After the patriarchy: The HR lady is in charge now
- Joanne Jacobs
- Oct 18
- 2 min read
The patriarchy has been smashed, writes Helen Andrews in Compact. The female future that feminists predicted is now -- or very soon.
In The Great Feminization, the pseudonymous J. Stone argues that women's growing power in our institutions and professions is changing society, and not always for the better. It explains the rise of wokeness, writes Andrews, the author of Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster.
"Women became a majority of the college-educated workforce nationwide in 2019," she writes. Law schools and medical schools are now majority female. Women make up 46 percent of managers, and rising.
In 1974, when I joined the workforce, "10 percent of New York Times reporters were female," Andrews writes. "The New York Times staff became majority female in 2018 and today the female share is 55 percent."
"Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition," she writes.
Andrews worries that a feminized legal profession will "bend the rules for favored groups and enforce them rigorously on disfavored groups, as already occurs to a worrying extent."
She fears a business world in which the human resources VP -- not the male CEO -- sets the tone. "If a business loses its swashbuckling spirit and becomes a feminized, inward-focused bureaucracy, will it not stagnate?"
Women have gained power because of anti-discrimination law, not because they're outcompeting men, Andrews believes. In a much-quoted line she writes: "Women can sue their bosses for running a workplace that feels like a fraternity house, but men can’t sue when their workplace feels like a Montessori kindergarten."
I remember the bad old days when many opportunities were closed to women, and I'm not convinced of Andrews' thesis, but I'm OK with her proposed solution. She thinks " fair rules " -- not firing the uppity women -- is the answer. "Let’s make hiring meritocratic in substance and not just name, and we will see how it shakes out," she writes. "Make it legal to have a masculine office culture again. Remove the HR lady’s veto power."
We all hate the HR lady, don't we?
The problem for writers from Helen Andrews to Christina Hoff Sommers is that they blame the black/white achievement gap on black culture/genetics while blaming the male/female achievement gap on mean, old female teachers picking on the boys (especially white boys).
Of course, one should remember that the gender gap is largest for blacks and smallest for Asians but does exist for all racial/ethnic groups. In addition, as Richard Reeves has argued, if admission at selective universities was based upon merit instead of things like sports, legacies, parental employment, and wealth, there would be a huge gender gap instead of the Ivy League schools being 50/50 male/female. What Mrs. Andrews means is that admission should be based upon SAT/LAST/GRE/MCAT scores a…
Lawyers, HR about the same. Just read a reaction to this article from the view point of women taking over the legal profession and legal decision becoming more about feelz.
Can the Rule of Law Survive Women?
By John Hinderaker
HR used to be a service organization, c. 1980. Serving the needs of the rest of the company. The tsunami of regulation has put them in the driver's seat. As a hiring manager, I generally found their inputs to be irrelevant or counterproductive.
Fred Drinkwater
I recommend reading the whole column by Andrews; it's certainly thought-provoking.
Notice that, as Andrews says, it's group dynamics and not individuals that account for the problems she describes: it's the dynamic when women predominate (and not necessarily the 'fault' of individual women) that, if she's right, has led to "wokeness" and all its discontents.
If we try "fair rules" from now on, then we (as managers) wouldn't award 'extra points' for sex, or sexual orientation, or race/ethnicity; we'd go for actual, demonstrated achievement / merit.
Sounds good to me!
Grin about HR women. A co-worker and I once made HR scream. It was in Southern California, and we were chasing a lizard, so that it could be returned to the outside. The lizard ran underneath her closed door, and out of either fear or startlement , she screamed. We didn't get the lizard.
Personal opinion. If Dante had known about HR, he would have made them guardians of the lowest parts of hell.