Swedish researchers: Feminism is bad for your health

Worth a few chuckles Via the UK Independent:

Researchers in Sweden, arguably one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, have found that equality could be associated with poorer health for both men and women.

In the study, published in Social Science and Medicine, the researchers compared data from all of Sweden’s 290 municipalities. They used nine indicators of equality in both the private and public sectors, ranging from the proportion of men and women in management jobs to average income. These were related to local life expectancy, disability and absence from work through illness.

The results showed a strong link between gender equality and levels of sickness and disability for both men and women. One of the findings was that equal financial resources between the sexes was associated with higher levels of sickness and disability.

For both sexes, gender equality in managerial positions was associated with lower life expectancy.

The scientists said possible explanations for the correlation is that men’s health may be adversely affected by a loss of what had been seen as traditional male privileges. Women’s health, meanwhile, could be being damaged by greater opportunities for risky behaviour as a result of increased income, along with stress from longer working hours.

Another suggestion was that gender equality has not yet been fully achieved, and that the effects being seen are just transitional.

What’s a possible solution?

Anastasia de Waal, head of family policy at the think-tank Civitas, urged caution in interpreting the findings: “The danger is that the data will be interpreted as a warning against shaking up divisions of labour. In fact what Sweden needs is complete gender equality with, for example, men entering the private sphere to the extent that women have entered the public.”

Dawn Eden provides the translation:

Not surprising, a feminist quoted says the answer is to get more men out of the workplace.

Heh. Yep. The solution for ‘women’s rights’ types is not mere equality for women, but domination in the workplace as well as other public and private venues. Men only exist to help bring more ‘dominant’ women into the world. That’s all ‘we’ ‘need’ them for. (That’s what we’re supposed to believe, anyway)

Never let the spokesmen (er, spokeswomen?) or other prominent ‘women’s rights’ figures tell you their sole purpose is to promote and advocate equality for women. When the ‘equal rights’ movement splintered in the 60s between those women who fought for work, home, and educational equality and those who took it so far away from its original intent so as to inadvertently turn women into the very type of self-centered people they claimed to loathe, the purity of the movement as a whole evaporated as a new culture of selfish, irresponsible, man-hating feministas was born. Unfortunately that type of attitude is very much still in vogue even today.