Women Not Under the Influence of Feminism

If the various American states are considered to be laboratories for democracy, that is, places where new policies can be tried out on a smaller scale before they are enacted on a larger scale, then Holland seems to be something of a reverse laboratory for feminist ideology.

By that I mean: How would women in advanced industrial and democratic societies live their lives if they had not suffered the influence of feminism?

The issue should not even be new news. By now it should be old news. The book that provoked the debate, Ellen de Bruin‘s Dutch Women Don‘t Get Depressed, was published in 2007.

To the best of my knowledge, the book has not yet been translated into English.

When the book was published, it elicited some commentary. More recently Jessica Olien wrote about it on the DoubleX blog, the Economist covered the story, and I wrote a column about it entitled, “Have Feminists Gotten It All Wrong?” on the Right Network.

Now the story has gotten its third wind. London Daily Mail reporter Liz Jones recently traveled to Holland to try to figure out what is going on with Dutch women. Her article is nicely entitled: “The Land That Feminism Forgot.”

Like Jessica Olien, Liz Jones found that Dutch women seem to be far happier and to have far more balanced lives than do their British counterparts.

Neither she nor any of the others who have written about this topic have figured out how it happens that Dutch women seem to be immune to feminism. How did it happen that this group of women did not allow their minds to be colonized by feminist ideology? How did they have the moral fortitude to stand up against the Anglo-American feminist tide and say: No, not here.

Why did these women, in this advanced democracy, refuse to follow the lead of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Germaine Greer?

In other Western countries feminism rode a fictional wave of caricatures about women’s lives. When she went to Holland, Jones wanted to put them to the test. She wanted to see for herself whether women who have escaped feminism have been consigned to lives of domestic servitude. Are they household drudges, chained to their stoves, bound to the mindless tedium of housewifery?

She concludes that despite what feminists would have you believe these women are basically very happy. I think it is fair to say that in many ways she envies their lives.

Perhaps the worst part is that Dutch women have one of the lowest divorce rates in Europe.

But why have these women made the choices they have made? Have they been brainwashed by the patriarchy? Are they relics of some prehistoric age? Why wasn’t their consciousness raised? Don’t they understand that America and Britain call the cultural shots in this world?

As Jones observes, and as Olien reported, these women live their lives the way they do because that is their free choice.

If American women do not have a free choice, then the credit, or the blame, must go to feminism for insisting that women place career above all else.

So, feminism is the enemy of women’s freedom to live their lives as they choose. To be a feminist you must live your life the way feminists choose.

Amazingly, Dutch women like having free time. Jones reports: “Studies show that Dutch women don’t want to spend more time at work: they refuse extended hours at their jobs, even if they don’t have children. And they are horrified by British women’s lack of free time.”

These women are not neurotic and dysfunctional. They are not as stressed, harried and bedraggled as she, a British journalist, is.

Dutch women do work. But most of them prefer to work part time. They pursue their education, even to the point of gaining graduate degrees. They have the option to turn their degrees into careers, but most of them do not want to.

Apparently, they choose to be less involved with their careers in order to have more time for home and family.

Working part time, they do more housework than the men who, largely, support them. If they do not have as much money as a two-earner household, they do not care.

As you might guess, and as Jones reports, this system only works because Dutch men pay for everything. And this must mean that the jobs held by men are sufficient to support a wife and family.
In America, many women work full time because they have to work full time.

While some have to do it to help support their families, others do so because they want to maintain a certain lifestyle.

Among young Americans today, it appears that women are doing better than men. Under those circumstances, going "Dutch," as the old saying goes, feels just.

In Holland, couples do not split the check. Men pay for women, men court women, and men provide for women.

Women are not the only ones who like it that way. Men do, too.

While doing her research, Jones met a young men who was running home with an armful of tulips. She asked him whether his girlfriend worked full time.

He responded, in words that no American man would dare even think: “Are you kidding? No, it is my job to worship her, to make her happy and fulfilled.”

A chastened Jones concludes: “Maybe the Dutch women have got the right idea, after all.”