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Ich habe mich sehr über die Kritik von Bettina Kohlrausch an meinem neuen Buch „Wann sind Frauen wirklich zufrieden“ in der Welt gefreut. Als Professorin „für gesellschaftliche Transformation und Digitalisierung“ der Uni Paderborn sowie Wissenschaftliche Direktorin des WSI der gewerkschaftsnahen Hans-Böckler-Stiftung hat sie sich ohne Frage stark mit den Themen des Buches auseinandergesetzt. Da ihre Kritik ermöglicht, einige Argumente des sogenannten illiberalen Feminismus besser zu verstehen, gebe ich hier ihre wichtigsten Punkte ausschnittweise wieder und zeige, wie mein Buch „Wann sind Frauen wirklich zufrieden“ bereits eine Antwort darauf gibt. Dafür zitiere ich jede einzelne Kritik Kohlrauschs außer nicht-sachbezogenen Argumenten, bspw.

How many hours should people work? I am pretty sure you, and everyone you know, has asked that question. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, I can actually show with how many working hours people are most satisfied on average. And the results are pretty strange. In short, while mothers can be satisfied with their life while working long or short hours, fathers become unsatisfied with their life when they work shorter hours. You can check out the results in this graph, which shows how the life satisfaction of each group is related to working hours. To put this

In every society, some have more income than others. In some societies, some have much more income than others. But are people that live in more equal societies happier with their life? The prevailing view is that income inequality breeds unhappiness. But does someone from Sweden really wake up in the morning to thank god that she does not live in a country with more inequality? Probably not… Indeed, empirical studies that compare whether countries with more inequality have a happier population showed mixed results. Some found that indeed, countries with more inequality have a more satisfied population. But others

Imagine a population of wolves and sheep. Wolves eat sheep. The wolve population grows, as long as there are sheep. But once the wolves have eaten all the sheep, the wolves starve and die. When the wolves are gone, the sheep population can recover. This is a basic prey and predator model. Essentially, it shows how trade union power is linked to inequality, trade unions are the wolves and inequality is the sheep. Using data from 12 countries over 100 years, I can show with my co-author Louis Chauvel that trade unions recruit more members after inequality has been high.