Making strides?

Amy Otto writes at The Federalist,

Besides falling behind women academically, men are working dramatically less in the twenty-first century than in previous centuries.

...We are now riding on the immense technological advancement—often made by men, as Camille Paglia frequently points out—that has made us more free and prosperous than ever before. Now the risk is what to make of that new gift of leisure time. Do we take it and create even more successful families, businesses, inventions, cures? Or are many men who would have spent their twenties working hard if given the right social incentives instead spending that time watching the unrated version of “Blurred Lines” one too many times?

...While it’s wonderful women are making strides in college education and the workplace, there’s no reason this must be at the expense of men. Less stability for unmarried men diminishes their success all through life. That loss means less success for all of us.

Even worse, in dropping their standards women have reduced their capacity to get what they really want. Less commitment, less caring, less respect, and an increased emphasis on appearance are poor outcomes for women, too. Their random “empowerment” pictures on social media in emulating Kardashian are the only lever they have left in the arsenal because they’ve given everything else away. In an attempt to be known for our personhood, we thrown ourselves back on the most obvious weapon in a woman’s arsenal: curves.

Reverting to a primitive charm offensive in hopes of luring a man’s attention for 10 uninterrupted minutes is not empowerment. Nor is it what makes married women happy: “The biggest predictor of women’s happiness is their husband’s emotional engagement. The extent to which he is affectionate, to which he is empathetic, to which he is basically tuned into his wife, this is the most important factor in predicting the wife’s happiness. This basically drowns out every other factor in our models.”

Instead you have young girls today pushing themselves too early into pleasing men without expecting reciprocity. “College women are more likely than men to use their partner’s physical pleasure as the yardstick for their satisfaction, saying things like ‘If he’s sexually satisfied, then I’m sexually satisfied,’” says Sara McClelland, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. “Men are more likely to measure satisfaction by their own orgasm.”