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Notes -
The root cause is mechanization. Remember that 1920 and 2020 aren't meaningfully different when you look at TFR compared to the proportion of population that lives in a city- actually, I'd argue that in 1920 it was worse because it was near 2.0 even though the country was 50% rural. We have a ways to go before we get (back) to South Korea/Taiwan TFR.
Women's education is related, but mechanization causes women's education and not the other way around.
This was temporarily reversed in the 1950s and 60s (in the US) because of the post-war economic boom that uniquely benefited male labor, but as soon as that was over (and also that the cheap oil disappeared!) its value went right back into the toilet. And by the time we had cheap energy again, Chinese
slavesfree trade had permanently displaced those men.You want to reverse this effect, you need a similar technological shift. AI might get there someday, but it'll need to be a compelling and overwhelming technological force (that somehow survives getting lawfare'd into oblivion; not that lawfare isn't the reason a lot of objectively-unnecessary women are employed to begin with) that devalues their biological advantages so hard that the life path that involves having kids has a better return on investment for the overwhelming majority of women.
The other way is to just go full Handmaiden's Tale, but if you wanted that you have to forsake mechanization (and thus restore the biological advantage human doings have over human beings), and nothing lies that way but ruin: remember, the Spartans lived in fear of a Helot uprising, and given where the power lies in mechanized societies that's why women tend to be hysterical about the possibility of men doing the same thing to them despite the pains they take to make sure they don't.
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