Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine (Catherine Hakim)

Equal opportunity policies, in regards to women’s access to the labour market in the UK, have been successful. Despite this, many politicians and feminists appear disappointed with the slow pace of change in women’s attainment of top jobs. Sex differences are treated as self- evident proof of widespread sex discrimination and sex-role stereotyping rather than the result of personal choices and preferences. Thus, calls to smash the glass ceiling, to eliminate the pay gap and to end sex differentials are regularly heard in Parliament and from supranational organisations, academia and the media. But these demands for further change rest on faulty assumptions and outdated or partial evidence. For the latest academic research and cross-national comparative studies show that most of the theories and ideas built up around gender equality in the last few decades are wrong. Despite feminist claims, the truth is that most men and women have different career aspirations and priorities. Men and women often have different life-goals and policy makers should therefore not expect the same job outcomes.

Gender pay gap 'down to women's lifestyle choices' (UK)

Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, said women have the freedom to make lifestyle choices about their work and private lives, and that tougher equality laws will not open any more doors for female workers. She also warned that women who combine top executive roles with a family rarely have more than one child - and struggle to spend much time with them. In a 12,000-word report to be published next month, Dr Hakim described new government policies to promote equality as “pointless” and based on “feminist myths”.

Feminist ideal a myth: Gloria Steinem

Women grappling with the overwhelming pressure for perfection that can wreak havoc in their lives need to realise that the notion of "having it all" is largely a myth, women's movement icon Gloria Steinem told eating disorder clinicians at an annual meeting in the US. Women have made huge strides in the workplace over the past several decades, but with no reduction in their amount of responsibility for child-rearing and household duties, she said. Steinem told the group of several hundred attendees, many of them psychologists, physicians and nutritionists, that women cannot "have it all" unless and until men have an equal role in rearing children.

Women's Choices, Not Abilities, Keep Them out of Math-Intensive Fields, Experts Argue

The question of why women are so underrepresented in math-intensive fields is a controversial one. In 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, set off a storm of controversy when he suggested it could be due partly to innate differences in ability; others have suggested discrimination or socialisation is more to blame. Two psychological scientists have reviewed all of the evidence and concluded that the main factor is women's choices -- both freely made, such as that they'd rather study biology than math, and constrained, such as the fact that the difficult first years as a professor coincide with the time when many women are having children.

Women's 'double shift' of work and domestic duties a myth finds new research (UK)

Feminists are wrong to claim that men should do a larger share of the housework and childcare because on average, men and women already do the same number of hours of productive work. In fact, if we consider the hours spent doing both paid work and unpaid household, care and voluntary work together, men already do more than their fair share, argues LSE sociologist Catherine Hakim in a special issue of Renewal: a journal of social democracy. Until recently, unpaid work such as childcare and domestic work has been hard to quantify and so mostly ignored by social scientists and policy makers. The development of Time Use Surveys across the European Union, however, has provided data on exactly how much time we spend carrying out both paid and unpaid productive activities. The findings show that on average women and men across Europe do the same total number of productive work hours once paid jobs and unpaid household duties are added together - roughly eight hours a day. Catherine Hakim said: ‘We now have a much more specific and accurate portrait of how families and individuals divide their “work” and this data overturns the well-entrenched theory that women work disproportional long hours in jobs and at home in juggling family and work. Feminists constantly complain that men are not doing their fair share of domestic work. The reality is that most men already do more than their fair share.’