Instafaggot brings up a valid point:
Firstly, you’ve got this backwards. The “market” drove women into the workplace (increased demand for employees coupled with increased need for families to make more money. Real income has deteriorated during the past few decades) rather than feminism.
VD: [That’s not the market, that’s the government. That “increased need” of which you speak is called taxes. Which leads us back to government spending, which, in turn, was brought about by the people who put the spenders into power.]
Secondly, this is a classic (or rather anti-classic) loaded question which presumes several things that are not proven to be so.
“positive step” is not defined nor is a mean of measure offered. Before you roll you eyes at me, explain how you measure a positive economy. Are we talking about the US only? The West only? The world in general or what? What is the criteria? GNP? Interest rates? Home ownership rates? Are these things really a good measure of “positive”? If so, how?
Define “individual liberties”…For liberals, liberty means freedom from discrimination, economic misery, repression, blah, blah, blah. For conservative, especially Christian libertarians, this means the right to disrciminate and repress, to use bad words, make threats, imprison sodomites, etc. So we’re not clear.
This is a fair question and a reasonable response. I’ll have more on this later, but Liverpool-Juventus is starting. In the meantime, I think Switzerland and the USA offer the best comparisons, given that neither were torn apart by WWII and the fact that Swiss women did not get the vote until 1971 provides a control mechanism of sorts. The context was the USA, but I suspect that the results will be similar in any Western county.
I mentioned a few thoughts in the comments of a previous post, but if anyone has their own ideas for a fair and reasonable metric, this would be a good place to suggest them.
UPDATE – Talk about leaping to errant conclusions! Some bloggers are concluding that I was making an editorial comment about Instapundit here, not responding to a gay blogger who left some comments here. Given his links to Margaret Cho and Michelangelo Signorile, I’m guessing he’s not a VPQF member.