One Nation, Boys vs Women
Watch what you wish for, guys. You might get it.
Hello to all the new subscribers from the Body Shaming post! This is a bit different but please hang with us for more female-focused takes and thanks for being here.
As a kid, some gym classes struck even more terror in me than others.
The days the teacher announced: “Boys Against The Girls.”
The boys spontaneously combusted, bellowing like berserkers leaping into Un-Holy War. No mercy against 8 timid girls they’d known since 1st grade.1
Still, lopsided games aren’t fun for long. They flame out fast, then what? Run laps.
Yet the boys never remembered the next time.
Same Sides: New Adversaries
The last few weeks/months/years have me thinking of those days. The short-term thrills of violent dominance often don’t work out that well for the victors.
If there is any “winner,” it may not be who they are betting on.
It seems we’re headed for South Korean levels2 of gender hostility, but America’s women have more established female strength girding us, with fewer day-to-day cultural restraints.
For now, here are my dystopian (?) predictions for the boys vs women future if we don’t get our culture to a different place.3
If it sounds dark, maybe some of it will be. But like that last-era woman is always saying in between lectures, we can do hard things.4
Buckle up, boys. And women. We got this.
Women Will (Continue To) Outperform Men
70% of US high school valedictorians are female. More women enroll in and graduate from college.
🤑There is no gender earnings gap for young professionals who don’t have kids. 🤑
Nearly half of women (45%) earn as much or more than their husbands.5
Curiously, the male earners are always lumped into "55% of men are the primary or sole breadwinner.” With the preponderance of single moms out there, I think the fantasy of the man as sole breadwinner is mostly that.
Women Will (Continue To) Arm Themselves
Roxane Gay recently outed herself as a gun owner. She’s not alone.
Women accounted for half of all gun purchases between 2019-21. We’re already more likely to be first-time gun owners than men.
Prediction: Huge upsell in women’s gun sales, female gun clubs and combat-style defense classes. Yoga retreats are so Blue State era!
Women Will (Continue To) Start Businesses
It’s often repeated that female investors outperform male investors.
Well, women-owned businesses perform better, too. And they’re often bootstrapped, since VC to female-only founders already dropped to 2% in 2023. While that hurts in the short-term it also means less barrier to entry.
Prediction: With “woke” and DEI already declared dead, WFH dying and continual lack of systemic support for care duties, mid-career and late-career women will jump at layoff packages/get squeezed out and keep starting their own businesses.
With a majority of college-educated women voting for Harris, I expect more curated shops, collabs and women-focused marketplaces to swing back up as they did briefly post-MeToo. Just different vibes.
Women Will (Continue To) Organize. But Better.
A few years ago Kellogg researcher Brian Uzzi found women needed different types of networking to thrive. Men benefit from large group of loose contacts. Women need big networks, but also closer connections to “private” information like workplace culture, personal intros, etc.
The explosion in pay-to-play female groups is already reaching MLM levels, but MAGA reality may finally burn down the last vestiges of girlboss and get women to help each other in concrete ways.
Prediction 1: The high-dollar rah-rah groups and female empowerment will give way to more nuts-and-bolts training on hard skills, tech expansion and results-driven relationships. Enough with the “YOU ARE ENOUGH” speeches (✨ OK i’m trying to manifest that one ✨)
Prediction 2: The Invisible Women voters who skewed Blue this week and in the last midterms will step up as angel investors and form angel networks. People keep talking about Millennials getting the Boomer wealth transfer, but wives outlive husbands. See also Gen Z female impact investors focused on women and climate.
This will be essential because, well, only one VC (female) was willing to comment for this article on How Trumps Re-Election Impacts Female Founded Startups.
Birthrate Will Keep Dropping & Men Will Have Less Sex with Women
Natalists can bark at each other all day on X/Truth/Telegram (side prediction: at least 2 of these platforms will merge, soon). But their memes may manifest in ways they don’t like.
Prediction: Gen Z is not going to want to have a lot of sex or babies in Project 2025-ville. This is already trending. Social anxiety, getting choked out, the hetero orgasm gap, climate disaster and the Gen Z gender political fault line isn’t sexy?? Only 72% of Gen Z identifies as straight anyway. And it’s now been proven and publicly acknowledged that women’s earning power never recovers after motherhood. So why?
