Well sure. But there's needed and then there's Needed, you know?

What you said is true, people like to feel needed.

Here's that caveat though.

Not many people enjoy being a burden. How do you think those same trainees you mentioned would feel about knowing their presence and efforts were seen as burdensome and unnecessary? Something that had to be tolerated begrudgingly in order to get something, like a raise?

Now maybe you see why women at pushing back on the "Needed" narrative.

In context, it's attached to disenfranchisement, derision, and scorn.

How many times have you heard women referred to as the old ball and chain? How many times has a man said, "if she wasn't pretty, she'd be absolutely useless/worthless". How many times have men put down the work of women, made fun of it, or disregarded it?

Do you think that century plus of yammering from men made women feel needed and wanted? Or do you think that it made them feel like Needed burdens men reluctantly had to put up with for sex and a legacy?

Words have power and meaning. Killing someone with a thousand cuts is still killing them.

Freeing men from women Needing (economically) them opens up the possibility to women needing (in the way you described) men in a way that doesn't hurt either party.

The men balking on that truth, with all their "feelings", are supremacists. They don't want to be needed as you described. They want to be Needed because they're scared little shits who have to control and subjugate women in irder to be okay with themselves as a man. They don't know how to be a man without domination. They'd rather be dead than try, according to them.