Not only have the proposed benefits manifestly failed to manifest themselves, but the opportunity cost of future generations has begun to become readily apparent everywhere from Europe to Asia. One wonders how low birth rates have to fall in civilized countries before the elites begin to realize that the Taliban may not, in fact, be the stupid ones with regards to this particular matter.
I address a recent article on the correlation between female education, the declining Japanese fertility rate, and the reported collapse of the collective Japanese interest in sex at Alpha Game:
Throughout this period Japan experienced a sharp decline in the total rate of fertility. After a sudden downswing in the early 1950s, the birthrate continuously declined until the mid-1980s, when it began to drop rapidly, and by 1997 it fell to 1.39. In light of these findings, it is plausible to suggest that there is a relationship between the increase in women’s access to a higher education and the decrease in the fertility rate.
As one commenter there noted, if Nicholas Kristof read the post, his head would probably explode. But there is no empirical evidence indicating that female education is societally beneficial, and there is an increasing amount of evidence that correlates it with a broad range of societal ills. The Japanese birthrate has continued to fall, hitting a historical low at 1.26 per woman in 2005. In 2012 the number of deaths exceeded births for a sixth straight year.
Far from being the 21st century superpower that my university professors taught that it was certain to become, it is a literally dying society.
No society that wishes to survive should convert all of its prospective mothers into worker drones any more than it should convert all of its prospective farmers into doctors or telephone sanitizers. Sure, it takes longer for a society to die out demographically than starve, but the end result is the same.
Just ask the Shakers, another equalitarian society that believed in the importance of educating women.