Why is it that as women get more rights, their well-being decreases, and they are less satisfied with the treatment of women in society? In this episode, we discuss a graph that shows the decline in satisfaction with the way women are treated by society.
00:00:00.000So the question is, why is it that as women get more rights, they become less happy, their well-being decreases, and they are less satisfied with the treatment of women in society?
00:00:21.280We have an increasing pandemic of imposters in our society.
00:00:25.180And yet our society isn't allowed to say, no, you are genuinely incompetent, and you got where you were due to the scales being tipped in your favor.
00:00:53.020So this is a pretty mainstream U.S.-based polling company that theoretically has rigorous methods.
00:00:59.820And they asked U.S. adults, both men and women, are you very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied with the way women are treated in society?
00:01:53.560Actually, there was a study, like a meta-study, that looked at a lot of studies on things like happiness ratings of women and stuff like that.
00:02:01.500Women have traditionally reported higher levels of happiness than men, but they are now reporting happiness levels that are similar to or even lower than those of men.
00:02:09.280The relative decline in well-being holds across various data sets and holds whether one asks about happiness or life satisfaction.
00:02:15.960Yeah, and I'm not going to go around like defining feminism or talking about where we are in feminism because I'm not an expert in feminism.
00:02:22.320And I frankly don't really care that much how we're going to like talk about it or what academics are saying because that's not reality.
00:02:28.080But I would say, and I think it's like most people would agree, that at least in the United States where this poll took place,
00:02:34.500there are more privileges for women in society and more preferences in terms of hiring, in terms of university, in terms of political favoritism, et cetera, than ever before.
00:03:17.180And remember, this is a question about treatment and not rights.
00:03:20.160I think that we reached a level of equal rights, like statutorily speaking, legally speaking, a long time ago, way before this survey ever started.
00:03:29.160So we're not even looking at women's rights being affected.
00:03:32.580What we're looking at is how women are treated.
00:03:34.440And what we have seen change over the period of this study, from 2001 to 2021, is a change in female favoritism.
00:03:46.000I think that favoritism or privilege creates entitlement, and entitlement breeds dissatisfaction.
00:03:53.460And I think we can see similar things with other social justice arenas, where we've gone past technical legal rights and gone to, okay, now we're going to give you outright favoritism and bias in your favor, which leads people to feel entitled, which then leads people to feel disappointed.
00:04:10.580And like entitlement, of course, like I've probably gone over this a billion times before, but there's nothing that triggers me more than entitlement.
00:04:16.720Like when someone becomes entitled, they are dead to me.
00:04:26.980This really aligns with some of the other studies we've covered and other videos that we've done, like, you know, the trauma video, where we show that individuals, when they looked at individuals who reported symptoms of trauma, and then they went through court filings, first, they found that the symptoms of trauma correlated with the amount of trauma that the person reported experiencing.
00:04:46.420And not their actual trauma experienced.
00:04:48.220It did not correlate with the amount of actual trauma experienced from historical documents, like court records and stuff like that.
00:04:54.580So people who didn't actually experience trauma in their childhood, but believed they did, would have all of the symptoms of extreme trauma.
00:05:00.740People who didn't experience trauma in their childhood, but, or who did experience trauma in their childhood, but didn't believe they did, had very little trauma response.
00:05:08.180And I think that you, you might be right here.
00:05:10.680So much of our mental states is a reflection of our internal self-narratives and not the things that are actually happening to us.
00:05:22.660And we know that women from the AILA study, which was just absolutely fantastic, where women reported within a equivalent data set to men as growing up in a less advantaged socioeconomic environment and being spanked more, when basically we know that neither of those things are true.
00:05:37.440They just have memories of worse things happening to them.
00:05:40.320So part of this is likely that women are being rewarded psychologically within our society more and more for taking on this victim mindset, this trauma mindset.
00:05:50.700Yeah, no, there's a strong correlation between this level of entitlement, entitlement in general, and an external locus of control.
00:05:56.640Like, if things don't go well for me, it's because I wasn't treated the way that I was supposed to be treated, because I should always be treated better.
00:06:05.080Well, I think you're right about this.
00:06:07.540But although I do think that the other things at play, and I'd even ask you this, okay?
