How Feminism Failed Women

Feminism has failed in every promise it's made to women. It has not liberated women. Most women today are in significant debt and are forced into the workforce—not because they’re empowered, but because they need to work to pay off debt for a degree that’s essentially worthless and not dischargeable in bankruptcy court.

Women are told to prioritize career over family. But by the time many of them are ready to settle down, their peak fertility years are behind them. The men they may have been interested in have already married and started families. As women age, they’re less likely to get married, and that means they’re responsible for working until retirement, saving for themselves, and securing their own future—things men used to do for them in a traditional family model.

It used to be that a woman could work and then choose to stay home while her husband paid the bills. Now, many women don’t get married, and they have no option but to work into old age. And here's the brutal truth: women are now facing something they’ve never had to face en masse before—working straight through their 60s, 70s, even 80s, just to scrape together enough to survive retirement. There is no fallback. There is no husband’s pension. No partner covering the mortgage. Just decades of labor, taxes, rent, and rising costs. For many women, there is no “choice” to step away from work—because there’s no one else there to carry the burden. That doesn’t sound like freedom. That doesn’t sound like empowerment. That sounds like slavery to a wage.

And when life finally catches up—when the diagnosis comes, when the lump in the breast turns out to be cancer, when they can no longer walk up the stairs or make it to work—who will be there? Not a husband. Not a partner. Not children. Many will face those moments completely alone. No one to share the burden. No one to hold their hand in the waiting room. No one to drive them to treatment or sit by their hospital bed. Feminism promised independence, but what it delivered was isolation in the moments where human connection matters most.

When they finally retire, they won’t be surrounded by a family or children—they’ll have a dog, a cat, and a former employer that won’t even give them a gold watch on the way out.

The promise of liberation from feminism is exposed as a lie when we look at the reality: most women are in debt bondage. Many have turned to sex work on OnlyFans—immortalized as prostitutes for as long as digital technology exists—just to survive, all while pretending it's empowering to show their anus on camera to millions of strangers. That’s not empowerment. That’s desperation dressed up as confidence.

Yes, there was a time when women didn’t have credit cards or bank accounts—but that was because their husbands were responsible for their debts. If a wife racked up a bill and the husband didn’t pay, he was the one who went to collections, not her. In some cases, he could be jailed for not taking care of his wife. Now, thanks to feminism, women get to shoulder their own debt—and the man is off the hook entirely.

Many women now shoulder both domestic and financial responsibilities, leaving them with twice the workload, not half. A major reason for this is the rise in single motherhood—a trend that feminism not only failed to prevent but, in many ways, encouraged through the normalization of fatherless homes and the undermining of traditional family structures.

Feminism promised an equal partnership, but in practice, it often just meant adding more to the woman’s plate. She’s expected to bring in income, manage the home, raise the kids, and somehow still have time for self-care, a social life, and personal development. Meanwhile, men—who historically handled the external demands like working long hours, maintaining the property, managing bills, and physical labor—still largely do those things. But now, instead of division of labor, there’s duplication. The modern woman is expected to do it all, and feminism calls that “liberation.”

It’s not equality—it’s exhaustion disguised as empowerment.

Feminism promised so much, but what did it actually deliver?

Financial independence? Most women are swimming in student debt, working jobs they hate, and living paycheck to paycheck.

Career fulfillment? Many women are overworked, underappreciated, and burned out, with studies showing women’s happiness has actually declined since the feminist revolution.

Sexual liberation? Hookup culture has replaced connection with emptiness. Women are more depressed, more anxious, and less satisfied than ever before.

Empowerment through autonomy? If being immortalized online as a digital prostitute for rent money is empowerment, then the word has lost all meaning.

Equality in relationships? The promise of partnership has been replaced with solo survival mode.

Support and care in sickness or old age? Many women will face the darkest chapters of their lives utterly alone.

This isn’t progress. This isn’t liberation. This is a scam—sold as empowerment and delivered as isolation, overwork, and financial servitude.