What exactly is the definition of “interesting times”? Is it the progressive, world-shifting exchange of ideas that marked Vienna in the early twentieth century? Or is it the stale echo of a conversation where a man, anxious that women now know their worth, invites two women to validate his discomfort?

Apparently, for The New York Times, the second counts as intellectual discourse.

Under the headline “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?,” columnist Ross Douthat’s podcast Interesting Times asked the question no one was waiting for. The episode featured conservative writers Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant debating whether liberal feminism had “ruined” the modern workplace—and whether a so-called “conservative feminism” could repair it.

The result was not a debate but a rehearsal of old hierarchies: an attempt to repackage antifeminism as nuance, to turn equality into a failed experiment, and to position patriarchy as reason.

The latest argument that women ruin the workplace

Andrews, author of The Great Feminization, argued that contemporary “wokeness” is a byproduct of the “overrepresentation” of women in professional spaces. Whatever she understands by that term remains unclear.

She framed the #MeToo movement and workplace inclusion policies as symptoms of what she calls a “feminized social order,” one that, in her view, “privileges emotional reasoning, suppresses conflict, and undermines truth-seeking.”

Her claim was blunt: “Our institutions have gone woke because there are more women in them than there used to be.”

It is a line with a long history. In the late nineteenth century, antifeminist movements warned that women’s suffrage would “corrupt” democracy. Later, in the 1950s, anti-ERA campaigns predicted that women entering the workforce would “destroy the family.” In the 1980s, scholars noted that right-wing backlash routinely followed every feminist advance.

As sociologist Michael Kimmel explains, antifeminism is “the opposition to women’s equality.” It presents itself as protection, not aggression, as an effort to “save masculinity from pollution and invasion.” Andrews’ words follow the same script.

When women in the workplace become a political strategy

Antifeminism has always relied on what Canadian sociologists Melissa Blais and Francis Dupuis-Déri describe as “masculinism,” the belief that “men are in crisis because of the feminization of society.” The crisis, of course, is invented. It functions as a justification to re-establish hierarchies that feminism disrupted.

This pattern repeats itself with remarkable precision. In the nineteenth century, Harvard professor Edward Clarke warned that if women pursued higher education, “their brains would grow bigger and heavier, and their wombs would atrophy.” A century later, Douthat’s guests warned that if women enter law or academia, institutions “lose their truth-seeking function.” The vocabulary changes; the premise remains.

Women’s presence is portrayed as contamination.

Leah Libresco Sargeant’s intervention took a gentler, but equally regressive, tone. Liberal feminism, she claimed, “forces women to suppress their nature and fit into workplaces made for men.” The problem, she said, is that feminism denies “the dignity of dependence.”

That rhetoric (framing female subordination as natural, even dignified) belongs to a long lineage of benevolent sexism. Psychologist Magdalena Zawisza describes it as “the velvet glove of patriarchy”: it rewards women who comply, punishes those who resist, and upholds inequality through sentimentality.

Why patriarchy recruits women to defend it

“When all else fails,” as history shows, patriarchy finds women to make the unmakeable argument. From the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League to Phyllis Schlafly’s campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, antifeminist movements have often used women as their messengers.

These figures do not disrupt patriarchy; they authenticate it. They translate misogyny into something palatable, giving hierarchy a female voice.

As Jodi Bondi Norgaard recently wrote, “There is no such thing as conservative feminism. The phrase exists because patriarchy has learned to speak the language of empowerment.” It borrows feminist vocabulary —choice, agency, strength —but empties those words of their radical meaning. It is “liberation without justice.”

That is precisely what the Interesting Times episode accomplished. Andrews and Sargeant were not expanding feminist discourse. They were performing their containment, asserting that the limits of women’s ambition are biological, that equality has gone “too far,” and that a softer, obedient feminism should replace it.

Data already disproves the claim that women ruin the workplace

The evidence tells a different story. According to research by Jorge Tamayo of Harvard Business School, teams led by female managers perform better. Mixed-gender teams under female leadership report higher productivity, stronger rapport, and lower turnover.

Tamayo’s findings, published in 2024, show that women managers are 13 percent more likely to adjust staffing to meet workers’ needs and significantly more responsive to employee constraints. The conclusion was simple: women do not ruin workplaces. They make them functional.

And yet, as sociologist Paula England observed, the “gender revolution” in professional life has been “uneven and stagnant.” Women occupy management roles, but structural inequality persists. Wage gaps remain, caregiving work is devalued, and industries designed from a male perspective still dictate what leadership should look like.

If anything “ruined” the workplace, it was the refusal to redesign it around shared humanity.

The old fear of women who know their worth

Douthat’s podcast reveals an anxiety older than feminism itself. Every era of antifeminism begins when men fear irrelevance. From reproductive rights to the tradwife aesthetic, from attacks on DEI programs to nostalgia for “strong men,” the pattern is the same: reclaim control through women willing to enforce it.

As psychologist Zawisza explains, benevolent sexism “rewards compliance with the system.” It casts “good women” as nurturing and “bad women” as threatening. The result is cultural conditioning that persuades women to maintain the status quo for their own safety and acceptance.

This is not new thinking. It is an intellectualized return to the same binary: Madonna or menace. Caretaker or chaos.

Feminism didn’t ruin the workplace. Patriarchy did.

The irony is that the very policies antifeminists decry—equal pay, parental leave, anti-harassment protections—are what make the workplace humane. Feminism reimagined professional life as compatible with dignity and care, as something that could include rather than exclude.

As Jodi Bondi Norgaard wrote for Ms. Magazine, “Feminism didn’t ‘ruin’ the workplace. It made it more humane. It demanded equal pay, family leave, anti-harassment policies, and paths to leadership. If that disrupted old hierarchies, perhaps they needed disrupting.”

The fear behind Douthat’s question is not about women’s failures. It is about women’s permanence. Patriarchy cannot erase women from public life, so it recruits them to question their own progress.

But the truth is no longer negotiable. Women didn’t ruin the workplace. We built it for everyone else to finally belong.

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