SOME REFLECTIONS ON WOMEN AND Kay B o a h

Women have long had a reputation for being more peaceminded and less warlike than men, a reputation that led some males during World War I to oppose female suffrage on the ground that it would mean “the dilution with the qualities of the cow, of the qualities of the bull upon which all the herd’s safety must depend.” It was considered by them “a damnable thing that we should weaken ourselves by bringing into the war the woman, who has never been permitted in the war tents of any strong, virile dominating nation. ’ ’ I

But what evidence is here, apart from widespread belief, that women in their political views are less oriented than men to aggression, dominance, and exploitation and more concerned with humanistic values? Women’s reputation for being less warlike than males would appear to have some foundation in fact, both in that earlier era and in our own day. Many suffragists were also active pacifists, both in the pre-Civil War peace movement and during the period prior to American entry into World War I. By the early 1890’s all of the large women’s organizations had peace departments and clearly considered inter- national peace to be one of their main priorities. During World War I there was a woman’s peace movement led by Jane Addams, and a Woman’s Peace party which drew up a platform calling for “a conference of neutral nations to work for an early peace, the limitation of armaments and the nationalization of their manufacture (to take the profits out of war), the democratic control of foreign policies, and universal woman suffrage,” as well as a Concert of Nations to replace the Balance of Power and “the replacement of rival armies and navies by an ‘international police.”’* Even when the United States entered the war, organized American women avoided the parochial patriotism so characteristic of public opinion at that time, and those who were ap- pointed to the government’s Woman’s Com- mittee did much to moderate patriotic excesses. The war itself was, in the view of many women, an expression of “masculinity run amuck.”

PEACE

In the present period as well women remain more strongly peace-oriented than men. During the Korean War it was women more than men who desired an end to the fighting. Even more impressive are the results of a poll conducted in- the fall of 1970 on the question of whether to bring American troops home at the end of 1971. While 45 per cent of the males opposed the idea, only 27 per cent of women did SO.^

There is also evidence to support the view that women when banded together for social ac- tion have tended to display interest and concern for ecology, for consumer protection, and for working women and children. The major women’s organizations founded during the late nineteenth century focused heavily on securing protective labor legislation for women and children, and on conservation of the environ- ment. Even the General Federation of Women’s Clubs whose membership was much more con- servative than that of other women’s groups strongly supported these programs. Settlement workers, most of whom were feminists, sup- ported socialism and organized labor, but in practice devoted their energies primarily to women and children in the slums. The National Consumers’ League, a small, elite organization of educated women, conducted independent in- vestigations of conditions in various industries, and lobbied for protective labor legislation, es- pecially for maximum-hour and minimum-wage laws for working women. These concerns were shared by the National Women’s Trade Union League, which also focused on getting women un- ionized. All of these groups formed an important part of “the social-justice wing of the Progressive movement. ‘ ‘ 4

One problem with all of this, however, was the rationale on which it was based. While the early suffragists argued that women and men had common capacities and abilities and therefore there were no valid grounds for ex- cluding women from political participation on an equal basis. later proponents of female suffrage

* Kay Boals is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton and teaches courses on The Politics of Male- Female Relations, Affirmative Action for Women, and Law and Society, as well as Middle East Politics, an area in which she has published a number of articles. She is currently at work on a book on male-female relations that uses Jungian psychological theory and literature in the field of societal modernization to dis- cuss the problem of political action to create genuine equality between men and women.

’Statement by Henry A. Wise Wood, president of the Aero Club of America, testifying before a Congressional committee on woman suffrage during World War 1. Quoted in William O’Neill, EVERYONE WAS BRAVE: THE RISE AND FALL OF FEMINISM IN AMERICA (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), p. 56.

21bid., p. 175.

‘Kirsten Amundsen, THE SILENCED MAJORITY: WOMEN AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 142. See also WALL STREET JOURNAL, April 20, 1972, p. 18

‘O’Neill, op. cit., pp. 77-106.

