This episode examines whether today’s institutional dysfunction stems from cultural feminization or from a deeper loss of shared logic and foundational grounding. It draws from WORLD Radio commentary, discussions of critical theory, workplace dynamics, and Greg Garner’s analysis and research insights.
On a recent episode of The World and Everything In It (“The feminization of everything,” Nov 14, 2025), host Nick Eicher interviewed Katie McCoy about a viral essay from Helen Andrews. Andrews argues that when women become the majority in institutions like law, medicine, and journalism, those fields take on “feminine” traits:
empathy over logic, safety over risk, consensus over confrontation
She calls this the “great feminization of American life” and warns it could weaken open debate, meritocracy, and even the rule of law.
I’ll be honest: I don’t buy the idea that women are “the problem.”
Most of my managers over the years have been women, and those experiences have been overwhelmingly positive.
But I have noticed something that rhymes with what Andrews is describing:
- a tendency (in both men and women) to lead with feelings over logic,
- to choose what seems compassionate over what is coherent and true,
- and to treat disagreement as harm instead of as a path to better ideas.
McCoy’s analysis on the podcast helped me put language around this. She argued that the deeper issue isn’t female leadership—it’s feminist critical theory: critical theory applied to gender, where everything is ultimately about power, oppression, and conflict. In that framework, the solution is just to flip who holds the power.
In other words: if the problem used to be “masculine dominance,” the proposed fix is “feminine dominance.” Same game, different winner.
McCoy suggested a different picture:
Not a seesaw (where one side must be down for the other to be up), but a jungle gym bolted into the ground. The “ground” is a fixed moral foundation—what she called nature and Scripture. You could also call it a higher power, natural law, or objective truth. The labels differ by worldview, but most of us intuitively operate as if that foundation exists.
That’s where this hits my work life.
We live in a culture that likes to be morally agnostic—no right, no wrong, just “your truth” and “my truth.”
But our workplaces don’t actually run that way.
In business, software design, operations, and risk management, there are right and wrong answers:
- Systems either scale or they don’t.
- Data is either accurate or it isn’t.
- Controls either protect customers or they fail.
We talk about best practices, centers of excellence, and root cause analysis. None of that works if everything is just perspective and feeling. When a culture says “there is no right and wrong,” but your day job depends on right and wrong all the time, that creates psychological dissonance—for leaders and teams.
So here’s where I land:
- Women are not our cultural problem.
- A feelings-only approach is a problem, especially when it refuses to be anchored in anything beyond personal experience.
- Virtue is not gendered. Courage, justice, mercy, and gentleness are for all of us; they may look different in men and women, but they’re not “owned” by one gender.
I’m also convinced we need to leave more room for real transformation. Public figures (including very controversial ones) sometimes change. Whether you love or loathe Donald Trump, the broader question is: Do we allow anyone a path to change, or are people forever chained to their worst chapter? A culture that denies redemption will eventually cancel everyone.
For me, the takeaway from this conversation isn’t “women are ruining everything.”
It’s this:
If we keep swapping which group holds power, but never fix the foundation, we’ll keep getting the same conflict in new packaging.
In our companies and institutions, that foundation might be expressed as:
- commitment to truth over spin
- standards over slogans
- justice and mercy, not one at the expense of the other
I’d love to hear from others:
- Where do you see this tension between feelings and foundations in your workplace?
- How do you personally try to balance empathy with clear truth and standards?
🔊 Source:
“11.14.25 The feminization of everything, 1950s movies about the allure of fame, and our ‘ism’ addiction,” The World and Everything In It (Culture Friday with Katie McCoy), WORLD Radio. Podcast link: https://blubrry.com/the_world_and_everything_in_it/149898296/111425-the-feminization-of-everything-1950s-movies-about-the-allure-of-fame-and-our-ism-addiction/