women are from mars, men are from venus
April 12th, 2007 by 
bkmarcus
Every once in a while, I’ll encounter some soul-searching editorial, inquiring why there are so few women within the libertarian movement. These seem to be written most often after some LP convention, in which the editorialist looks over a sea of bearded white faces and despairs.
Less frequently, I’ll encounter an editorial hypothesizing just why there are so few women within the movement. The thesis is usually some variation of this theme: women are (either by nature or upbringing) more inclined to seek compromise, build bridges, think pragmatically; men are the abstract moralists, insisting on uncompromising principle. Since the libertarian movement is (or should be) a pursuit of principle, we attract mostly men … and social misfits, at that. The rare woman will slip through, like a goth babe in a comic book store, but mostly we’re the grown-up versions of the pimply faced nerd-boys.
I certainly think there’s something to that hypothesis, but I find it interesting — no, what I mean to say is, lamentable — that these questions and answers are written completely outside of historical context.
The editorialists either don’t know or don’t care about the prominent role of women in 19th-century libertarianism, as radical abolitionists became individualist anarchists. They fail to cite the exceptions to their rule, for instance, Lillian Harman or Voltairine de Cleyre.
Or, if you question our ideological lineage from the Tuckerites, how about a couple of 20th-century examples:
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After reading Ludwig von Mises’s Liberalism, Rose Wilder Lane took exception to his defense of majoritarian democracy. She wrote him:
[...] as an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism.
It is precisely democracy which is destroying the American political structure, American law, and the American economy, as Madison said it would….
My article at Mises.org today describes the very compromising (and compromised) market liberalism of George Stigler and Milton Friedman in their early careers. Needless to say, these two men are famous among libertarians. But, as I learn from Roderick Long in his comment to my article, Ayn Rand had a somewhat less compromising take on their pamphlet:
When Roofs or Ceilings? came out, Ayn Rand denounced it as obviously written by “a couple of Reds.”
I don’t offer any answer to the why-so-few-women jeremiad, but I doubt that girls were born or raised to be any less “soft” in the 19th or early 20th century than they are now, and I find it significant that some of the most righteous and incorruptible voices for individual liberty have been from the fairer sex.
Posted in culture, history, philosophy | 
5 Comments »
Anthony Gregory said,
Part of it is our rhetorical apparatus and unfortunate association with the rightwing. Men tend to be better on economics. Women are often better on war and police brutality. If libertarian men were more libertarian, and less conservative, I think they’d attract more women into the movement.
bkmarcus said,
Then why does there seem to be so much less of a conservative gender gap than there is a libertarian gender gap?
Anthony Gregory said,
For one, the conservative population of men and women is less determined by actual ideological inclination toward “conservatism” than is the libertarian population a reflection of actual ideology.
Women are still more likely to lean left, and I think most women who are conservatives are not the type to be enamored of libertarian ideals, but are conservatives for many other reasons. In terms of ideology, women are more leftish, and are more libertarian than the stats reflect. Maybe it is not exactly because the libertarian men are too conservative that they repel women, but that they fail to have the liberal appeal to ideals. I think women can be just as idealistic as men. The idea that men are more principled might be true in things like domestic policy and economics. But with war and even the basis of libertarianism as a philosophy of non-aggression and liberation, I think the idealistic appeal for women has been obscured by focusing on the aspects and implications of libertarianism that are most male-friendly. This is understandable, since most libertarians are men, and thus make libertarianism seem more like a masculine philosophy than it is.
Cheryl Cline said,
The funny thing about this post is that, after reading the title, I fully expected it to explain the gender disparity in the libertarian ranks as the result of biological differences. See Larry Summers, et al., and many libertarian/conservative opinions to the same effect, whether explaining innate math ability, corporate leadership or the wage gap.
I was relieved to find that this was not the case.
I agree with Anthony Gregory that libertarianism’s links to conservatism are what scare many women off. Also, the early feminists that BK Marcus mentions were what are often called first-wave feminists. From what I understand of feminist history, the Left has since co-opted mainstream feminism during its second and third waves (the 70’s and 90’s, respectively). The Left, with its rhetoric about social justice and equality, markets itself as the party that is truly concerned about women and, somewhat ironically, with what has been traditionally associated with femininity–children and the Earth/environment, for example. Under the guises of women’s rights and environmentalism, the Left seems to offer greater reproductive freedom and more protection for Mother Earth, which as we all know is about to be populated past sustainability or suffocated in a fog of carbon dioxide.
Conservatism, on the other hand, often advocates a return to tradition and traditional women’s roles, which many young women of our generation consider an affront to their autonomy. Thus the “socially liberal” half of that tired description is not enough to draw women to libertarianism, since it is more than outweighed by its supposed “fiscal conservatism.”
Instead of identifying government as possibly the most patriarchal and oppressive phenomenon known to humankind, many women seem at best to be most concerned with parity in leadership, or, at worst, to see it as a mechanism for forcing equality. Or they might recognize that government has traditionally expressed patriarchal interests, but blame this on the relative lack of women in high office. Thus many women would consider Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy a boon based on her gender alone, even though her hawkishness is a far cry from women’s alleged antiwar leanings.
I would also point out that few people seem to have been libertarians from an early point in their political lives. I would imagine that the “bearded white men” we see in libertarian circles mostly came over from conservatism or the Old Right. Although it’s also true that it’s usually lefties who go libertarian, and not the other way around, the initial dominance of the BWMs probably has some effect on perpetuating those particular demographics.
Finally, I have encountered many libertarian and conservative pieces that dismiss “feminism” or, worse, “femi-nazis” without specifically noting that it is leftist or collectivist feminism they are opposed to. It is difficult not to conclude that this is evidence of hostility to women and their interests.
women are from mars, men are from venus, libertarians are from... « der Blaustrumpf said,
[...] BK Marcus at lowercase liberty has a post asking why there are so few women in engineering the latter-day libertarian movement: Since the libertarian movement is (or should be) a pursuit of principle, we attract mostly men … and social misfits, at that. The rare woman will slip through, like a goth babe in a comic book store, but mostly we’re the grown-up versions of the pimply faced nerd-boys. [...]