00:06:11.920Do you think that you would be significantly less happy if we lived in the past and it was just expected that, like, you wouldn't work or be as educated?
00:06:22.240If you had a husband who supported you, like, you know, with the founding fathers and stuff like that, where you would make an impact on the world through their work, like Abigail Adams or something.
00:06:32.020Like, would you be happier or less happy in that world?
00:06:36.800I think about also, like, in modern contexts, people we know who were raised in environments where they were told, like, you know, you're going to be a housewife and you'll be impactful through how you teach your children and, you know, how you support your husband.
00:06:48.660That would be hard to think that that's sort of your only option.
00:06:52.220I think, yeah, but I don't – I think the bigger issue isn't that.
00:07:00.160And, again, like, I think we have to separate this from female rights because, again, this graph does not cover meaningful changes in women's rights at all.
00:07:07.000Well, so this actually goes back as you go further back.
00:07:10.260So if you go back to, like, the 70s, the trends continue.
00:07:14.280But does it go back to, like – I want to see the 19 – like, I want to see 1890, then I want to see –
00:07:21.580I think it actually goes up during that period.
00:07:23.660Like, if you go, like, 1920s to 70s – now, I haven't looked at this, but this is my intuition – it probably goes up during that period.
00:07:29.540And then this twisted feminism, like, after feminism began to become eaten by the virus and be used to try to remove all pain instead of promote genuine equality.
00:07:40.020Or try to remove personal responsibility from individuals.
00:07:43.020That is when it began doing this psychological damage.
00:07:46.160Well, and the danger is – and, you know, like, it's giving anyone entitlement.
00:07:50.300So, like, before – like, I think before women's rights were adequately covered, men were entitled and men were being assholes.
00:07:58.140And I think also men were, like, not – probably not as happy because they were being disappointed after assuming that they deserved everything and were mistreating people and were taking on things that they weren't good at because they were taking too much.
00:08:11.140I think a big source of dissatisfaction, too, and this is probably going to be a fairly spicy take, is that in modern society now, women are being given positions that, frankly, they can't take on.
00:08:22.440And this is something that we've seen, like, in off-the-record meetings we've gone to with various leaders talking about, like, hey, you know, I work in this governmental department or I work in this large corporation.
00:08:31.700And there are women who are being hired into positions that, frankly, are not qualified for those positions.
00:08:36.040And I have no trouble – like, these are otherwise very qualified women, but they're not qualified to do this position they got hired for.
00:08:42.620They'd be really qualified in something else, but not for this.
00:08:45.860And so I think maybe a lot of what's also happening – I wonder if there are graphs or there's research on imposter syndrome and people –
00:08:53.860Oh, yeah, everyone's always complaining about imposter syndrome these days.
00:09:06.040Yeah, there's this unfair bias, right?
00:09:08.520It's not that they have imposter syndrome.
00:09:10.180It's that we have an increasing pandemic of imposters in our society.
00:09:14.160And yet our society isn't allowed to say, no, you are genuinely incompetent and you got where you were due to the scales being tipped in your favor.
00:09:21.380But, like, you know, even so if everyone were just to set aside the damage done by putting unqualified people into positions, I think it even hurts the unqualified people.
00:09:31.380And I think this graph is kind of showing this subtly that even those who are given these privileges kind of know that they're not doing a really good job.
00:09:43.320It doesn't feel good to not do a good job.
00:09:45.900And I'm not saying this means that women need to go back to the kitchen where they belong, although I love – I just baked bread with the boys yesterday.
00:10:21.600And this is a life satisfaction thing.
00:10:23.200I think the issue is, you know, you cannot like doing – you cannot like the responsibilities that you're burdened with.
00:10:29.140Like, they can challenge you in a way that is trying, but you still have a better self-image because you are the type of person who are entrusted with these challenges, which improves your perceived life quality.
00:10:40.520Well, I like playing a meaningful role in our income.
00:10:43.180I like, you know, feeling like I'm pitching in in a meaningful way.
00:10:47.820Like, I bet a lot of people didn't exactly enjoy going out into the fields and doing backbreaking farm work, but I'm sure they really enjoyed having stores of wheat for their family all winter and having dried meats.
