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But whatever the rights and wrongs of it, such a topic is probably more likely to engage the interest of young people who live so much of their lives online, where the battle between the sexes is fought on TikTok before it moves to the student union, the boardroom, or the marital home.
This week, former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick was honoured by the Sydney Women’s Fund, a not-for-profit that supports women experiencing domestic violence and promotes women’s economic empowerment.
In a speech accepting the honour, Broderick noted that women’s and girls’ rights are facing a period of backlash and erosion around the world. She should know – in 2023, Broderick completed a six-year term as a United Nations special rapporteur, addressing human rights violations globally.
In her address this week, Broderick cited research showing that in Britain, 79 per cent of 16- and 17-year-old boys have consumed the content of misogynist influencer and accused rapist Andrew Tate, the apex predator of the “manosphere”. According to Broderick, the message of the manosphere bros is simple: “Women are the problem, and masculinity means taking back control.”
The tradwife movement has evolved as a feminine ancillary to the expanding manosphere – as men encourage each other to assert “masculine” control, a group of women stands ready to hand it to them. As Broderick says, “this isn’t nostalgia”.
“It’s an attempt to reshape what power, partnership and equality look like for the next generation.”
A 2020 Sunday Times article on the tradwife movement noted that “even men’s rights advocates acknowledge that movements that lack female support don’t last very long”.
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The article quotes a self-styled “masculine development” expert who says “it’s time to get women on our side”. The best way to do that, he argues, is to expose them to female YouTubers who channel the “men’s rights” program to millions of women online. Women like tradwives.
The rise of populism and authoritarian leadership around the world is strongly correlated with a repression of women’s rights, and a pro-nativist return to control over female sexuality and reproduction. Populism promises simple solutions to complex problems: protect male breadwinners by propping up inefficient industries; solve infrastructure shortfalls by banning immigrants.
The tradwife movement is a subset of the same seductive promise. If it’s too difficult to be a working, mortgage-laden mother who feels guilty because she believes she is under-performing on every front (and it is difficult), then why not return to a simpler past?
As an English tradwife told The New Yorker last year: “There is nothing wrong with the dream you had as a six-year-old … wanting to be wooed, to wear girlish and feminine things, marry your true love, bake pies, raise babies and live happily ever after.”
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It’s not difficult to see appeal in the promise of that sort of security. And yet, unlike six-year-olds, adults know that there can be no real security without economic and political power.
The woman who more or less invented the domestic goddess archetype, and brought it to a mass audience – Martha Stewart – was also the United States’ first female billionaire. Anyone who has seen Martha, the compelling documentary about this redoubtable entrepreneur, will know that Stewart is just about the least-biddable female on the planet.
Likewise, the most successful tradwife social media influencers have hugely lucrative, globalised businesses. Their (often female) critics twist themselves in feminist knots by pointing out that actually, these tradwives do work – they are follower-rich social media professionals who create, photograph, curate and manage a huge content machine.
A tradwife quoted by The Times harked back to the 1950s as “the last time housewives were treated with respect”, a statement that requires a fact-check. She also took inspiration from the Tudors and the Victorians, she said.
“I admire Anne Boleyn – I know she got beheaded, but she was powerful.”
Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.
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