Nena Arias | May 2, 2022
“An excellent woman, who is he who can find her?
Her value is more precious than jewels and her worth is far above rubies or pearls”
(Proverbs 31:1)
Studies show that women are less happy than men these days. I believe the radical feminist movement has been the main culprit of wiping out the foundation for women’s true identity and set them on a downward spiral of dissatisfaction by crashing that foundation of identity and substituting it with one of quicksand. It is ironic that the movement that started out to free women is exactly what has robbed them of their happiness.
The following excerpt is from an article that reports the findings that women are less happy than men:
A little over a decade ago, two researchers at Wharton published a paper showing that, despite women’s increasing work and educational opportunities, their self-reported happiness was in steady decline. Back in 1970, women were on average happier than men; they are now less happy than men.
Broadly, since 1970, everyone has gotten more miserable. But the decline in women’s overall happiness has outpaced men’s, and the happiness curve inverted sometime in the early 1990s. The paper also documents increasing anxiety and neuroticism, as well as decreasing social cohesion among women.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that alcohol use has been increasing among women. Heavy drinking among women has increased 41%. Other reports state that rates of depression among women are at the highest rates ever measured, especially young women, but it continues through midlife. It is true women in general have more hormonal issues, creating more mood swings than men, but this has always been. So, clearly hormonal issues are not the real reason why women are less happy than men. This unhappiness is a general existential state of unhappiness.
In my view and what I have learned from God’s Word and experienced in my own life is that this unhappiness coincides with the growth and strong thrust of the radical feminist movement of the 1960s that told women they must liberate themselves of their “traditional” identity as women. The movement planted and publicized the idea of dissatisfaction in women of what had made women happy for millennia which is to find a good man, marry him and create a happy home as a team. Making a happy home is a phenomenal achievement and the bedrock of a well-adjusted society.
The radical feminist movement poisoned the minds of women “preaching” a false narrative that women in their traditional role were being oppressed by men and society was robbing them of freedom. Granted some of that has always gone on and it needed an adjustment, but it certainly was not the majority. This shift also coincides with the drastic change to American families due to WW II when the men went off to war and the women had to go to work and cover the home as well. But, when the men came home in 1945, too many women did not want to return back full time to the home and the domino effect was set in motion to destroy the traditional family. Sadly, a shift also took place in how the Christian churches did not emphasize the reimplementation of the biblical family order and the breakdown only continued.
In the case of the Suffragette movement in the early 20th century that gained women the right to vote and fought for equality for women in the workplace I totally agree that women were being robbed of that right. But since then, the radical feminist movement has gone extreme and made women want to be identical to men.
What the radical feminist movement did in actuality was to defy God’s order and identity for women and the family and since then, we have all been less happy in society as a whole. Not only have women been robbed of happiness, but the impact of changing their identity has been felt in everything.
If you study the profile of the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31, you will see the image of a truly successful woman in every sense of the word. God did not make a mistake in the family and social order he created for women to have their ideal environment to thrive.
Needless to say, it is time to get back to the true liberation of women as found in God’s Word—the Bible.
“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.”
(Proverbs 31:29-31)