Not Such a Feminist Paradise

"Sweden seems to be an egalitarian, feminist utopia. So why are American women so far ahead of their Swedish counterparts in breaking through the glass ceiling?" asks Christina Hoff Sommers in a well-documented article in AEI's The American this month.

Sweden has the kind of very generous 'family friendly' policies that American liberals dream of, including:

• a 16-month leave policy for new parents — male and female; and
• a parental right to work only part-time (at a reduced salary) until his or her child is 8 years old.

But it turns out that even in the feminist paradise state, women take advantage of the policies (the mommy track) while men stay focused on the career track. In 2012, Swedish officials reported 1 in 3 women (33%) took the part-time parental work option, compared to only 1 in 10 men (10%). Not surprising, women hold fewer high-level jobs than men, too.

Sommers cites the following findings of two major recent studies on the impact of 'family friendly' work policies on women: 

• Swedish-style 'family friendly' work policies "make employers wary of hiring women for full-time positions at all."
• European "broad-based welfare state policies impede women's representation in elite competitive positions."

With fewer welfare-state work policies than Europe, the United States is a better environment for women who want to break the glass ceiling. Writes Sommers:

Though the United States has fewer women in the workforce (68 percent compared to Sweden’s 77 percent), American women who choose to be employed are far more likely to work full-time and to hold high-level jobs as managers or professionals. Compared to their European counterparts, they own more businesses, launch more start start-ups, and more often work in traditionally male fields. As for breaking the glass ceiling in business, American women are well in the lead, as the chart below shows.

Ironically, liberal welfare-state, family-friendly work policies appear to boost men's careers and earning power a lot more than women's. Another case of feminist-fail.

Read the full article.