[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

A Dramatic Reversal!

Our world has changed greatly since the time I graduated from High School in 1964. Drive-in theaters were still a place to go on a Saturday night. Transistor radios were a hot item for teens, and most of us learned to type on mechanical typewriters. Telephones were mostly dial-up versions. And, most of us had to wind up our watches unless we had one of those new ones that wound up by itself by the motion of our wrists.

But all of these are a thing of the past. Today it is all about computers. We talk directly with others over Skype or Zoom. For some, hardcopy letters are ancient history—everything is computerized, including greeting cards. Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram are the ways many interact socially.

But there are equally profound changes in society, not the least of which concerns how men and women see themselves. The feminist movement, which really took off in the seventies, has had a dramatic impact on culture and families. Do you realize that a reversal in the roles of men and women was predicted long ago in the pages of the Bible? I’ll read that to you in a moment, so stay tuned!

A Misleading Source of Information Results in Inequality

Welcome to Tomorrow’s World, where we fearlessly tackle the problems facing our world and bring you good news of a better world to come. On today’s program, I’ll be discussing the feminist movement and how it is fulfilling a prophecy from the Biblical prophet Isaiah.

Among feminists’ most successful initiative was the 1992 report released by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), titled “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” It alleged that boys were favored in the classroom while girls were ignored, but the report was biased and dishonest. Dr. James Dobson had this to say about it in his popular book Bringing Up Boys:

The most widely disseminated finding was that teachers permit boys to speak or participate eight times more often than they do girls, but as with the rest of the conclusions, this turned out to be pure nonsense. Their data was based on an old 1981 study that actually said boys are reprimanded eight times more often than girls, and that three-fourths of both girls and boys said they thought teachers compliment girls more often, think they are smarter, and [teachers] would rather be around female students. That level of distortion was evident throughout the AAUW report (Dobson, Bringing Up Boys, p. 172).

The report garnered significant attention in academia and in public

perception and brought about dramatic changes in how schools approached boys and girls. Dobson went on to write that:

Although the report has been widely discredited now in the professional community for what it was—a blatant attempt to skew educational resources away from boys and to characterize girls as victims—the damage had been done. It resulted in an unfair distribution of available resources that continues to this day (Dobson, Bringing Up Boys, p. 172).

Most damaging was when Congress, as a result of lobbying from various feminist organizations, passed:

… the Gender Equity in Education Act, which allocated hundreds of millions of dollars per year to programs designed to redress the [so-called] bias against girls (Dobson, Bringing Up Boys, p 173).

Among the initiatives in the Act, money was funneled to:

“reprogram” teachers who were unconsciously sexist (Dobson, Bringing Up Boys, p 173).

What the feminist movement, and especially the Act, has done is create an atmosphere that is bringing about the fulfilling of an ancient prophecy. You can read it in Isaiah 3 and verse 12;

As for My people, children are their oppressors, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths (Isaiah 3:12).

Education has changed at all levels since the AAUW report.

Falling Behind, Replaced—But for What Result?

This resultant bias in favor of girls in education, starting at the earliest levels, has had its effect. The September 6, 2021 Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Douglas Belkin titled:

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: “I Just Feel Lost.”

The numbers are disturbing. Roughly 60 percent of college admissions are women and schools of higher learning struggle to keep the male population at the 40 percent level. Samuel Goldman, writing for The Week, in the article titled “The American elite will be female,” points out that the ratio between men and women would be even worse were it not for a bit of fudging on entrance requirements.

The burgeoning gender gap is an open secret in higher education. With none of the fanfare that accompanies their pursuit of racial diversity, many institutions give an admissions advantage to men. One reason is that administrators fear women are also less likely to enroll when the male student population drops below 40 percent (The Week, “The American elite will be female,” September 8, 2021).

As disturbing as that is, it is only part of a dismal picture. Going to university is one thing—graduating is another. Belkin explains:

Among University of Vermont undergraduates, about 55% of male students graduate in four years compared with 70% of women (“A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost,’” Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2021).

Those percentages are significant, but when we put them to specific numbers, they are shocking. If you take 100 students where 60% are women and 40% are men, and apply the percentages who graduate in 4 years, it means for every 42 women graduates you only have 22 men.

