A sight of not so long ago in the West

By Ali Ismail

0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)

aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk

FEMINISM MAY HAVE TO EITHER CHANGE OR DIE

The Western concern for gender equality is of recent vintage



One of the major criticisms levelled at the part of the world – South Asia – from which most of us originate is that we collectively do not know or at any rate do not practise fairness towards our womenfolk.

I do not go to Speakers’ Corner on Sunday afternoons much these days but I remember that when I did so one of the most persistently used ammunitions used by hecklers at Islamic orators was the accusation that Muslim women suffer at the hands of their dictatorial men.

We have to remember that this Western stance is of recent vintage and that a couple of centuries ago women were excluded from active direction and control in the affairs of nations all over Western Europe and North America.

Therefore, it seems that this “enlightenment,” if such it is, came to the West first and we are being lambasted thoroughly for not following suit; in fact, we seem to be blamed for behaving as the not so distant ancestors of our detractors did towards the distaff sides of their societies.

Perhaps one way of looking at this subject is to stand back, as it were, and see it from a distance. Taking the whole of the animal kingdom including humanity (with all its races and cultures) it does seem to be the case that gender typing is the norm.

Take, for example, lions who are mammals like us. With them gender roles are clearly and explicitly defined and carried out. The tasks of the adult females are to catch prey, feed the pride and bring up the young. The tasks of the adult males are primarily to guarantee the security of the pride’s territory by warding off external intruders with special emphasis on excluding out-group males.

Therefore, it appears that throughout the animal kingdom and the majority of humankind gender typing is de rigour and stamped by the approval of millions of years of evolutionary progress.

It seems to me that only in the Western world and even there only since the late 19th Century has that universality been challenged.

Feminism is the principal vehicle of the argument that, basically, the sexes are pretty similar psychologically and even physically, bar a few anatomical differences.
Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements and moral philosophies, largely motivated by or concerned with the experiences of women. Most feminists are especially concerned with social, political and economic inequalities between men and women; some have argued that gendered and sexed identities, such as "man" and "woman," are socially constructed.
Feminists differ over the sources of inequality, how to attain equality, and the extent to which gender and gender-based identities should be questioned and critiqued. In simple terms, feminism is the belief in societal, political and economic equality of the sexes and the movement organised around the belief that gender should not be the pre-determining factor shaping a person's social identity, or socio-political or economic rights.
In my understanding (I am no expert), feminist political activists commonly campaign on issues such as reproductive rights, including the right to safe, legal abortions, access to contraception, quality prenatal care, violence within a domestic setting, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harrassment, street harrassment, discrimination and rape.
Many feminists today argue that feminism is a grass roots movement that seeks to cross boundaries based on social class, race, culture and religion. They also argue that an effective feminist movement should be culturally specific and address issues relevant to the women of the society in question such as female genital mutilation or "clitorectomies", in Africa and the Middle East and the "glass ceiling" issue in developed economies.
They also debate the extent to which certain issues such as rape, incest and mothering are universal. Themes explored in feminism include patriarchy , stereotyping, , sexual objectification and oppression.
As stated above, an early champion of female equality was John Stuart Mill who wrote a long and powerful essay to explain his viewpoint which was revolutionary in its time.
The Subjection of Women 1869 was thought to be excessively radical in John Stuart Mill's time but is now seen as a classic statement of liberal feminism. Its essential case is that if freedom is a good for men, it is a good for women, and that every argument against this view drawn from the supposedly different "nature" of men and women has been superstitious special pleading. If women have different natures, the only way to discover what they are is by experiment, he wrote, and that requires that women should have access to everything to which men have access. Only after as many centuries of freedom, he wrote, as there have been centuries of oppression will we really know what our natures are. Mill published The Subjection of Women late in life to avoid controversies that would lessen the impacts of his other work.
Mill concluded his long essay with these words: “When we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification - first in the loss of the most inspiriting and elevating kind of personal enjoyment, and next in the weariness, disappointment, and profound dissatisfaction with life, which are so often the substitute for it; one feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another.
“Their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for those which they are idly apprehensive of: while every restraint on the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow-creatures (otherwise than by making them responsible for any evil actually caused by it), dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being.”
Conversely, there is the philosopher Schopenhauer who in his famous essay On Women wrote: “Nor can one expect anything else from women if one considers that the most eminent heads of the entire sex have proved incapable of a single truly great, genuine and original achievement in art, or indeed of creating anything at all of lasting value: this strikes one most forcibly in regard to painting, since they are just as capable of mastering its technique as we are, and indeed paint very busily, yet cannot point to a single great painting; the reason being precisely that they lack all objectivity of mind, which is what painting demands above all else. Isolated and partial exceptions do not alter the case: women, taken as a whole, are and remain thorough and incurable philistines: so that, with the extremely absurd arrangement by which they share the rank and title of their husband, they are a continual spur to his ignoble ambitions.
“They are sexus sequior, the inferior second sex in every respect: one should be indulgent toward their weaknesses, but to pay them honour is ridiculous beyond measure and demeans us even in their eyes.”
Another German philosopher, Nietzsche, thought that there were enormous differences between male and female and that the primary function of man was warfare while that of woman was motherhood.
Some experimental psychologists have, perhaps daringly, postulated the hypothesis that by and large women live in the present and do not take well to analysing the past and planning for the future while men can think in the past, present and future.
Some psychologists additionally reckon that women excel in memorisation while men are tops in analytical skills. What cannot reasonably be doubted is that on the whole women congregate in education in subjects which have strong linguistic components and which require a great deal of rote memory. Men tend to dominate problem-solving subjects with mathematical and logical leanings.
Establishments such as Imperial College, London which specialise in the “hard” sciences have a predominantly male composition.
It appears to be the case that women are not collectively particularly good at planning for the future. I play a good deal of chess (and lose many games) and have noticed that men predominate over women numerically. Memory plays little part in that game and most of the skills involve assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a particular set up on the board and planning for future exigencies.
Women are well represented in card games, however, where abstract planning for the future is less taxing.
This suggests that a profession such as management accounting where the practitioners are always planning forecasts for future accounting “periods” is, arguably, not suitable for typical women.
Nancy Smith of Honolulu, Hawaii says: “I do believe in equality. I believe that if a woman is physically and intellectually equal she should not be held back. The same applies to race. Sometimes it is reasonable to have institutions with just men or just women. Any race should have equal pay for equal work. I believe in everyone winning. Men are probably better at spatial perception which may explain why men mostly play chess.”
Douglas Smith of Kula, also in Hawaii has a sturdy view: “Women who do equal work should get equal pay. I really don’t know why men play more chess than women.”
So there you have it with both sides of the question catered to. The next question is how the human colonies in space will be run in regard to gender relations when their turn comes to take over mankind’s destiny.

THE END

This article was published in the 4 September 2006 issue of the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read all over the world from the Arctic to the sub-Antarctic.