Factories not what they used to be - they're all extremely high-tech.

Every new medium has, within a short time of its introduction, been condemned as a threat to young people. Pulp novels would destroy their morals, TV would wreck their eyesight, video games would make them violent.

One way the Tea Party has benefited female candidates - and the conservative movement generally - is by consciously steering clear of social issues.

Fixing things around the house was the last bastion of manliness. But now, even that is getting taken away. As women become more economically independent, they are starting to fix things around the house for themselves.

When women gain access to higher education and then suddenly start doing better at it than the men, that can really throw the prevailing social order out of balance. That's exactly what's happened in South Korea, which is a highly patriarchal society. They started educating women, and then they were no longer the women that society wants them to be. That caused a real cultural crisis.

If you look at total numbers in the working and middle class, men still on average make more than women.

What the economy requires now is a whole different set of skills: You need intelligence, you need an ability to sit still and focus, to communicate openly to be able to listen to people and to operate in a workplace that is much more fluid than it used to be. Those are things that women do extremely well.