Women are the hidden engine of world growth
A quiet revolution is transforming the role of women, particularly in the developed world. Call it capitalist feminism - the powerful alliance between market forces and the talents, ambitions and desires of that 50 per cent of the population that is finally free from many of the legal and social constraints that held it back for repressive millennia.
We tend not to think of capitalism and feminism as natural allies. Conservatives, normally the biggest cheerleaders of American consumer capitalism, become oddly hostile when working women enter the picture. Feminists, meanwhile, have an ambivalent attitude towards what used to be called the capitalist patriarchy.
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On the ground, however, the forces of the market economy are doing more than any movement or manifesto to propel women into positions of power - and working women are one of the most important engines of the great burst of economic growth in the postwar era. The Economist magazine has dubbed this feminisation of global gross domestic product "womenomics" and, in a striking analysis, found that over the past decade or so increased female participation in the paid labour force has contributed more to the growth of the world economy than either booming China or new technology.
Set against centuries of sexism, this transformation has been impressive. The female conquest of the classrooms in the developed world is so complete that educators' big worry is what to do about failing boys. That success carries on to college, with more women than men going to university - in America, 55 per cent of college students under 25 are female.
This intellectual training is translating into increased female participation in the labour force. In America, two-thirds of women of working age have a paid job, double the level in 1950 and not far off the 77 per cent of men in paid work. Women are entrepreneurial, too - one in four Americans now works for a female-owned business.
One driver of capitalist feminism is the business world's discovery that gender diversity makes cents - and dollars, too. It is no accident that Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo's new boss, and several of the other 10 women who head Fortune 500 companies are in the consumer goods business. Most customers of these companies are female, so it stands to reason that they will do better with some women in charge. Indeed, an oft-cited study by Catalyst, the consultancy, found that companies with more women on top delivered a better financial performance than those with fewer.
A second important driver of capitalist feminism is personal. Feminists these days tend to lament the fact that so few women describe themselves as feminists. But what women are doing is making choices that improve the financial well-being of their families. Even on the fraught issue of work and children, many studies suggest that one of the most powerful determinants of a child's future success is its family's wealth.
Of course, the triumph of capitalist feminism is far from complete: some glass ceilings seem shatter-proof. This spring The New York Times pointed out that only 17 per cent of partners at leading American law firms in 2005 were women, a woeful figure given the roughly equal numbers of male and female law graduates. Ben Barres, a Stanford professor of neurobiology, believes discrimination is still partly to blame. His opinion carries unique weight: a transgendered man, Prof Barres was born Barbara and has worked as both a female and a male scientist. Writing in the journal Nature last month, he described how scientific work done by Barbara was dismissed, only to be lauded when presented by Ben.
A bigger problem may be the sticky floor. Women have surged into the paid workforce, but men have yet to pick up their full share of the domestic slack. However, even in this private sphere market forces are starting to make an impact. A time-use study released last month by Statistics Canada, the national agency, found that the time men spend on housework increases as their wives' incomes increase, while women spend less time on housework as they earn more. When women's pay cheques hit $100,000 (￡53,000), the division of paid labour and housework within couples is more likely to be split equally.
Women may find an even more potent ally in another invisible force - demographics. Rich countries are at the beginning of a demographic crisis, with birth rates starting to fall below replacement levels. It might seem natural to blame the increase in female employment for falling birthrates in rich countries, but the statistics suggest the opposite. Some of the developed countries with the highest birth rates, such as America and Sweden, actually have far higher levels of women in paid employment than those such as Japan and Italy, where the birthrates are lower, too.
The debate about what exactly drives lower birthrates in developed countries points to everything from job insecurity to lack of state-supplied childcare. I have a personal theory, though: the more sexist the country, the lower the birthrate. Market forces have made the world of work appealing for most women; social forces will have to adapt if we want the nursery to retain its appeal, too.