Some would argue, “so what?” Men still make more money and hold power positions in our world. That’s the conventional wisdom, but Goldman points out that this is “largely a generational effect.” He explains that leaders across the board, whether in industry, commerce, communications, or government:

… began their careers decades ago, when college student bodies were more equally divided (and in some cases, exclusively male). It would be surprising if the gender ratio in upper management remained the same in another 20 years (The Week, “The American elite will be female,” September 8, 2021).

He then explains what should be obvious to all.

Because elite institutions hire almost exclusively college graduates, campuses are the point of departure for female dominance of publishing, the culture industry, and areas of the corporate world—particularly the massive human resources industry (The Week, “The American elite will be female,” September 8, 2021).

The double standard goes beyond education. For decades, women strove to invade every bastion of male exclusivity. Women reporters demanded equal access to men’s locker rooms for interviews. Girls clamored to play on boys’ baseball teams. They lobbied for admittance into the Boy Scouts. Anything that was singularly male became a target, but could you ever imagine males being allowed into women’s locker rooms or competing in women’s sports?

… Well, I guess we now can. What goes around comes around. Yes, by a bizarre circuitous route, men and boys are today invading everything female, by simply claiming that they are females trapped in male bodies. Girls and women are pushed aside as confused, or opportunistic, men break record after record in female track and field, in weightlifting, and more. Scholarships that should rightly go to girls are funneled to biological boys who will never become biological girls. I can only imagine the anger fathers must feel when they see their daughters robbed in this way.

In October 2017 the Boy Scouts of America began admitting girls to their organization. Not surprisingly, the ones most disturbed by this turn of events were the Girl Scouts! Yes, what goes around does come around!

The problem is not that special programs have encouraged girls in academics, sports, and leadership, but that these resources are mostly going in one direction. Just as girls have special needs, so do boys, and without proper support and motivation, too many are left adrift, feeling lost. Boys especially need guidance and focus as Belkin explains.

Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of over diagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medication (Belkin, Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2021).

Or, as civil engineering student Luke Weiss put it:

I see a lot of guys that are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree (Belkin, Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2021).

What we see is a world turned upside down. Instead of men as leaders, we have men floating aimlessly, with more and more leadership positions going to women. Some women no doubt rejoice in this turnaround, but thoughtful women understand that the problem is not good for society as a whole. As college enrollment consultant Jennifer Delahunty warns, the disparity we see in education today is not only bad for men, but also for women.

If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women (Belkin, Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2021).

One wonders, “Has the feminist movement, which spawned the biased AAUW study, improved the lives of women? Are women happier as a result?”

Does “Liberation” Equal Happiness?

According to a 2013 Psychology Today article, the 1970’s feminist movement has NOT translated into greater happiness.

This is a great time for women. Women all over the world are running countries, companies and universities. The most recent U.S. Secretary of State and Speaker of the House were women. Women make up about half of the workforce and can now fight side-by-side with their male counterparts in the military. But, given all of these advancements, are women happier? According to a 2009 study entitled, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, the answer is a resounding no (“Women & Happiness: Is It Still Declining?,” Psychology Today, March 10, 2013).

Quoting from the referenced study, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”:

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men…. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men (Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” NBERI, May 2009).

Britain’s Daily Mail Online published an article in response to the study, titled:

“Women have it all but are less happy than forty years ago.”

In it, Netmums website founder Siobhan Freegard explains:

We pushed so hard for equal rights, for having the right to work, for having equal status, we pushed so hard to have choice.

But what we hear from many mums is: I have no choice, I have to work, I don’t love my career, my childminder is taking half my salary and I’d rather bring up my children myself but I can’t afford to.

If you enjoy your job and it’s a fulfilling career, that is a positive choice, but if it’s not, it’s almost in some ways that we got it all, then found that actually it wasn’t quite what we wanted (Daily Mail Online, June 1, 2009).

An interesting observation is found in The Guardian, another British source, on May 18, 2016. It explains that the Swiss did not give women the right to vote until 1971. Many things in life are counterintuitive. They go against expectations. Ten years after receiving the right to vote, another referendum was held. This time to decide whether to amend their constitution to require equal pay for equal work.