00:10:58.360You know, they didn't enjoy butchering the cow, but they, you know, had a blast.
00:11:02.480Well, and they enjoyed allowing their family to thrive and being the self-narrative of the protector and everything like that because these self-narratives are really what creates our happiness.
00:11:10.780Now, self-narratives are malleable, but they become – when a person is just like an NPC, they are easily modified by like social wins like this modern and twisted feminism we live with today.
00:11:21.260And this brings me to a really interesting point that you made, which is men might be better off in a way because society is so rigged against them right now in that the mothering of a group imparts mental fortitude to that group, which in the end may help with life satisfaction.
00:11:44.260I'll push back, but finish your point.
00:11:45.460Well, so long – this is what I'm thinking is I'm thinking of stories I've read about, you know, for example, like Jews, for example, in areas where they were clearly not super welcomed in society at the time but that weren't in full-on like pogrom or holocaust mode yet.
00:11:59.080The challenges that they went through made all of their successes feel like truly meaningful and made them feel more distinct and unique from society and also helped with community within that group.
00:12:11.720If you look at men's communities, I mean, I think this is something that's been growing significantly right now.
00:12:17.820You know, right now we can pitch Exit Group, Kevin Dolan's organization.
00:12:20.540I mean, like ask your typical guy kind of anywhere, and he is fairly likely to be in some kind of private society because they're just figuring it out on their own.
00:12:29.080Well, I mean, so there was a long period of male private societies, and we'll do an episode on this one day, like why they existed and what purpose they served in society.
00:12:36.580They were openly known, you know, like the Rotary Club and the Elks Club and the Society of Odd Fellows and the Freemasons.
00:12:44.480But those have largely collapsed, and there was this period without them.
00:12:47.880And I think what caused them to collapse was that the audience that they were serving was in such a dominant position within society for so long.
00:12:55.340And now we see organizations reforming that have similar goals.
00:13:14.040Yes, from a larger scheme of things, giant painting of history, the disadvantaged groups are benefited because only the strongest survive.
00:13:25.640So, like, when we look at sort of the inverse of what's happening, like, to men, like, especially if you are a cis, white, middle to upper class male, but we are hearing this from young men.
00:13:39.680Like, they're getting, like, leaked notices from employers they're trying to work with that are like, you know, we can't hire any more white men.
00:13:47.300And this is, like, really, really discouraging to me.
00:13:48.640This has come up to me even, and I'm from an older generation where, you know, a job that I had tried for my whole life, I was told, actually, there's a moratorium that you don't know about that's not public information against hiring white men for this job right now.
00:14:01.860Yeah, well, because, like, I think it's fairly illegal in many cases for people to do that.
00:14:06.020But, like, you know, off the record, and that's where we're going.
00:14:08.760See, we've gone beyond rights and we've gone to favoritism, even sort of actually breaking many equal rights rules.
00:14:15.780So, but what does this mean that those disadvantaged groups or groups subject to bias are doing?
00:14:22.600Well, that means this is forcing those men who are smart enough, who have enough initiative, et cetera, to actually build new companies, build new empires, and then really own the future, right?
00:14:32.040Like, they're not some bureaucrat or functionary making a cush job and not making a difference.
00:14:36.220They have to go out and make their own difference, and in the end, they're going to own 100% of that, which is really meaningful.
00:14:41.440So, yes, on, like, the larger scale, yes, this benefits the group that is doing life on hard mode.
00:14:49.440However, the vast majority of people are not going to, like, they're not going to make it through hard mode.
00:14:55.300They're just going to, like, wash out.
00:14:56.660And this is what Jonathan Haidt's been looking at a lot with his team is, like, actually young men in the United States are floundering more than young women.
00:15:05.000And they originally had not thought that that was the case because, you know, women are like, man, it's so hard.
00:15:12.080And, like, they report more mental health problems because that's kind of, like, what women do, whereas, like, men kind of are not allowed to do that in the same way.
00:15:18.780But what they are seeing and where Jonathan Haidt specifically changed his mind about, oh, wait, no, men really are doing poorly in society now is they're just completely opting out of society.
00:15:39.580I think that this is really important.
