General Electric CEO Jack Welch ignited a
firestorm recently when he told female executives that to become
top dogs (like him), they have to toughen up. “Over-deliver,” he
lectured. “Performance is it.” Forget about “life balance.” A
couple of women walked out—and others have since condemned him as
“spectacularly stupid.”

Nasty though this spat was, it masks a fundamental agreement
between Welch and his feminist detractors: They both regard the
paucity of female CEOs as something regrettable needing correction.
But if there’s anything regrettable here, it’s that so many men in
the 21st century are still reflexively busting their derrières for
the pleasure of parking them in the C-Suite.

There is no doubt that women executives are a rare breed. Only 3
percent of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs—the same as in
the tech companies of the young, dynamic, multiethnic world of
Silicon Valley.

Feminists blame this on enduring sexism in the workplace. And
there is no question that sexism is a real problem. I can’t think
of a single woman (myself included) who has worked in a
male-dominated environment and not felt that she must work
extra-hard to prove herself before she is taken seriously,
something men rarely encounter. That might discourage some women.
But for most, that’s not the main obstacle to climbing the
corporate ladder to the topmost rung.

The truth is that corporations are just no fun. They require
insane hours, adherence to rigid hierarchies, mind-numbing work and
a taste for political maneuvering that would put Machiavelli to
shame. It’s not that women can’t hack it. They can. A recent survey
by Harvard Business Review found that women executives are rated
higher than male executives by their superiors and colleagues in 12
of the 16 competencies that constitute outstanding
leadership—including supposed male fortes like “taking initiative”
and “driving for results.”

It’s just that women don’t like it. Most women with options (and
contenders for top executive jobs certainly have options) don’t
think that a fat corporate paycheck is worth sacrificing their home
and family. Women would much rather run their own lives on their
own terms than the rest of the world on someone else’s.

The first to point this out was journalist and blogger Lisa
Belkin in a 2003 New York Times article. Although women
made up roughly half of the student body of professional programs
in elite universities and were recruited by top firms in all
fields, Belkin found, they had a tiny presence in higher corporate
echelons. And the reason was that somewhere along the way, the lure
of a high-powered job simply vanished for them, something she
dubbed the “opt-out revolution.” (Belkin, herself a Princeton
graduate, had given up a full-time position as a staff writer and
aspirations to one day run the Times for a part-time gig
and children.)

For her efforts, Belkin was pilloried as factually wrong,
emotionally deluded and, worst of all, a “choice feminist,” a dirty
word reserved in some feminist circles for women who betray the
cause of gender equality for the sake of their own personal
fulfillment. But the “opt-out revolution” has marched on. Companies
have been trying to boost the ranks of female executives by
re-examining their promotion policies; offering greater workplace
flexibility; and implementing mentoring programs (which Welch
rightly ridicules as institutionalized victimhood). But a National
Science Foundation study two years ago found that female executives
remain twice as likely to leave as males. And census data shows
that the rate of stay-at-home moms has grown from 19.4 percent in
1994 to 23.7 percent in 2009.

Gender-equality feminists regard this as a travesty. But that
take is as dumb as Welch’s. Just because women are not assuming
their rightful place in the patriarchal power structure doesn’t
mean that they are returning to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
Rather, they are striving for a higher balance based on their own
inner needs and strengths. And they are able to do this because
they have allowed the feminist revolution to liberate them from the
stigma against working women—without letting it consign them to a
life of wage slavery.

It is unfortunate that men haven’t experienced something
equivalent that would liberate them from traditional role
expectations and allow them to make unorthodox life choices for a
more fulfilled and self-actualized existence. Men remain
psychologically wired for worldly success. But it’s unclear whether
it’s their inner needs that are driving them or external social
expectations.

If feminists were honest, they’d acknowledge that this state of
affairs really presents the best of all possible worlds for women.
Should men, liberated from social expectations, decide that they
too prefer to stay at home rather than remain stuck in
soul-crushing jobs, women will have to pick up the slack or pare
back their lifestyles. Either way, they’d lose the social and
psychological space they currently have to write their own destiny.
This might be equitable and fair, but it won’t necessarily be good
for women.

As for Welch, if he weren’t so impressed with himself, he’d
realize that women have negotiated a far better deal for themselves
than men in the modern world. He’d exhort men to question their
priorities, instead of hectoring women to embrace his single-track
notions of success.

He is a Neanderthal, all right—but not for the reason feminists
think.

Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia is a
columnist at The Daily, where this column
originally appeared.