The most widely discussed essay of recent weeks is Helen Andrews’ The Great Feminization. The American journalist argues that what is often attributed to neo-Marxism, to extreme forms of political correctness, or to shifts in psychology, is in fact the result of the feminization of institutions. In offices, newsrooms, universities, and public agencies, women now dominate numerically and culturally—and women’s collectives behave like women’s collectives. They prioritize conformity, emotional safety, required smiles, and the elimination of anything that might disturb the atmosphere of comfort. That, Andrews contends, is the essence of the great transformation of recent decades—much more than any ideological change.
The article has, unsurprisingly, stirred intense reactions on both sides of the cultural divide. Yet the mere fact that it could be published—and that even liberal commentators now respond with phrases like “I disagree, but it’s interesting”—reveals how dramatically the public mood has shifted compared to just two years ago.
Andrews is correct that female mass behavior differs profoundly from male mass behavior. A crowd of shrieking girls produces an entirely different social energy than a mob of half-drunk, aggressive men, or a tightly drilled military formation. She is also right that ideology itself is rarely decisive. For an ideology to be accepted, it must harmonize with the prevailing temperament, customs, and material interests of the group that embraces it. This is why intellectuals spend so much time searching for receptive constituencies. Ideological entrepreneurs are not unlike corporate salesmen: the best salesman is not the one who praises the product most loudly, but the one who finds the right buyer.
Where Andrews goes astray is in assuming that every female collective must resemble a faculty of gender studies or the editorial board of The New York Times. There are striking counterexamples. When Israel’s Supreme Court mandated the inclusion of women in combat units, the all-female squads that emerged did not exhibit the hallmarks of the stereotypical “female collective.” Psychological studies show a near-total adoption of male behavioral patterns—including vulgar speech and a form of predatory sexuality once thought foreign to women.
Women, Andrews notes, are above all conformist. Intolerant political correctness comes naturally to them, but that is not because they are ideologues—it is because they conform precisely to the expectations of their environment. As columnist Laura Kennedy observed, “The male-dominated academic environments I worked in were every bit as passive-aggressive and conflict-avoidant as the media spaces now dominated by women.”
A more persuasive explanation, then, is not that women remade institutions in their own image, but that institutions themselves changed first—they became bureaucratic, image-sensitive, risk-averse, and managerial. Once the nature of organizations shifted, it was only natural that women would thrive in them, for they simply fulfill the new requirements more effectively than men.