Guys will have AI girlfriends and OnlyFans to keep them occupied. And paying per click.
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Divorce Rates will Go Up
Many parents are already stocking up on abortion pills and Plan B for their late teen and young adult daughters. The loss of no-fault divorce is a real threat and women will lawyer up, soon.
Prediction: Despite the trad wife fantaToks, a female-led surge of divorce will occur in the next several years. Women on the fence will decide to get out while they can.
Gray Divorces, spurred by women, will keep going. Divorce over 50 has doubled, over 65 has tripled.
A Quiet-Quitting Style Silent Rebellion Will Occur in Christian Co-Owned Businesses
Are you close with any successful Evangelical couples? I know a few. The women speak softly, but sticks are only the beginning.
Evangelical and Mormon women are a force. They essentially created MLMs, momfluencers and affiliate marketing. They’re incredible at networking, media, and operations as a whole, but many of these businesses seem co-owned with spouses.
Prediction: A “bless your heart” style takeover where more and more of these Jesus Girlies disempower their husbands by giving them more public face or flattery and less actual power. The most tragic examples of these scenarios are Rachel Hollis and Ruby Franke.
P.S. Evangelicals have higher divorce rates than other religious or non-religious groups.
Women Will Leave the Country in Greater Numbers Than Men
Globally, more women than men emigrate. Americans leave in pretty even numbers—but that will change.
US expats are more likely than those from other countries to be older and well-educated, and to own businesses.
Prediction: More childless women and gray divorcees will move out of the country, alone, as well as hetero-partnered females leading their spouses out of country.
This indicates a low-key brain drain effect that will not benefit the US, either.
The Golden Girls Will Be Real
At an election night party, two separate groups of women told me about already hatching plans to move out of the country with friends during retirement.
Prediction: Senior women co-housing will thrive. McMansions will be converted into cool semi-senior living manses. Gendered time shares. Upscale dorm style living in lieu of traditional nursing homes. LOTS of pickleball in old commercial real estate turned into mall-style ungated communities.
None of this is good news for men.
Older Men Will Be Alone & Uncared For, With Deaths of Despair Continuing to Rise
Wife left. Adult kids increasingly going no-contact. Bleeding money to online betting, OnlyFans models, booze and tariffs. Fewer immigrants for care giving.
Men die of overdose at 2-3x the rate of women.6
Mainlining rage is not a life strategy.
Unmarried Gen Z men will have financial hardship, with a greater percentage permanently living at home
There’s no trope about young women living in their mom’s basement. The death valley of young guys neither working nor going to school will metastasize into a loser generation whose main power will be online trolling.
Prediction: This will be a short-term powerful voting bloc, but eventually the indifference of the billionaire bitcoin class will be obvious. They’ll stay home.
Final 🌞 prediction: There are lots of good men out there. We do, we can and we will work and live together.
Diverse teams still outperform non-diverse teams.
Most men are better parents and partners than previous generations.
More men are going to therapy and getting real mental health support than ever before.
We need to separate the men from the boys and stay out of all-out war, however much the boys and Project 2025 fans want us to fall into that distraction and despair.
What do you think? Comments very welcome, we need open dialogue right now.
If you are looking some viewing that remind us how women can run through walls, watch the Netflix documentary on Martha Stewart.
I cannot wait for her autobiography. Her letters show an evocative and gifted writer, and you KNOW the ghostwriters will all quit.
It’s not all dark, friends. We will prevail. It will just be work, but it always has been. Like Rosie said before the last big backlash, we can do it.
Except Betty, Darlene, Teresa and Sara P - you carried our side as best you could.
4B was trending on Tiktok before but it’s heating up again.
Visions for more retail changes coming next week.
Less cheetah, more leopard.
18% of women earn more.
Women get more pain med/opioid scripts.
Another great newsletter where you pack so much information and current events around the topic we are all thinking about.
Loved seeing the focus on women forming real networks, not just for feel-good support but to build skills and make things happen. Let's do this.
Julie, this is what I needed to read, thank you! I think your predictions are spot on!