Why Do More Rights Make Women Less Happy?

In this video, Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss research showing that women's satisfaction with society has declined as feminism has progressed. They argue this is due to a rise in female privilege and entitlement, rather than a lack of rights.

Simone suggests that favoritism and putting unqualified women in positions breeds dissatisfaction. Even when given unfair advantages, people know deep down when they haven't earned something.

They also discuss the rise of imposter syndrome and why it likely correlates with female advantage in modern workplaces. The Collins see it as a lack of personal responsibility and initiative rather than a syndrome.

Finally, they give tips for how to raise strong girls avoided entitlement mentalities and boys to overcome systemic discrimination.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So the question is. Why is it that as women get more rights, they become less happy, their well being decreases, and they are less satisfied with the treatment of women in society? this episode, what do we call it? Feminism has led to a rise in imposter syndrome. Guess why? um, . .

Simone Collins: Ow. Ouch. Ouchie.

Malcolm Collins: We have an increasing pandemic of imposters in our society. And they know Our society isn't allowed to say, no, you are genuinely incompetent and you got where you were due to the, the scales being tipped in your favor.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: So this morning I sent you and some of the family this insane graph. I'd love if you

Malcolm Collins: described it. Yeah. For the podcast listeners who aren't on YouTube. I'll put it on the screen for those on YouTube. Thank

Simone Collins: you. Yes. So this is a graph that shows satisfaction with the treatment of women in society. From, it's a Gallup poll.

So this is, you know, pretty mainstream U. S. based polling company that theoretically has rigorous methods. [00:01:00] And they asked U. S. adults, both men and women. Are you very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied with the way women are treated?

In society, this poll went from 2001 to 2021. And if we're looking at men, the rate of satisfaction with female treatment went from 80%. In this is very or somewhat satisfied. So basically any level of satisfaction went from 80% to 61% from 2001 to 2021 for women. It went from 61 percent to 44 percent so fewer than half of women in the United States now are satisfied with the way that women are treated in 2001.

It was kind of low at 61. It actually went up to 69%.

Malcolm Collins: And you actually see this with other things. There's a wellbeing index. You see a similar thing. Actually there was a study that was like a meta study that looked at a lot of studies on things like happiness ratings of women and stuff like that. And a quote [00:02:00] from this study was women have traditionally reported higher levels of happiness than men, but they are now reporting happiness levels that are similar to, or even lower than those of men.

The relative decline in wellbeing holds across various data sets and holds whether one asks about happiness or life satisfaction.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm not going to go around like defining feminism or talking about where we are in feminism because I'm not an expert in feminism and I frankly don't really care that much how we're going to like talk about it or what academics are saying because that's not reality.

But I, I would say, and I think it's like most people would agree that at least in the United States where this poll took place there are more privileges for women in society. And more preferences in terms of hiring, in terms of university attendance in terms of, of political favoritism, et cetera, than ever before.

Like we are at a, a, an all time high.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, look at the rate of women in college compared to the rate of men in college. Look at the, the, the grades that women are getting in, in high school, middle school, kindergarten. You know? So the question is. Why is it [00:03:00] that as women get more rights, they become less happy, their well being decreases, and they are less satisfied with the treatment of women in society?

I have

Simone Collins: a hot take, so, and I think I'm correct, so like, prove me that I'm wrong, because I also love being proven wrong. I don't think this is about rights. And remember, this is a question about treatment and not rights. I think that we reached a level of equal rights, like statutorily speaking, legally speaking, a long time ago, way before this survey ever started.

So we're not even looking at women's rights being affected. What we're looking at is how women are treated. And what we have seen change over the period of this study from 2001 to 2021 is a change in Female favoritism. And I think that is the toxic thing. I think that favoritism or privilege creates entitlement and entitlement breeds dissatisfaction.

And I think we can see similar things with other social justice arenas where we've gone past. [00:04:00] technical legal rights and gone to, okay, now we're going to give you outright favoritism and bias in your favor, which leads people to feel entitled, which then leads people to feel disappointed. Like entitlement, of course, like I've probably gone over this a billion times before, but there's nothing that triggers me more than entitlement.

Like when someone becomes entitled. They are dead to me. I want them dead. Like, I

Malcolm Collins: can't, I just get so angry. You don't spend time with them. You just immediately cut them out of your life. And I agree with that. You know, I like this take. This really aligns with some of the other studies we've covered and other videos that we've done.

Like, you know, the trauma video where we show that individuals, when they looked at individuals who reported symptoms of trauma, and then they went through court filings first they found that the symptoms of trauma correlated with the amount of trauma that the person reported experiencing

Simone Collins: and not their actual trauma experienced. It

Malcolm Collins: did not correlate with the amount of actual trauma experience from historical documents, like court records and stuff like that.

So people who didn't actually experience trauma in their childhood, but believed they did would have all of the symptoms of [00:05:00] extreme trauma. People who didn't experience trauma in their childhood but, but or who did experience trauma in their childhood but didn't believe they did had very little trauma response.

And I think that you, you might be right here. So much of our mental states is a reflection of Our internal self narratives and not the things that are actually happening to us. Right. And we know that women from the ALA study, which was just absolutely fantastic, where women reported within a equivalent data set to men as growing up in a less advantaged socioeconomic environment and being spanked more when basically we know that neither of those things are true.

They just have memories of where things happening to them. Right. So part of this is likely that women are. being rewarded psychologically within our society more and more for taking on this victim mindset, this trauma.

Simone Collins: There's, there's a strong correlation between this level of entitlement and entitlement in general and an external locus of control.

Like if things don't go well for me, it's because I wasn't [00:06:00] treated the way that I was supposed to be treated because I should always be treated better.<