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argued that women had unique capacities and sensitivities which were needed in the political arena. According to them, it was women’s special maternal role that was responsible for this difference and it was as mothers that women would enter politics. A typical statement of this position came from the newly-formed League of Women Voters in 1920: “Women unite on a humanitarian basis. There is a kinship of motherhood that binds together all women of all classes. So where the home and children are con- cerned, women will stand side by side in spite of creeds or caste. We have also learned that home does not mean house, nor children . . . it includes world-wide welfare.”’

This stress on women’s maternal role or in- stinct remains very much with us today. In his in- fluential piece on inner and outer space, Erik H. Erikson points out that the potential for annihila- tion that now exists in the world can affect even unborn children in the womb (e.g. radiation) and suggests that such a situation calls for “the representation of the mothers of the species in the councils of image-making and of decision.” Women, he says, have a special contribution to make - “realism of householding, responsibility of upbringing, resourcefulness in peacekeeping, and devotion to healing” - which is linked to women’s possession of “a productive inner- bodily space” accompanied by “a biological, psy- chological, and ethical commitment to take care of human infancy.”6

The danger in stressing motherliness as the rationale for women’s more active participation in politics and public life is clear from the history of nineteenth-century feminism. It led women to focus on what one author has called “social feminism,” that is, the attempt by women to remedy social injustices by trying to influence, persuade, educate, and shame those who held power rather than by working to assume positions of power themselves.

Social feminism was attractive to many women because it enabled them to func- tion on a larger state and at the same time exhibit such womanly attributes as compassion, nu r tu re , and child- centeredness. The professions that appealed most to women were teachin

with the prevailing definition of woman’s nature . . . The chief feature of social feminism was that it created roles for women that militated against their full emancipation. Their benevolent enter- prises met women’s desire for useful and satisfvinrr work without touching the

and social work, which were compatib B e

It is conceivable that women’s increased participation in politics during the contemporary period will take a similar course and that we shall see, not a transformation of society con- commitant with a fundamental change in the sturcture of male-female relations, but rather a continued extension of women’s opportunities within the framework of the existing structure that will be sufficiently broad to satisfy the vast majority of women and keep a more radical feminist consciousness from spreading. If that is the way things turn out, the consequences for the political system will be a continuation of the pre- sent dominance of males and masculine values backed by the supportive subservience of females and feminine values.

The only way to avoid that possibility would seem to be for women to be willing to risk step- ping outside cultural definitions of femininity and to develop in themselves qualities of asser- tiveness and leadership that will allow them to hold power themselves. Women who remain within the cultural notions of subservient femininity - or, indeed, even those women who develop a fuller range of feminine values but neglect the development of their symbolically masculine potentials - cannot function as affec- tive advocates for feminine values for two major reasons: first, because they will be taken seriously in a masculine-value-oriented society only to the extent that they meet masculine value standards at least to some degree; and, second, because the task of advocacy and the role of ac- tive leadership both require those qualities of determination, perserverance, courage, and clarity of view that are aspects of the sym- bolically masculine.

But suppose women do succeed in conscious development of their own masculine side to the point that they are able to be effective advocates for themselves and their goals and values. Is there not the danger that women will become “like men” and that whatever differences in values now existing will be destroyed? Would not a society in which both males and females had strongly developed masculine t ra i ts and proclivities be even more inhumane than one in which women represent the feminine, albeit in a depotentiated form? As one author puts it: “Women can be every bit the brutes and bastards men have been . . . and they have as much right to cultivate the qualities. Yet here is a great question: how shall this already too brutish and bastardly world be saved and made gentle by in- creasing the numbers of brutes and bastards among US?^ We need, therefore, to consider -

sources Gf their inequality.’ seriokly how and whether the conscious 51bid., p. 51. See also pp. 33-6 for similar statements from an earlier period.

EErikson, “Inner and Outer Space: Reflections on Womanhood,” DAEDALUS, Spring 1964, pp. 582-83.

‘O’Neill, op. cit., p. 143.

“Theodore Roszak, “The Hard and the Soft: The Force of Feminism in Modern Times,” in Betty Roszak and Theodore Roszak, eds., MASCULINE FEMININE, (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 103.

