Liberated Women

I am currently reading James Martin's The Meaning of the 21st Century. One of the interesting ideas is about the liberation of women and the effect this has on population growth and fertility rates. He breaks liberation into four phases:

1. Teaching women to read increases the use of birth control and lowers fertility rates.
2. Giving women jobs lowers the fetility rates further.
3. Women become "liberated" rates fall again.
4. Women become ambitious for the best jobs then rates are well below the replacement rates.

There is one statement about liberated women that I found amusing.

"Liberated women can enjoy sex, as men do, without having children - and because bringing up and educating children is far more expensive than it used to be, many couples are motivated to have small families." p63.

I think that was not the best choice of words - "women can enjoy sex, as men do". Who said that women did not enjoy sex already? I think that female liberation has been taking place as an "undergound movement" for a lot longer than men appreciate -Lysistrata and the poetry of Sappho is just one early example.

I can never understand men in a society that tries to treat women as less than human. You have to sleep at night and there is plenty of time to find a knife in your back or a Bobbit like part of you missing. In the end women will always win, even if there are periods in history where culture tries to subjugate them.