00:15:41.280So it means that we have to, when we're raising our kids, you know, take this into consideration for both our sons and our daughters.
00:15:46.500If we raise our daughters to become susceptible to this trend where women will perceive themselves as being victims more, where women will take on this victim trauma mindset more often, we are hugely disadvantaging them.
00:16:01.140And we need to work really, really hard in terms of how we frame things for them.
00:16:05.540Like, many people say, why do you give your daughters masculine or gender-neutral names?
00:16:41.940So Simone constantly underestimates herself vis-a-vis the world population.
00:16:48.460And, you know, I've mentioned in the past, like when I got to Cambridge, what I had to ask her to do to like build up her self-esteem is, okay, this is supposed to be where the best of the best are.
00:16:55.700Every day, ask yourself if you've met anyone that day who is at your level.
00:17:00.280And it's just every day she'd be like, no, I haven't.
00:17:03.400She had imposter syndrome in that when she went there.
00:17:06.940So I would say I didn't have imposter syndrome.
00:17:09.600I just had everyone is better than me syndrome.
00:17:11.320But I've never felt in a role like I'm not qualified.
00:17:14.960And I think what's meaningful here, and I think this is where, like, if we're talking about how do you deal with imposter syndrome, there are two things that you may feel.
00:17:22.660I mean, one, like basically we figure everything out as we're going along and we openly admit to ourselves, I have no idea what I'm doing.
00:17:29.720This is all really weird, but we're just going to figure it out.
00:17:32.720But we have the ability to figure it out.
00:17:34.600I think imposter syndrome is very different.
00:17:36.960It is I have no idea what I'm doing, and I don't even have the tool set I need to figure it out.
00:17:42.660Like it's like it's like showing up is like, you know, you're in a surgery room and your job is to do brain surgery.
00:17:55.460It's also in part caused by a lack of initiative in that when you say that imposter syndrome is OK, like when you're like it's OK to not know what you're doing
00:18:03.720or to not feel like you know what you're doing and to not feel like you're qualified for something.
00:18:07.740If you got into a position and you were like, OK, I'm lacking here, here and here, then you would fix those things like that would be like, OK, I'll just fix it.
00:18:16.520Whereas imposter syndrome is like, I'm not going to or just like, yeah, you know, maybe maybe what?
00:18:23.460Yeah, what makes them imposters is they actually could if they had initiative.
00:18:28.140Figure it out as they went along and actually not be imposters, like become the real deal, but they literally lack the initiative.
00:18:34.960Maybe this is one of those things where like, you know how it turns out that being fat has a big genetic component.
00:18:40.480Right. And that, you know, it's not it's really not your fault if you get fat, especially modern society.
00:18:45.820What I think is going on is you lack the inhibitory controls to deal with the addictive elements of hyper processed food in most cases.
00:18:51.900Like that's why most people in modern times are now hitting this when like before people with these apparent genetic tendencies weren't getting overweight.
00:18:58.640I think that maybe there may be some like literally like genetic problem that some people have where they like they just don't have the literal like mental nuts and bolts necessary to figure things out as they go along.
00:19:13.280And it's not their fault, but also that happens to women more often than men.
00:19:17.980And do you think it's biological or societal?
00:19:19.640I could see it belonging more to women than men because women have had fewer evolutionary pressures to figure things out as they go along and they have more evolutionary pressures to go along with the group, which does not involve initiative, does not involve figuring things out, right?
00:19:36.740But it does allow them to outcompete within bureaucracies.
00:19:39.020Another interesting thing is that while the scales are being tipped in their favor, they also have a particular or potential biological advantage within these bureaucracies to rise from the bureaucracies.
00:19:52.680Which was argued by that one guy that we, whose subject we read about, what was it?
00:19:58.120Population booms who argued that basically like the solution to baby booms is remove a lot of government bureaucracy and social services because that will naturally reduce the rate of women who are employed in a way that stops them from having kids.
00:20:14.420Because women have an unfair advantage in bureaucratic systems due to the nature of their biology, which it's an interesting take that I just, you know, like people don't typically present that, but I think he's right.
00:21:07.180Understanding that part of who they are and part of the legacy of their position in the world today and the challenges that the agents of Providence have created for them was designed to strengthen them in a way.