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development of women’s masculine side is likely to increase the number of brutes and bastards or instead to create effective advocates for feminine values.

Some interesting evidence in this connection appeared in a recent New York Times article on girl gangs in New York City in the context of a discussion of one gang that is traditionally feminine in its relationship to men and another in which the members are developing their own masculine potential^.^ The traditional group ac- tively supports male machismo, not only by wearing jackets that say “Property of Savage Skulls” (the male gang of which the females are a subdivision 1, but also by an exceedingly worshipful attitude towards male violence. Of the gang’s president, one girl said:

‘He’s our president . . . If you don’t do what he says, you get beat up (by the boys). They have no pity, they use whatever they have: chairs, garbage cans, fists.’She looked at Blacky proudly 2nd continued, ‘I think that’s right. You have to respect the boys. No, we have no right to hit back and we shouldn’t.’

In the Savage Nomad headquarters, Janet concurred. ‘The guys take care of us. It’s their job to protect us, so whatever they do has to be right! (Emphasis supplied. 1

Girls from these two gangs repay this protection by doing a variety of housekeeping chores. As Blacky aptly put it, “They’re like our wives; they do everything a wife does.” These girls want to get married and eagerly enter into common-law marriages with the boys in the gang.

I n contrast to this and to the tight authoritarian discipline that characterizes these male-dominated girl gangs, the Ghetto Sisters represent a quite different orientation, as is in- dicated even by their name. Attitudes to marriage and career differ strongly from those of girls in the traditional gangs. The Ghetto Sisters see the achievement of autonomy through education and steady jobs as their first priority. One girl said: “I want to be a data processor. That way if my husband turns out to be a bastard, I can tell him to get out because I’ll be in- dependent.” According to their leader, “we want girls who talk good, who know what they’re say- ing, who care about the community.” Concern for the community leads the group to hold cake sales and raffles for fund-raising in order to help community members in emergency situations. “We want to get to the top and that means help- ing the community,” said one of them. What better amalgamation of ambition and concern for others?

This suggestive example indicates, in my view, the likely direction of development for women who relate actively to the symbolically masculine within themselves. It also indicates an interesting paradox: on the one hand, women who do not consciously develop their own masculine potentials and remain instead one- sided embodiments of feminine values wind up both depotentiating the feminine and overvaluing the masculine as it exists in males - and, often in those males who embody its least socially desirable forms. On the other hand, women who develop their masculine potential while remain- ing in touch with feminine values as well are able to be effective carriers and advocates of the feminine while at the same time remaining sen- sitive to the dangers of ruthless egocentricity.

Additional support for this position can be found in the concern - much in evidence within the women’s liberation movement - for humanizing society by changing the value struc- ture. From this perspective what the movement is about is not simply opening opportunities for individual women within the existing structure but rather changing that structure both on the level of values and on the level of institutional forms. While during the early years of the feminist resurgence in the late 1960’s there was an understandable stress on the negative side of feminine values like compassion and nurturance as they operate in this culture to oppress and restrict women, in recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the positive side of such feminine values once they are freed from an oppressive context. Thus, as Gloria Steinem said in a speech to the National Women’s Political Caucus: “Our aim should be to humanize society by bringing the values of women’s culture into it, not simply to put individual women in men’s places.”’O Or, as Yoko Ono argued in a recent New York Times editorial:

In the last two thousand years, men have repeatedly shown us the failure in their method of running the world. Instead of falling into the same trap that men fell into, women can offer something that the society never had before because of male dominance: that is the feminine direction. What we can do is to take the society which contains both masculine and feminine characteristics, and bring out the more feminine nature in the society, rather than the masculine one now at work as a negative force. We must make more positive usage of the feminine tendencies of the society which, up to now, has been either suppressed or dismissed as something harmful, im- practical, irrelevant, and ultimately, shameful.

’Nadine Brozan, “For Hundreds of Girls in City, Street Gangs Offer a Way of Life,” NEW YORK TIMES, May 9, 1972, p. 48.

