Gloria Steinem’s triumphant failure

Gloria Steinem died this week at the age of ninety-two. She was a ground-breaking feminist who championed abortion rights as the path to the equality of the sexes and true happiness for women.

She said her abortion saved her from losing the career to which she aspired:

“I would have been stopped there. I was working as a waitress in London waiting for my visa to India, where I had a fellowship. I wouldn’t have been able to do that [without the abortion]. My life would’ve stopped there.”

Perhaps it would have been replaced by the joys of motherhood. But Steinem chose career over the life of her daughter.

Steinem promoted her contempt for men by repeating the feminist trope, that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” She railed against the ‘patriarchy’:

“Patriarchy – or whatever you want to call it, the systems that say there’s masculine and feminine and other bullshit – is about controlling reproduction.”

And yet she wanted women to become more like men.

In this age of ‘suicidal empathy,’ she said:

“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”

And yet she demonstrated a shocking lack of empathy towards her aborted daughter:

“[Abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could!”

Love her or hate her, Gloria Steinem’s vision for women was triumphant. Despite the Dobbs decision which returned abortion regulation back to the states, abortion is widely available. In Blue states, it is minimally regulated, if at all.

Success or failure?

So has the political success of Steinem’s feminist movement served women or hurt women?

It’s hurt women, in light of a number of sociological markers. Twenty percent  of women take some form of an antidepressant medication. Best selling author, Dr. Leonard Sax, spoke in Des Moines last year spelling out just how depressed young women are. 

Sax said research reveals women are more anxious than ever. 

They are more likely to suffer from eating disorders and abuse alcohol.

They are more likely to cut themselves, a practice known as non-suicidal self-injury.

He spells it out in more detail in his best-selling book, “Girls on the Edge“.

But interestingly, the women who embrace Gloria Steinem’s liberal feminist doctrines are less satisfied with their lives than the women who reject it. The Institute of Family Studies identified a significant happiness gap:

“We found that 37% of conservative women reported being “completely satisfied” with life, whereas only 12% of liberal women did. Young conservative women are three times as likely to report being very satisfied with life compared to young liberal women. Moreover, liberal women are two to three times more likely to report they are “not satisfied” with their lives, compared to conservative women. And consistent with previous research, the effect of ideology on young women’s happiness held up to controls for age, education, race, and income.”

Steinem devotees are less likely to attend church or get married compared to their conservative counterparts. And as the Institute of Family Studies reports, marriage and a belief in God cultivates happiness.

Sadly, only 35% of women under the age of twenty-five have a favorable view of men. Coupled with the abortion culture championed by Steinem, our country’s replacement birth rate has plummeted.

Sixty-four million abortions have occurred in the U.S. since 1973 thanks to the efforts of Ms. Steinem and the feminist movement she championed. She has shouted her abortion with pride, and with not the least amount of shame, encouraging impressionable young women to do the same.

How has that all worked out? Women’s happiness has been in continual decline since the 1970s according to researchers Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers in their paper, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”

In essence, Gloria Steinem’s feminist vision for America has been largely realized. And women are more miserable than ever. 

R.I.P. Gloria Steinem.

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