My father was a conservative man, politically and socially. European version of conservative, but definitely the real deal. I don’t want to elaborate too much, but you can believe me that some of his views are no longer politically correct.
There was one big, notable exception: women working, having a career and having power. He embraced that as good, full of sense and empirically proven. My mother worked, and he kept saying she was better at what she did than he was. A historian, he found it easy to name examples of successful and fascinating female leadership and female leader personalities: Maria Theresia of Austria ruled, closely followed by Maggie Thatcher. While a practicing Catholic, he had zero issue with women who taught, preached and otherwise spoke a lot, and publicly. Together with my mother, he devoutly followed the well broadcast exegesis of Jewish theology professor Ruth Lapide.
On the other hand, men and women keeping women from leadership, including themselves, were suspected to suffer from outright stupidity, a life-threatening disease to please or otherwise questionable motives and in any case were filed as making a massive mistake.
I keep coming back to this impressive mix of world views because I have not seen it often. Truth be told, its opposite is far more frequent: a generally modern and liberal worldview that does not go beyond lip service on gender equality, and secretly enjoys every opportunity to nudge women back out of the competition. (Ligue du LOL is an extreme case in point, but hardly the only one).
Where did Dad’s view originate? The conservatism was not unheard of in a male of his generation, but his outspoken emancipation? – If you believe Raquel Fernandez et al.’s well published article on Mothers and Sons, it has to do with Dad’s mom working. My Granny had a higher education as commercial secretary and took up work when facing early widowhood during WWII. My father saw her working (and rising in responsibility) through most of his child- and young adulthood.
She was not alone: the war moved many women into the workplace. The variation in draft rate across the US states is exactly the data variation that Fernandez uses to identify the effect she observes. Men growing up in a household with a working mother were more likely to encourage and support their wives’ work. “…the growing presence of a new type of man–one brought up in a family in which the mother worked–has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time.” Fernandez concludes.
That may have been it. At least one important factor. Thank you, Granny! (Miss you, by the way, and your son too.)