Rotundus.com

You might have guessed by now that I'm not a fan of a lot of the results of feminism on society, but how best to keep from overreacting?

Like most movements, it's had its pros and cons. On the positive side, for example, there's been change of the sort that you find described in the following quote:

There is no doubt in my mind that the [feminist] movement has brought greater respect and dignity for females, especially in the business world. Prior to 1965, it was not uncommon for an attractive young woman in the work force to be treated like a piece of flesh, a toy to be used by men ... In this and many ways, the elevated self-concept of women has been a healthy phenomenon in our culture.

Dr. James Dobson, Focus on the Family, cited on p. 50 of No More Christian Nice Guy

(On the other hand, "respect and dignity" isn't what I'd describe as part and parcel of the sort of changes described in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture).

I already posted one blurb from the New York Times article Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, but here's another that struck me as worth noting:

... Shapiro shows that the shift toward industrial cookery began not in response to a demand from women entering the work force but as a supply-driven phenomenon. In fact, for many years American women, whether they worked or not, resisted processed foods, regarding them as a dereliction of their "moral obligation to cook," something they believed to be a parental responsibility on par with child care. It took years of clever, dedicated marketing to break down this resistance and persuade Americans that opening a can or cooking from a mix really was cooking. Honest. In the 1950s, just-add-water cake mixes languished in the supermarket until the marketers figured out that if you left at least something for the "baker" to do — specifically, crack open an egg — she could take ownership of the cake. Over the years, the food scientists have gotten better and better at simulating real food, keeping it looking attractive and seemingly fresh, and the rapid acceptance of microwave ovens — which went from being in only 8 percent of American households in 1978 to 90 percent today — opened up vast new horizons of home-meal replacement.

I was always wondering why you could buy powdered eggs, but if you ever bought a cake mix it always would require adding an egg. Apparently it's marketing that's to blame. Once you've gone through the hassle of throwing in an egg, you might as well forgo the cake mix and just whip up a cake from scratch - after all eggs have a shorter shelf life than a bunch of the other components that go it.

Denise Hines of Clark University found that when an abused man calls the police, the police were more likely to arrest him than to arrest his abusive female partner. This is partly the result of laws such as Maryland's primary aggressor law. Primary aggressor laws encourage police to discount who initiated and committed the violence but instead look at other factors (such as size and strength) that make them more likely to arrest men. When the men in Ms. Hines' study tried calling domestic violence hot lines, 64 percent were told that they only helped women, and more than half were referred to programs for male DV perpetrators. ... Ms. Hines found that the biggest reason male victims hesitate to leave their wives/girlfriends is concern for their children. If they leave, their children are left unprotected in the hands of a violent mother. If they take their children, when they're found, the children will be taken away and given to the mother.

- Source: Baltimore Sun

The answer appears to no. See some details from a Pew Centre study, or the following TED video: