The years between 2016 and 2020 marked an inflection point in American institutional life that future historians will recognize as revolutionary. Law schools crossed the threshold to majority female enrollment in 2016, reaching 56% by 2019. The New York Times newsroom became majority female in 2018. Medical schools achieved female majorities in 2019. The white-collar workforce overall tipped female during this same period. These weren’t gradual shifts playing out over generations—they were rapid transformations occurring within a single presidential term.

The timing correlates precisely with what we now call the “Great Awokening.” This is not coincidental. As Andrews demonstrates, every aspect of wokeness—from its emphasis on emotional harm over objective standards to its preference for social ostracism over direct debate—reflects characteristically feminine approaches to social organization. The elevation of “lived experience” over data, the obsession with linguistic harm, the pursuit of consensus through exclusion rather than confrontation: these are not random ideological developments but predictable outcomes of demographic transformation.

Consider how swiftly institutional norms shifted. In 2015, the concept of “microaggressions” was confined to academic feminists. By 2020, major corporations were mandating training sessions on unconscious bias. In 2015, speakers could debate controversial topics on college campuses. By 2020, professors were being fired for citing scholarly research that challenged progressive orthodoxy. In 2015, color-blind meritocracy was still the official ideal. By 2020, explicit racial and gender preferences were not just tolerated but mandated.

These changes didn’t emerge from careful deliberation or democratic decision-making. They erupted simultaneously across institutions as soon as women achieved the critical mass necessary to reshape organizational culture. The 30% threshold that researchers identify as the tipping point for minority influence became, in institution after institution, the moment when feminine preferences began displacing masculine norms.

What makes this transformation remarkable is its invisibility to those living through it. We discuss the “crisis in higher education” or the “polarization of politics” without recognizing their common origin. We debate whether wokeness represents a new religion or a marxist revolution without seeing that it’s something more fundamental: the replacement of masculine institutional norms that prioritized objectives, hierarchies, and systematic reasoning with feminine norms that prioritize relationships, equality, and emotional intelligence. The demographic data Andrews marshals makes this impossible to deny—the correlation is too perfect, the timing too precise.

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