The gender wars are heating up — on the right

More than half a million women left the labor force this year.

- Abby McCloskey, Tribune News Service

Doug Wilson

Many are mothers with young children. It's being called the next she-cession. This may be a good thing to the extent that it reflects women's preferences, such as wanting to spend more time with their families, or that it represents the improved ability of a partner to support a family on a single income.It may be a bad thing to the extent that workplace policies (specifically the rollback of pandemic-era accommodations such as flexible work) make it harder for women to have a family alongside the career they trained for and desire to have.

But there's a new theory in town: The fewer women in the workforce, the better. That argument that working women are woke and will be the downfall of corporate America — is the subject of conservative commentator Helen Andrews’ viral essay, “The Great Feminization,” which is reverberating in conservative circles.

It seems that in response to the progressive left's obsession with genders and sexual identities, the political right is toying with its own gender extremism. And it’s not just Andrews.