Over the past year, several women-focused articles in the New York Times declared feminism has gone too far, and put the onus on women to fix what is broken.
An article asking if liberal feminism “ruined the workplace” broke the internet late last year.
An article last month featured a conversation with influential, right-wing columnist Louise Perry, about how women need to change, in order to close the growing gap between men and women. Perry’s position justifies re‑inscribing patriarchal control over women’s bodies and sexuality in the name of “protecting” us.
I feel a familiar sense of disappointment in the recent feature, “Women Are Too Controlling, She Wrote. Her Message Still Resonates,” about Laura Doyle, author of The Surrendered Wife, a 2001 self‑help book and the basis for a relationship “movement” that teaches women to relinquish control in their marriages, defer to their husbands’ decisions (including finances), and focus on their own “self‑care” and gratitude to restore intimacy and harmony.
Each article asks a version of the same question: How should women change?
Doyle’s message and the broader “surrendered wife” ideology, is troubling.
What struck me even more was that one of the country’s most influential newspapers presented it as a growing cultural trend, without examining the cultural forces and gender expectations that have long reinforced this ideology.
Women and feminism don’t need to surrender. They were never the problem.
