Indians are routinely scapegoated for nepotistic hiring practices, transforming their social circles into professional pipelines. Yet across the Western world, another group has been diligently dismantling the myth of the all-powerful patriarch, revealing it as little more than a contrived male fantasy.
Larry Summers’s resignation as president of Harvard University in 2006 stands as a pivotal inflection point in our cultural shift. The entire “woke” era can be traced back to that episode, not just in the mechanics of his cancellation, but especially in the identity of his chief antagonists: women.
During what was meant to be an off-the-record address at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference, Summers suggested that the under-representation of women in STEM fields might stem, in part, from innate differences in aptitude at the extreme high end of the distribution. The backlash was swift and ferocious: a faculty no-confidence vote followed, culminating in his ouster. In that moment, the tides of grievance and institutional power decisively turned.
While men in the West carried on with their working lives: diligent, productive, and blissfully oblivious women seized the reins, ascending to dominate every corner of academia, law, government, media and the public service. From boardrooms to bureaucracies, the scales tipped irrevocably. But as cultural winds shift once more, that era of unchallenged hegemony may be nearing its twilight, with new forces gathering on the horizon to rewrite the script yet again.
