If that is the grand assessment of your observations and education, @novocadian? Giving up the joy of children and families is empowerment? (Technically, women have proven they're capable of achieving both!) Those "empowered" women are absolutly crushing the patriarchy, by working for male-dominated corporate monoliths, spending their days in tiny cubicles and cement jungles.

Have you considered it might be these corporations who are the ones being empowered, and that by choosing sterility, they are a direct cause for the exponential drop in birth rates? Have they possibly considered this provides the excuse for more cheap imported labour that will eventually replace all these working women, whose superior education gave them the notion they were achieving some sort of victory?

But it couldn't be an intentional plan to sow division between men and women, an actual conspiracy to lower birth rates. Nah. You're right.