’“NEW YORK TIMES, July 11, 1971, p. 22

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I am proposing the feminization of society; the use of feminine tendencies a s a positive force to change the world.“

In addition to these statements of intention, there is other evidence from the movement as well. Consciousness-raising groups which begin from feelings and personal experience in order to develop theory have been basic to the movement and reflect the serious commitment to connec- ting t,he personal and the political, the concrete and the abstract. In addition, both within these groups and in other types of groups within the movement there has been a definite attempt to avoid hierarchical leadership, the creation of “stars” by the media, and the monopolizing or dominating of meetings by a few individuals. Techniques adopted have included assignment of leadership positions by lot, rotation of positions so that everyone eventually leads, having each member speak in turn about the subject under discussion, holding group rather than individual press conferences, and the refusal to be personal- l y identified i n the press except a s a spokeswoman of a particular group. Moreover, the commitment to fostering the self- development of each member rather than allow- ing t.hose whose skills and talents were initially better-developed to monopolize the more creative and interesting tasks can be seen in many feminist groups in the policy that each in- dividual is responsible for doing some of the creative work and some of the drudgery and that those who have skills will share them with the group and teach them to others.

There have, of course, been difficulties in working out and applying these patterns, the more so since they constitute a radical departure from hierarchical, task-specialized group organization. There is undoubtedly, at least at the outset, a loss in efficiency, as well as a need to spend an enormous amount of time building and securing group consensus. Nonetheless, the important point for our purposes is that the seriousness with which the attempt has been made provides additional reassuring evidence for those who fear that politically active women are not committed to feminine values.

I t is possible to arrive at the same conclusion from a somewhat different point of view, name- ly. on the basis of the theoretical perspective provided by Jungian psychology. As was noted above. “masculine” and “feminine” as used here denote archetypal modalities of being in which both sexes can and do participate. Yet that

is not to say that they do so in exactly the same way. Certainly it is the case that all qualities, whether heretofore considered appropriate for males or females, are in fact human qualities. As Theodore Roszak says, “Courage, daring, decisiveness, resourcefulness are good qualities, in women as much so as in men. So, too, are charity, mercy, tenderness. But ruthlessness, callousness, power lust, domineering self- assertion . . . these are destructive, whether in man or woman.”” But there are nonetheless good reasons for not talking only in terms of human qualities.

First, we start from a historical situation in which males and females have been socialized for millennia to embody quite different sets of human qualities. Thus, even if we assume that the assignment of qualities to one sex or the other is essentially arbitrary, continued use of masculine-feminine terminology is useful as a way of indicating the point from which each sex must begin its transformation to a fuller humani- ty. The terminology itself helps to keep us aware of the likely problems and pitfalls, strength and weaknesses, of each sex and therefore of the need for the two to take rather different,paths to wholeness. Taken as groups, in other words, males and females are at present different and, given the strength and duration of societal prohibitions on female aggression and autonomy and male compassion and nurturance, are likely to remain so for some time to come.

Second, it seems likely that the closer con- nection of males to the symbolically masculine and females to the symbolically feminine is not merely a matter of arbitrary cultural assign- ment but instead reflects rather different modal propensities, tendencies, and problems in the two sexes. Both recent genetic and hormonal studies and research on sex differences observable only hours after birth suggest that there may well be a somewhat different psychosomatic base in males and females.” Moreover, the nature of those differences offers support to the view that males may well have easier psychological access to the masculine and a harder time connecting with and developing the feminine, whereas for females the reverse is likely to be true. If that is indeed the case, then fears that women will become “like men” in terms of one-sided masculine development may well be misplaced, not only for the immediate future, but for the long run as well.

“Yoko Ono, “The Feminization of Society,” NEW YORK TIMES, February 23, 1972, p. 41.

”Roszak in Roszak and Roszak, op. cit., p. 102.

I3See, for example, Maggie Scarf, “He and She: The Sex Hormones and Behavior,” NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, May 7. 1972, pp. 3031; 101-7.

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