times segment entitled “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” It was soon renamed “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” due to widespread backlash from readers of the New York Times and women as a whole, which struck me as quite ironic. Because one of the guests of the video, who incidentally is the focus of the essay at hand, had touted that “cancel culture” — or “wokeness,” as she called it — was so very terrible. And “canceling” was exactly what had happened to her.
That woman is Helen Andrews, a conservative commentator, author, and journalist. She has written for The American Conservative, the Washington Examiner, and the National Review. She has authored numerous books and essays. But it was her essay entitled “The Great Feminization” that found her a place on Ross Douthat’s New York Times segment.
In this essay, she argues that her perceived vices of the fairer sex — group hysteria, failure to “compartmentalize,” sympathy, the placement of emotions over “rationality,” and the “pursuit of truth” — will break down many major societal institutions, most notably law, scientific research, and democratic proceedings. Andrews, in the conclusion of her essay, writes that the feminization of the workplace will make society “conflict-averse” and “consensus-driven.”
What follows is a breakdown of and commentary on the arguments contained within her infamous essay.
Analysis
I must admit — while reading the essay, I was immensely intrigued.
It is widely acknowledged that women and men have different tendencies when it comes to group behavior. As a teenage girl in high school, I can’t say I’ve never witnessed it firsthand, and you likely can’t either. But reading through Andrews’ essay was almost comical in its analysis. I found myself laughing at certain statements, simply because the statements were utterly polarizing. The sentiment I got from the entire essay, summed up into a phrase, is “Man good, woman bad.”
But my speculations aren’t fact. So, let’s talk about facts.
The evidence presented in backing of Andrews’ high claims of the innate behavior of groups of women to cancel others, or to put empathy over rationality, was many-a-time lacking. Putting aside the statistics meant to show how many women hold positions within each career pursuit, evidence with numbers pertinent to the general population, which would best support theories of group behavior, is only mentioned once in her entire essay — and it reads as follows: “One survey, for example, found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite.”
But a quick click on the hyperlink from which she gleaned that data revealed to me: this data was not from the general American public, representing women of all ages and experiences. This was data from 4,407 college students — in no way touching on the general sentiment of all the women in the workforce, whom this essay explicitly targets.
In fact, a study conducted with virtually the same population of students (as they both used participants from the organization College Pulse) found that 35/44 college campuses they surveyed had a student population that was 50% or more “liberal.” Granted, “liberal” means a variety of things to different people, but its mainstream definition is often similar to taking note of and working with the emotions and experiences of people — which could be labeled as “creating a cohesive society.” Thus, the sample she used for her data is biased, as the general American population is only half as “liberal” (25%) as the population on college campuses.
Women are less likely to disregard the First Amendment than Andrews leads you to believe.
What interests me most is the fact that some of Andrews’ claims aren’t necessarily wrong — she just frames them in a strange, provocative way. I found that she had taken the aforementioned data from an essay comparing the group behavior of men and women by Cory Clark and Bo Winegard, PhDs in Social and Personality Psychology and Social Psychology respectively.
Here’s where the analysis differs: Andrews frames the differences between male and female behavior in an utterly negative way. She writes, “Now that medicine has become more feminized, doctors wear pins and lanyards expressing views on controversial issues from gay rights to Gaza,” as if advocacy is an atrocity. She argues, “Female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation,” as if agreement is abhorrent.
Yet as Clark and Winegard write in their own essay on the same topic, “In many applied settings (such as medicine), for example, the entire purpose of the rigorous pursuit of truth is to discover interventions that improve human well-being, so truth goals and moral goals are almost perfectly aligned.” Even taking Andrews’ argument at its highest ground, just because institutions may be moving towards a more “feminine” future — championing empathy, cooperation, and kindness — does not necessarily mean those institutions are on a path to destruction.
What both of these essays touched on, and what I found most intriguing of all, was the argument about evolution. Joyce Benenson, Lecturer in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, wrote a book entitled Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes. In it, she champions that men evolved to be “warriors,” developing group behaviors that were optimal for war and strategy, while women evolved to be “worriers,” developing traits that were optimal for child rearing. This statement could be considered sensical, considering how society and the sexes operated in centuries past.
What is completely omitted from Andrews’ essay, however, is Benenson’s observations of the real world. While Andrews only cites an example Benenson provided about a psychology experiment in which she says men “cheerfully relay[ed] a solution” while women simply chattered, Benenson’s thoughts do not stop there — as evidenced by the existence of an entire book.
In fact, as author Carlyn Beccia points out in her own exposition on Andrews’ essay, Benenson writes just a page later: “Are men really more task-oriented than women? Evidence in the real world suggests the opposite of what research in a university laboratory shows. In most cultures, women consistently work longer hours than men…Women typically take most of the responsibility for caring for babies and older family members, and for finding and preparing food. Surely this counts as a task, one that often requires working around the clock.”
What does this tell us? It tells us that although men and women could have evolved differently, developing traits optimized for their roles at the time and bringing those traits into the modern world, those traits are not always the master of our behavior. Women may have evolved to be “worriers,” but they will still work when duty calls. Evolutionary traits are not do-or-die.
