So, what is Andrews’ solution to the problem she names? “Feminisation is not an organic result of women outcompeting men,” she explains. “It is an artificial result of social engineering, and if we take our thumb off the scale, it will collapse within a generation.”

In a recent popular essay, American cultural critic Helen Andrews warned that the feminisation of workplaces, academia and law presents an existential threat to civilisation. Is she correct? And if so, what is the solution?

Just occasionally, an idea with great explanatory power for the world we inhabit is articulated with singular clarity.

“The Great Feminisation”—an essay published earlier this month by American cultural critic Helen Andrews—does exactly that.

In just over 3,400 words, Andrews observes an elephant whose presence has long lingered in the proverbial room, but that most Westerners—men especially—have been reluctant to call out.

“Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organisation or field.”

“That is the Great Feminisation thesis,” Andrews writes. “Everything you think of as ‘wokeness’ is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminisation.”

It goes without saying that, as a woman herself, Andrews is not diminishing the worth or value of women. Instead, she is challenging the modern notion that men and women have identical, inseparable and interchangeable strengths. Her aim is to expose how this false belief has hurt society—including women—and how we might make it right.

According to Andrews:

Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behaviour applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently. How did I not see it before?

The numbers don’t lie, Andrews contends:

Medical schools became majority female in 2019. Women became a majority of the college-educated workforce nationwide in 2019. Women became a majority of college instructors in 2023. Women are not yet a majority of the managers in America but they might be soon, as they are now 46 percent. So the timing fits. Wokeness arose around the same time that many important institutions tipped demographically from majority male to majority female.

“The substance fits, too,” she adds. “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritising the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.”

As an example, Andrews cites one survey which “found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite”.

For those who bristle at Andrews’ argument, she has elsewhere offered the following, rather compelling defence:

Feminisation is a great example of what Michael Anton calls the Celebration Parallax, which is a fancy term for anything where you’re only allowed to notice something if you think it’s a good thing.

There are literally thousands of articles out there saying it’s great that we have more women judges now because women are more empathetic, or it’s good to have more women on corporate boards because that’ll make capitalism more humane.

It is only when you say women are fundamentally changing the bedrock institutions of our society and that might be bad that you start to get into trouble.

The Dangers of the Great Feminisation

In her recent speech on the same topic, Helen Andrews warned about the dangers of the Great Feminisation:

Feminisation, in the case of many important institutions, is a bad thing. In a few cases, it is so bad as to threaten the end of civilisation. The rule of law, for example, is a very important thing. It’s also very fragile. It requires a deep commitment to objectivity and clear rules, even when those rules yield an outcome that is not nice. I do not want judges who are more interested in context and relationships than in what the law says.

Academia is the one part of our society that’s supposed to be about finding and transmitting the truth. If it instead becomes about censoring ideas that are dangerous or threatening, then it no longer serves its purpose.

In business, if the only way to advance at your company is to behave in the most HR-compliant way possible, that’s going to exclude and discourage the very people who are most likely to be leaders and innovators.

I happen to think that the most important political issue in America today right now is immigration, and that is a perfect example of a political issue where the elite consensus is highly feminised. We have all of these laws on the books about citizenship and borders, but we’re not allowed to enforce any of them if it might make somebody sad.

So, rule of law, pursuit of truth, borders, innovation—without these things, I am not being hyperbolic when I say that a thoroughly feminised civilisation will set itself on the road to collapse.

Three Compelling Insights from Helen Andrews

Before I offer three measured correctives to Helen Andrews’ thesis, let me highlight three of her most compelling insights.

First, there are innate and immutable differences between men and women. Writes Andrews:

Female group dynamics favour consensus and cooperation. Men order each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade. Any criticism or negative sentiment, if it absolutely must be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments. The outcome of a discussion is less important than the fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it.

“The most important sex difference in group dynamics is attitude to conflict,” she concludes. “In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracise their enemies.”

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