Malcolm and Simone Collins break down Helen Andrews’ “Great Feminization Theory” — the idea that the rise of wokeness, institutional dysfunction, and cancel culture correlates with fields tipping majority-female and importing feminine sociological norms (empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition).

They explore law schools, medicine, media, management, conflict resolution styles, why organizations feminize and then decline, practical solutions, male-only spaces, and how this intersects with marriage, ambition, and building high-agency families in a declining culture.

Show Notes

The theory

* presented by journalist Helen Andrews at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, DC in September 2025

* Speech got over 175K views

* later published as an essay in Compact Magazine in October 2025

* Connects the rise of wokeness and institutional dysfunction to higher percentages of women in formerly male-dominated fields

* Because women bring feminine values that prioritize empathy over rationality, safety over risk, and cohesion over competition

* Notes that many key institutions tipped from majority male to majority female in roughly the same period that “wokeness” intensified:

* law schools (majority female since 2016)

* New York Times staff (majority female since 2018, now 55 percent women)

* Medical schools (majority female since 2019)

* College instructors (majority female since 2023)

* The college‑educated workforce (majority female since 2019).

* Women now 33% of judges (63 percent of those appointed by Joe Biden)

* Women now 46% of managers

* Cites writers like Noah Carl and Bo Winegard & Cory Clark, saying survey data show women more likely than men to prioritize social cohesion over free speech (one cited survey: 71 percent of men favor free speech over cohesion, while 59 percent of women favor cohesion)

* Draws on Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers, she reports lab observations that male groups “jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,” then quickly converge on a solution, while female groups focus more on personal relations, eye contact, and turn‑taking, paying less attention to the assigned task

* Attributes the rise of cancellations to women’s conflict aversion

* That’s interesting—I hadn’t seen it as being that way but it is

* References research and primate observations claiming that males are quicker to reconcile after conflict, while females favor slow, covert, ongoing competition within a group, and generalizes this to say men tend toward open conflict and reconciliation, whereas women undermine or ostracize enemies

* Examples cited

* Larry Summers’ resignation from Harvard in 2006 (after his comments about women in science)

* Bari Weiss’ resignation from NYT (Weiss described colleagues calling her a racist and bigot in internal Slack, and shunning people friendly with her)

* Doctors wearing political pins, endorsing Black Lives Matter protests during Covid as “public health” despite lockdown rules, and generally importing political causes into professional settings as a “failure to compartmentalize” tied to feminization

* Causes cited

* Andrews claims feminization is not organic but engineered via anti‑discrimination law

* because under‑representation of women invites lawsuits and huge settlements (she cites large companies that paid nine‑figure or multi‑million settlements over gender bias or “frat boy culture”), firms are pressured to hire and promote women and to suppress “masculine” office culture

* THe creation of hostile-to-men environments

* women’s preferred norms drive men out rather than women simply “outcompeting” men

Is it backed up by actual evidence?

Support

* Medicine

* Momen comprised only 9.7% of doctors in 1970

* Reached 32.4% by 2010 and continue to increase

* Medical students are now over 50% female

* Law

* Women were just 4.9% of lawyers in 1970

* Rose to 33.4% by 2010

* Reached 41% by 2024

* Academia

* Women law faculty now constitute the majority among those with 20 years of experience or less

* Women are projected to become the majority of full-time faculty in ABA-accredited law schools by 2024-2025

* Government

* In the U.S. Senate, women held 0% of seats in 1973 and 1975, rising to just 2% through most of the 1980s, then accelerating to 25% by 2023.

* The House of Representatives showed similar patterns: women were 3.2% of representatives in 1973, 10.8% by 1993, and 28.5% by 2023.

* Women’s representation in presidential Cabinet positions has fluctuated more dramatically based on administration, ranging from 0% in the early 1970s to a historic high of 48% under President Biden starting in 2021.

* Re: General government employment: While women made substantial gains in government employment from the 1940s through the early 2000s—rising from less than one-third to nearly half of the federal workforce—their representation has largely plateaued around 45-46% since the 2000s and has begun declining in absolute numbers due to recent federal workforce reductions.

Mixed

* Journalism

* 1971: Women represented only 22% of daily newspaper journalists and 11% of television journalists

* 1982: women comprised 34% of daily newspaper staff and 33% of television journalists

* 2001: women had reached 37% of daily newspaper newsroom staff and 40% of television news staff

* 2022: 40.9% of US journalists are women

* television (44.1%) and radio (43.7%)

* weekly newspapers (41.7%)

* daily newspapers (37.2%)

* wire services (34.1%)

* News magazines (43.9%) (up by about 10% over the past decade)

* Online media (40.4%) (up by about 10% over the past decade)

* One 2023 survey found journalists nearly evenly split by gender, with 51% men and 46% women.

Contra

* Business

* Corporations in general

* Women represented about 47% of the U.S. labor force in 2000

* As of 2025, women STILL constitute approximately 47% of total U.S. employees.

* Women were just 35% of the workforce in 1970, rising to 47% by 1990. Between 1966 and 2013, women’s participation rates in the workforce increased from 31.5% to 48.7%

* Startups (down over time)

* For over a decade, only ~2% of venture-backed startups are exclusively female founded

* In 2024, female-only founding teams received just 2.3% of global VC funding ($6.7 billion out of $289 billion total), while all-male teams captured 83.6%.

* This 2% figure has remained largely unchanged since at least 2017, when female-only teams received 2.5% of funding. By 2026, some reports indicate this has declined to 1-2%

* Female workforce participation is below its peak

* Women’s labor force participation peaked at 60% in 1999-2000 and has since declined to 57.5% as of March 2025, remaining well below men’s rate of 67.5%

* Women still constitute only 47% of the total U.S. labor force, and projections suggest this will remain “slightly less than half” through 2032

* Women remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions where institutional power is concentrated

* Women hold only 27% of U.S. medical school dean positions and 25% of department chair roles despite representing 45% of faculty

* In law, men still “dominate the upper echelons of the legal profession through federal judgeships, state supreme courts, law firm partnerships and corporate counsel positions”

* Women represent only 33% of law faculty with over 30 years of experience and comprise just 38% of C-suite positions in corporate America (up from 31% in 2021) (See: National Jurist)

The Criticism

* Andrews presents no policy solutions

* Some push back on Andrews’ argument that women are emotional while men are rational

Helen Andrews’ Background

* American conservative political commentator and author

* Senior editor, The American Conservative

* Features editor, Commonplace Magazine

* Graduated from Yale University in 2008 (BA in Religious Studies)

* Lived in Sydney, Australia from 2012 to 2017 (worked as a policy analyst and think tank researcher)

* 2021 book: Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster

* Argues that the Baby Boomer generation harmed American culture

* Profiles six prominent Boomers: Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia Sotomayor

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about The Great Feminization Theory by Helen Andrews. In summation, if you are not familiar with the theory, ‘cause it’s been doing the rounds recently, and it might have some explanatory power to society’s current state.

She specifically looks at when various fields began to become majority female, be that university professors, law school students, scientists, management in the United States, most of which at this point is majority female. And she pinpoints the dates that these transitions happened to the rise of wokeness as a social phenomenon.

Arguing that what wokeness really is is a female sociological approach, like what makes female minds different from male minds, applied at the civilizational management scale. And I find it very interesting. I told Simone to dig into it. I mean, [00:01:00] unfortunately she’s got a cold today, so you’re gonna have to have a, a, a, a weak voice Simone here.