00:21:32.300But you are going to be among the best.
00:21:34.140It means that when you then take the skill set you built up during this period and you apply it to areas of your life that are more meritocratic intrinsically, like entrepreneurship, you are going to outcompete other individuals who didn't have to deal with the challenges that you're having to go through.
00:21:53.360And this is one of the really rich thing about a lot of these, you know, putting their fingers on the scale of the system to make it easier for one group or another group is in that disproportionately pushes those groups into jobs that have much lower income caps, i.e. bureaucratic jobs or jobs at large companies.
00:22:10.160And it pushes the people who are being discriminated against into much more entrepreneurial professions, which have much, you know, they don't have any cap on how much money you can earn.
00:22:20.780And ironically, lead to the groups that are being the most discriminated against ending up in the positions of outside success most often, and then with the most influence in society, which is really interesting to me.
00:22:35.900And these often end up having, I mean, so long as those groups have a level of genuine competence in the way that they are culturally approaching this.
00:22:43.080If they take the approach that, like, you know, we are just downtrodden, I will not try, then they do not gain these advantages.
00:22:49.160They need to see all of this as a challenge that was meant to test and improve them.
00:22:54.080And if they take that approach, it ends up benefiting the group overall and leading them to more power in the long run rather than less power in the long run.
00:23:01.100And a lot of that comes down to contextualizing it as, you know, essential, good, you know, a test that they must pass that is a good thing and an important part of proving themselves that makes them stronger and sharper, even when they lose, even when they're kicked down.
00:23:14.540I would just add to that. This doesn't mean that we expect our sons to like back out of every bureaucratic organization.
00:23:22.640If they, if they, for example, are an amazing, they want to be an amazing particle physicist or whatever, you just have to be the entrepreneur within what everything you enter, meaning that you cannot enter through the I'm going to work my way up way.
00:23:35.540I'm going to go like, no, you have to instead be like this breakout, you know, at age 14, published, you know, five peer reviewed papers, became world renowned, got a full ride scholarship, sort of like you have to figure out how to surpass the bureaucracy.
00:23:48.180So you can't enter a bureaucracy, but you have to do so in a way that means that you are in some ways not subject to the rules, right?
00:23:57.480Yeah, no, I think that that's absolutely right. And teaching them that when they are going down bureaucratic pathways, they need to look for how they can hack the system and be incredibly strategic.
00:24:09.220But these hardships were designed for them. You know, the agents of Providence don't allow this stuff to happen by accident.
00:24:14.080All of this was meant to strengthen the individuals who are meant to be strengthened by these unfortunate events, be they men or women.
00:24:22.180It's just whether or not you have the mental fortitude to either as a woman, ignore all of these calls to, you know, aggrandize yourself to fall for trauma narratives and victim narratives.
00:24:32.140And as a man to overcome the challenges that society is setting for you.
00:24:36.900But the current regime, I think, is very damaging to both men and women.
00:24:44.080And it's interesting, you know, a lot of the red pillars will go out there and they'll be like, well, women set all this up.
00:24:48.760It's like, not really. Actually, men set a lot of this like feminist stuff up as well.
00:24:54.160You can't just blame one group. And a lot of the women who are most affected by this are the ones who buy most into it.
00:25:01.200And a lot of men who are most affected by it are the ones who buy most into it.
00:25:04.140Oh, conspiracy theory, if you want. You could argue that a lot of men who are already in positions of power actually benefit from hiring in inept, corrupt imposters because then who actually has all the power, who actually can get this stuff done, who actually is indisposable.
00:25:21.220Well, and this is something that is done a lot within companies or more than people think is people are intentionally hired around people that to prevent them from from losing their job.
00:25:31.300You can't lose your job if the people below you are less competent than you.
00:25:34.400And we've genuinely seen this. We've genuinely seen both like as third parties and within our own organization, organizations, I should say, people choosing to not hire or trying to fight against hires that they feel could supplant them.
00:25:47.640So, yeah. And this is why bureaucracies are intrinsically evil, which we talk about in the Pragmatist Guide to Governance. You should check it out.
00:25:53.720And it has been wonderful chatting with you, Simone.