By: Charlotte Aver
“Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” was published by The New York Times in video form and as a transcript on November 6th, 2025. It was originally titled “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” but due to online backlash the offensive title, targeting at least 56.7% of the workforce, was changed.
The podcast is a conversation between the host, Ross Douthat, and two guests, Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, both authors. The conservative bent of the conversation is immediately evident. A great deal of the conversation is a discussion about the “evils” of wokeness and how women in workplaces are pushing wokeness onto men. They define liberal feminism as toxic feminism characterized by unnecessary gossiping and complaining.
Ms. Andrews recently wrote an essay called “The Great Feminization”, which asserts that feminism has failed us, made our institutions too feminized and has driven out masculinity. My gripe with this premise is that the definition of how to be masculine is often based upon not being feminine. “Don’t throw like a girl” and “Don’t cry like a girl” are phrases often said to boys which implies that the idea of masculinity is based on anti femininity.
Ms. Sargeant recently wrote a book titled ‘The Dignity of Dependance’ with the premise that liberal feminism has forced women to suppress their nature to fit into the workplace that is structured for men. I have an issue with this premise as well; we are all human and therefore our brains work in similar ways, so why would a woman have to “suppress her nature to fit into a workplace” if the brain chemistry is almost identical?
The first question discussed in the podcast is “What is the difference between men and women?” Ms. Andrews starts off by not answering the question; instead she states that “wokeness” has too many feminine ideals and qualities and is the reason that our intuitions are “very clearly self-evidently broken”. She then goes on to discuss the #MeToo movement, which she described as a “flavor of wokeness”, that was a way for women to be heard regardless of the credibility of their testimony. To me it sounds like she doesn’t believe that the aggression women reported actually happened and that women used #MeToo simply to gain attention. She says that probing questions on the incidents would be considered rude and disrespectful, and that wokeness is about shutting down conversations. I strongly disagree with this statement because it appears the person who doesn’t want to have a conversation is her.
In another case of her saying things that I feel indicates she does not think women should be believed when they report mistreatment she states “Title IX kangaroo courts for sexual assault on college campuses. If that is what the feminization of the law looks like in practice, I think that’s horrible.” I think that saying this indicates that she thinks women being heard is horrible. It is unreasonable to both discriminate against women and discount their stories and experiences.
As they continue to discuss the differences between women and men, the conversation turns to prehistory social structures. As a freshman I just studied this in world history and I am here to say that Ms. Andrews made some blatantly wrong statements. “And they needed to be able to engage in conflict, to fight, and then, when that fight was over, you needed to be able to make peace. And that women, being more oriented toward child rearing, were more likely to have protracted conflict with their rivals within the tribe and were less likely to reconcile at the end.” At the time she is describing, women and men had almost equal roles within their tribe, the men hunted and the women gathered, which were equally hard jobs. They raised children together but only one or two at a time due to the dangers of raising a child.
As they continue talking about women in the workplace, Ms. Sargeant makes a statement that highlights the virtues of masculinity, but only calls out the vices of femininity without providing any virtues. That masculine virtue is about risk-taking, about embracing chances, brotherhood, fighting, making up, and comfort with turbulence, right? Masculine vices are about vulgarity, and in some sense condescension toward women, and female vices are about gossiping, backbiting, irrationality, ostracism. ”It is not fair to state that feminine ‘vices’ drive out masculine ‘virtues’ without considering how the opposite could be true.” As I already mentioned, women and men are both human first, with similar brains. Each has both virtues and vices that are more about who they are as people not their sex, but Ms. Sargeant seems to want to blame all vices on women. During the discussion both women say that men need a job where they can be masculine, and that women push them to their vices of being “condescending to women” – but when women report that behavior, Ms. Andrews and Ms. Sargeant don’t believe it. Do they have an issue with men being “masculine” or do they just hate women being honest?
I personally find their hate of feminism funny, because without feminism would Ms. Andrews or Ms. Sargeant have been able to publish their books on their own? Would they be able to keep the money that their books and essays make? Would they even be able to open a bank account on their own, without someone to cosign, to store that money to then buy the materials they need to write the essays and books? I think that their argument is incredibly privileged, because they take everything feminism provided them for granted and don’t even see that the privilege that they hold comes from the feminism they so dislike.
They end the podcast by discussing what would be best in the future and Ms. Andrews says she doesn’t know what should happen which is interesting for someone who has such strong opinions on the topic. I think she would like to see women leave Corporate America but doesn’t want to say it publically. Ms. Sargeant says that women should depend more on men, which I don’t think is what is needed at all.
Overall, I find this to be a piece of media constructed to make men who don’t want women in their workplace feel better about not wanting them there. Built to cater to a conservative male perspective and using female voices to make those unpleasant views ok is stooping too low for my taste.
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