As Andrews’ essay continued, the claims only clambered higher, but the evidence itself slimmed down tremendously. She writes, “…the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female.” This was one of my favorite claims, because the evidence that followed was not up to par with such doomsday foreshadowing.
Her first piece of evidence was the Title IX courts back in 2011, where college campuses carried out investigations into sex-based discrimination, harassment, and violence. I will admit, there were many controversies within Title IX cases — with a struggle to find the balance between survivor rights and due process — because of which rules and regulations have since been updated to make the cases more just. But to claim that every wrongdoing in those cases was because of women was a high cry, and I saw no evidence pointing towards that conclusion.
Just because women made up the majority of the complainants does not mean that those women were doing something wrong. Also, specific wrongdoing on the part of specific women did not, and does not, speak for the general population of women.
Andrews then cited the Supreme Court nomination controversy of Brett Kavanaugh, in which three women accused him of sexual misconduct of varying degrees. Here’s the thing: Brett Kavanaugh was still confirmed. Andrews goes on to write that while the “masculine position” on the case was centered around Blasey Ford (one of the women) and her ability to provide evidence, the “feminine position” was that “…[Blasey Ford’s] self-evident emotional response was itself a kind of credibility that the Senate committee must respect.”
But I found myself asking: who is the “masculine” here? Who is the “feminine”? While data on groups of different men and women can show that women are sometimes more prone to protect and men sometimes more prone to seek truth, that in no way means that in every court case, the female population will blindly follow the prescribed victim.
In fact, in 2024, 41% of U.S. lawyers were female. A decade ago, when the Title IX courts were raging on, it was 36%. If Andrews was correct in her theory of legal degradation by the hands of women — who supposedly put empathy over law — then I would assume that the current legal situation would be worse than that of the Title IX cases. But, because Andrews used the 15 year-old Title IX cases as her main evidence, I wouldn’t be quick to label that as truth.
Finally, one of Andrews’ big contentions stands with anti-discrimination law. “It is illegal to employ too few women at your company,” she writes. “As a result, employers give women jobs and promotions they would not otherwise have gotten simply in order to keep their numbers up.” Her reasoning began with allegations of gender discrimination against large companies in the past decades: Texaco, Goldman Sachs, Novartis, and Coca-Cola, which resulted in said companies paying complainants nine-figure sums in settlements or damages.
Now, although I did intern at an employment law firm last summer, I am in no way a lawyer. But I do know this: cases aren’t lost, and settlements aren’t considered, without evidence. In the 2010 Novartis case, which was the only case out of the examples to reach trial, the jury voted unanimously in favor of the women. Andrews is quick to box all of these major discrimination cases together, taped up with a big red label that reads “whiny women” — when that may not always be the truth.
She then cites a discrimination case from the 1990s, where a woman sued for — as she says — “pinups on the walls of their work areas.” Of course, when framed as such, it sounds like quite a silly thing to sue over. But in fact, on Andrews’ New York Times appearance, her evidence provided was ripped apart by another guest on the segment. Because that case wasn’t about any normal pinups. They were pinups of completely naked women, with lewd graffiti. That would make any sane person uncomfortable, even other men.
The essay ends with Andrews’ trademark foreshadowing. “I am — we all are — dependent on institutions like the legal system, scientific research, and democratic politics that support the American way of life,” she writes, “and we will all suffer if they cease to perform the tasks they were designed to do.”
So, What Now?
I am a young woman, about to enter college — and eventually, the workforce. It was strange to hear my identity berated so heavily. To be told that my gender was the problem, to be told that we are going to be the reason that society falls. Especially because I consider myself “feminine,” by the standards of its mainstream definition. I have an abundance of empathy. I do think cooperation is, in most cases, a much better resolution than continued conflict.
But evidence has trumped shock value. The “feminine” it seems, will not crumble institutions just yet.
Contrary to Andrews’ view of my traits as a woman, I am — we are — able to live in the grey area where conflicting sentiments collide. Although skeptical of her arguments, I acknowledge that perhaps there exists some semblance of truth behind some of her statements, especially considering the fact that other scholars have commented on the phenomenon of “feminization.”
But no matter virtues and vices, no matter if the “masculine” or the “feminine” will ravage society, men and women are stuck together — in the home, the workplace, and the world. So, naturally, my question at the end of Andrews’ essay was: how do men and women work together? I received no answer in her writing; there existed no sentiment aimed at finding the balance between the sexes.
Desperate for answers, I re-watched her New York Times appearance. And then, all at once, it was abundantly clear to me why Andrews wrote “The Great Feminization.” It made perfect sense. After all, Andrews is an Ivy League graduate and an author — someone I think unlikely to believe in the high claims and twisted evidence often provided.
What was her goal with this essay? The secret was unveiled with a simple question posed by the New York Times host:
“What do you like about women, Helen?”
A spiel on the dangers of “feminization” followed. What did not was an answer.
Contrary to Andrews’ view of my traits as a woman, I am — we are — able to live in the grey area where conflicting sentiments collide. Although skeptical of her arguments, I acknowledge that perhaps there exists some semblance of truth behind some of her statements, especially considering the fact that other scholars have commented on the phenomenon of “feminization.”