At a time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce. Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world's great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France. Women's economic empowerment is arguably the biggest social change of our times. Just a generation ago, women were largely confined to repetitive, menial jobs. They were routinely subjected to casual sexism and were expected to abandon their careers when they married and had children. Today they are running some of the organisations that once treated them as second-class citizens. Millions of women have been given more control over their own lives. And millions of brains have been put to more productive use. Societies that try to resist this trend-most notably the Arab countries, but also Japan and some southern European countries-will pay a heavy price in the form of wasted talent and frustrated citizens. – Economist
Dominant Social Theme: Hurray for women …
Free-Market Analysis: The liberation of women is in our opinion another dominant social theme, one of the longest running of the power elite's promotions. The real push for women to become part of the work force happened in the 20th century. Not surprisingly, this was the century that saw the imposition of full-fledged central banking around the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was still culturally a problem for women to work, but the power elite promotion was launched to make women "modern" and it is still ongoing.
If you want to implement global governance, you need to break down the family unit as much as possible. Nothing can stand in the way of the state. From the power elite's standpoint, getting women into the workplace in the name of "equality" solved a lot of problems at once. It left children parentless during much of the day, so that the state itse lf could take over childcare. And without the firm guidance of the full family, many children, especially girls, became much more promiscuous at an early age which also contributed to a fracturing of private culture.
Giving women a sense of employment empowerment also contributed to the divorce-rate as women were more likely to utilize state-provided divorce proceedings that were for the most part favorable to them and therefore facilitated the family break up. But the real reason, in our opinion, that woman's liberation is a power-elite promotion, and a very long-running one, has to do with central banking. The erosion of fiat money earning meant inevitably that to keep up there would have to be more than one wage earner in the household. Woman's liberation was promoted, in our opinion, as a way of making it culturally acceptable for women to work – so as to conceal the degradation of the currency.
Many women want to have a more active role in the family, and even if they don't, there is no guarantee that from a biological perspective the husband is able to do what is necessary on a day-to-day basis. This often may leave the woman with the majority of the household tasks, no matter what magazines say and family psychologists recommend. In fact, women who have trouble with this sort of massive schedule are encouraged to feel subpar – as if something was wrong with them.
Modern Western women may wish to celebrate the ability to have a career and help care for a family at the same time. But now that the Western employment infrastructure has imploded in the late 2000s, a career may have turned into a situation where the woman is merely holding on to a job she neither especially likes nor wishes to pursue. (There are very few women, still, who have glamorous jobs at the top of multinational firms.) Work is not so fulfilling after all, but the necessity remains.
Ed note: The Daily Bell does not intend, in this article, to imply that women, like men, should not work as they choose when they choose if they wish to or need to. The Daily Bell is all for female empowerment and for human empowerment generally. But what this article does attempt to point out is that a power-elite promotion has been put into place for purposes of justifying central bank fiat-money degradation, and that the "formal" (ideological) feminist work movement has thus been promoted with cynical motives and not for the benefit of women but for the benefit of the banking elite. (1/8/10)
NOTED: "EPA proposes nation's strictest smog limits ever … It wants to toughen the ozone limit adopted in 2008 by cracking down further on power plants, factories and landfills. Much of the U.S. could then be in violation of federal regulations. … Environmentalists praised the agency for proposing regulations that match the unanimous recommendations of an EPA science advisory committee. … Industry groups warned the regulations would increase business costs. … The proposal now enters a public comment process, which will include open hearings next month in Arlington, Va.; Houston and Sacramento before the EPA makes its final decision." – LA Times
The modern Western woman needs money. Taxes and inflation have wrecked the family budget. Thank goodness times have changed! she is told to think. She may not fully understand what is going on worldwide due to the erosion of fiat dollar, but she sure feels the pinch, and believes therefore she ought to feel grateful for changing cultural mores. She also feels she ought to celebrate her empowerment. If she does not celebrate her increased range of responsibilities and mind-numbing work schedule, there are articles in publications such as the Economist that will be glad to explain it to her and put it in the best possible light.