女性：经济增长的“隐形”发动机
一场革命正悄无声息地改变着女性的角色，尤其是在发达国家。不妨称之为资本主义女权运动――市场力量与女性才能、抱负与欲望的有力结合。占全世界一半人口的女性，终于摆脱了压抑她们数千年之久的法律和社会束缚。
我们往往不觉得，资本主义和女权主义是天然同盟。保守派通常是美国消费资本主义最大的拉拉队，却在职业女性进入视野时，莫名其妙地变得充满敌意。同时，女权主义者也对过去被称为资本主义父权制的体系持有矛盾态度。
然而，从根本上来说，市场经济的力量正发挥着比任何运动或宣言都要大的作用，将女性推到了权力强大的位置上，而职业女性是二战后推动世界经济突飞猛进的最重要动力之一。《经济学人》(Economist)杂志已将全球国内生产总值的这种女性化现象冠以“女性经济”(womenomics)的称号，并在一项令人震惊的分析中发现，过去约10年间，有偿劳动力中女性人数增加对世界经济增长所做的贡献，超过了迅速崛起的中国或新技术。
对比数世纪以来的性别歧视，这种变化令人震撼。女孩们如此彻底地征服了发达国家的教室，使教育工作者为如何拯救落后的男孩而大伤脑筋。这种胜利一直延续到大学――进入大学的女性多过男性。在美国，25岁以下的大学生中有55%是女性。
女性知识培训的增加，进而转化为劳动力人口中女性比例的上升。在美国，三分之二的劳动年龄女性拥有有偿工作，是1950年水平的两倍，与男性77%的有偿工作拥有率相差不大。女性同样也成为了创业者――在每四个美国人中，就有一个为女性所拥有的企业工作。
资本主义女权主义的推动力之一，是这样一个商业发现：性别多元化有助于提升业绩，有时甚至幅度较大。百事公司(PepsiCo)新首席执行官英德拉?努伊(Indra Nooyi)，以及其他十位财富500强企业女掌门人都来自消费品行业，这并非偶然。这些公司的多数消费者都是女性，因此它们在女性执掌下能够表现更好，也就理所当然了。事实上，一份由咨询公司Catalyst所做的、经常被援引的研究发现，女性高管较多的公司比那些女性高管较少的公司拥有更好的财务业绩。
资本主义女权主义的第二个重要推动力，涉及个人因素。如今的女权主义者往往悲叹，很少有女性称自己是女权主义者了。但女性正在做的事情，是做出能够改善家庭财务状况的选择。甚至在工作与子女这些令人忧心的问题上，许多研究显示，家庭财力是子女未来成功与否的最重要决定因素之一。
当然，资本主义女权运动还远未取得胜利：一些玻璃天花板似乎坚不可摧。今春，《纽约时报》(The New York Times)指出，2005年，在美国主要律师事务所中，仅有17%的合伙人是女性。鉴于法律专业男女毕业生人数大致持平，这一比例十分可悲。斯坦福大学(Stanford)神经生物学教授本?巴瑞斯(Ben Barres)认为，这种现象仍要部分归咎于性别歧视。他的观点有着不寻常的份量：他是一名变性男子。巴瑞斯教授原先的女性名字叫芭芭拉(Barbara)，曾先后作为女性和男性科学家从事工作。上月他在《自然》(Nature)杂志上撰文，描写了“芭芭拉”所做的工作是如何被人忽视，而这些工作只有以“本”的名字展现时，才会受到赞誉。
一个更严峻的问题或许是让人无法抽身的地板。女性已崛起为有偿劳动力，但男性却尚未全部担负起应该承担的家务活。不过，即便在这个私人空间，市场力量正开始发挥影响。加拿大统计局(Statistics Canada)上月发布的一项时间利用研究发现，随着妻子收入的增加，丈夫花在家务活上的时间相应增加，而妻子则随着薪水的提高，花在家务上的时间相应减少。当妻子的年薪达到10万美元及以上时，夫妻之间有偿劳动与家务活间的分配就更可能平等划分。
女性也许会在另一股无形力量――人口结构中，发现更为强大的同盟。各个富国正处于人口危机的开端，出生率开始降至更替水平以下。在富国，将不断下滑的出生率归咎于女性就业的增加似乎顺理成章，但统计数据显示出相反的结果。一些出生率最高的发达国家，比如美国和瑞典，其女性有偿就业的比例实际上要远高于日本和意大利等国，而其出生率也高于后者。
在关于到底什么导致发达国家出生率较低的讨论中，观点指向各种各样的因素，从工作不安全感，到缺乏国家提供的托儿服务。但我个人的理论是：一个国家的男性至上主义越严重，其出生率就越低。市场力量令就业对大部分女性具有吸引力，如果我们想让托儿所也保持吸引力，社会力量必须适应形势。