Different parts of Switzerland voted very differently. Unsurprisingly, cantons (Swiss states) with a high proportion of votes in favor of the amendment were recorded as having a small gender wage gap some years later. But strangely, working women in areas with strong traditional values—where most people had voted against equal pay—were happier than working women in liberal cantons (“Gains in women’s rights haven’t made women happier. Why is that?” The Guardian, May 18, 2016).

One of the casualties of the feminist movement has been marriage and family. Feminists wanted to be free from what they described as the drudgery of housework and the responsibility of children. They wanted sexual freedom, and the result is a hookup generation where the commitment of marriage has declined sharply.

Men and Women, Working Together God’s Way

There are certainly women who are happy with their choices in life, but overall, studies show that they are less happy today than they were in the 1970s. This should not surprise us, because the feminist movement, among other things, is a rejection of God. This is not to say that individual activists—and especially women who simply bought into the attractive sounding propaganda of the feminist movement, without truly understanding it—were deliberately rejecting God. They saw the feminist movement as an attempt to improve the lot of women and did not realize it sought to overturn the roles of both men and women as given in our Creator’s instruction book—the Bible. But make no mistake. It is an attempt to do away with the nuclear family. But is that wise?

If we are indeed a product of creation and design, the Creator and Designer must know what is best for that which He created and designed. And, indeed He does!

The Biblical prophet Isaiah predicted that the reversal of traditional male/female roles would take place at the end of the age.

As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them (Isaiah 3:12).

O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths (Isaiah 3:12).

Men have not brought the world peace, and must bear responsibility for the world as it is today, but will women do any better? Not according to this prophecy!

Samuel Goldman’s prediction that “The American elite will be female,” is correct, even if Isaiah “scooped him” by more than 2700 years! Of course, it was not Isaiah, but our Creator who understood this in advance. In a later passage, Isaiah quotes God as saying…

Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure…” (Isaiah 46:9–10).

Male and female relations have never been in perfect balance. Far from it. Even today women are horribly abused in some countries around the world, where girls are not allowed to go to school and women may be beaten mercilessly with no consequences handed out to their husbands. Yet, our Western world has gone to a different extreme where men are considered bumbling fools incapable of the proper leadership role they were given by their Creator.

Radical feminists, many of whom resent men, perhaps due to abuse in their upbringing, or for other reasons, reject the God-given roles of men and women. And too many men are not being trained to be the loving providers and leaders they were created to be. The Bible lays out these simple facts:

For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man…. Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God (1 Corinthians 11:8–9, 11–12).

It is obvious that men and women are different physically and emotionally, but these differences are being discounted. Today it is the woman who comes to the rescue of the man. Need a tire changed? Woman to the rescue. Have a problem in business? Woman is there. Being attacked by city thugs? There she is again—stronger, quicker than any man, and a marvel at karate. But is this reality? I think we know the answer.

Men and women were made to complement, not compete, with one another. Men are designed physically to be protectors and providers. It’s not that a woman cannot provide and where the husband suffers sickness or injury, it may be necessary to reverse the roles temporarily or even permanently. There is no stigma to this. A man can still be the head of his household even under such circumstances, but when men do not prepare for the proper place of being the breadwinner and leave it to the wife to go out into the world to “bring home the bread,” problems readily arise. A woman needs to be loved and a man needs to be respected, and these needs are more likely to suffer when the roles are reversed. Instead of women fighting for control of the pants, God instructs:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:22–25).

Feminists have long scorned this passage as being sexist and misogynistic, not understanding that God has a plan far greater than they could ever imagine. Referring to the marriage relationship, Paul went on to say:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband (Ephesians 5:31–33).

The blending of male and female in marriage is essential to a well-ordered society. History shows that, as with the family, so goes the nation. Marriage between one biological male and one biological female can bring children into a balanced nurturing and loving environment where male and female contribute their unique qualities. Family is a perfect training ground to learn good manners, caring for others, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice.

Thank you for watching! To learn more about your role and purpose in life, order your free copy of “God’s Plan for Happy Marriage” by clicking the link in the description. And, remember to subscribe to our channel so you can continue to learn the truth as given in the Bible. See you next time!