The software I use for this blog is from WordPress, and one interesting feature is seeing from which countries blog ‘hits’ originate. Most of them are from Anglophone countries, of course, but one non-Anglophone country now accounts for more hits than all the other non-Anglophone countries combined – Germany.

I attribute the interest in Germany largely to Michael Klein, who runs the excellent and popular German-language blog http://sciencefiles.org. He’s mentioned this campaign in a number of his blog posts, and contributed a number of pieces to this blog, all of which have been well received. He’s just put up a new post in which he kindly includes a link to the Amazon page for The Glass Ceiling Delusion. Sales of the book have been increasing markedly, as this campaign attracts more publicity with each passing month.

For people who can read German, here’s Michael’s post:

http://sciencefiles.org/2012/09/15/ende-einer-genderphantasie-die-glaserne-decke-in-scherben/

For the 99.9% of you who can’t read German, here’s a Google auto-translation:

120915 Google translation of a post by Michael Klein

I think it’s fair to say German-to-English translators need have no fear of being replaced by auto-translation software any time soon. Michael also sent me the following:

Feminists keep telling us that – as EC Commissioner Viviane Reding puts it – ‘a group of middle-aged, business suit wearing men’ is discriminating against women. The result is a ‘glass ceiling’ in companies that prevents women from rising to the top. However, a new German study published in the mainstream journal Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie and Sozialpsychologie shows that there is no such thing as a glass ceiling. Fabian Ochsenfeld, author of the study, used panel data collected in the HIS-Absolventepanel and followed graduates from German universities over 10 years. Ten years on from their graduation, he found that among 1,780 male and 2,466 female graduates, the male graduates had a 19% higher chance of holding a top management position. However, the difference isn’t caused by discrimination within companies, the so-called ‘glass ceiling’, but is a result of life choices made by female graduates.

Firstly, data shows that female students differ from male students in their choices of disciplines. Female students more often study social sciences and humanities than male students, while male students choose engineering and economics more often than female students. However, it takes economics and engineering to head straight for a top job in management. Deciding to become a mother positively quashes chances to get to top management positions. It’s clear that the smaller number of women in top management positions or company boards isn’t the result of discrimination against women, but rather the result of women’s own life choices – the choice of motherhood in particular.

If feminism is to respect individuals’ choices, it’s reached a dead end. However, experience shows that individual life choices don’t count in the ideology of feminism, the main objective of which is to sponge off society.