Feminism has failed women

The media I read has been awash lately in articles that, in various ways, demonstrate the failure of feminism.

At one end, older women are lamenting that their lives, influenced by feminist thought, have led to singleness and childlessness, and they are realising the sadness of this. In the end, a successful career – however much enjoyed – did not make up for the loneliness of being without these basic life relationships.

Indeed, our world has a certain craziness about it when it comes to romantic relationships. One might conclude from every form of entertainment that almost nothing else matters; finding true love is the absolute goal and central value of life.

Yet feminism, still the dominant philosophy of almost every woman and every public institution, has often had a problematic view of romance. If men are the enemy, as some strands of feminism posit, is the ideal singleness or lesbianism? Both answers can be found in feminist literature. But some (heterosexual) women at least are now publicly acknowledging that prioritising a career so heavily in their twenties came at a serious cost.

"The pain has never left me", says one 63-year-old woman. "[It] now resides somewhere tucked away in my subconscious, rearing its head on occasions like my nephew’s party, or times when parents are sharing in-jokes about their beloved offspring."

At the other end of life, there are reports that younger women today just don’t like young men or are despairing at ever finding the right relationship that would enable them to raise children. Birthrates are drastically decreasing in most Western countries, but it may not be the dislike of children so much as the problem of the context in which to raise them.

As young men and women grow increasingly divergent in their political and moral views, how on earth is marriage to flourish? The current progressive views owe much to academic feminism, as "women’s rights" morphed into "women’s studies" and identity politics. Yet it has not resulted in greater harmony between people or happiness in relationships. Whatever the goal might have been – freedom? Satisfaction? – the result has not been better lives for mothers and children.

This could be, at least in part, behind some of the astonishing increase in religious vocations. In what might be considered an increasingly secular and anti-Christian mileau, young women are entering convents. And they are even choosing the hardest convents: secluded, cloistered lives of contemplation and prayer.

“It’s radical, and we know it is radical. When young women want to embrace the contemplative life nowadays, they’re looking for radical change,” one young nun said.

The attraction of career and relationships is not proving to be the temptation that most modern commentators would consider it to be.

Feminism was supposed to make life better for women, and as a result, for everyone. It was supposed to be about justice and harmony and equality and making the world a better place. Its advocates still claim that that is what feminism will do. Yet we keep seeing examples of its failure to do so.

It seems that Western world is experiencing an increase in conversions of young men. Let us pray that we will also increasingly see the conversions of young women.

For secular philosophies do not work. For all the increased economic wealth and the new opportunities it has brought for women in the twentieth century onwards, it does not seem that life is more satisfying overall. God does not promise an easy life, but He does show us how to live in wise concordance with creation rather than against it. If truth in abstract does not convince, let us pray that its outworkings will.