The Natural Superiority of Women (39 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

Tags: #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Women's Studies, #test

BOOK: The Natural Superiority of Women
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prophecy that wreaks havoc upon women's chances of excelling at mathematics: the still widely-accepted belief that some biological factor prevents them from doing well at math.

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A later study, conducted by Professor John Ernest of the University of California at Santa Barbara, concluded that societal rather than genetic factors more adequately explain the differences in mathematical achievement between men and women. The sex differences in mathematical achievement, Ernest writes,
are the result of many subtle and not so subtle forces, restrictions, stereotypes, sex roles, parental-teacher-peer group attitudes, and other cultural and psychological constraints which we haven't begun fully to understand. Our studies confirm the hypothesis of the sociologist Lucy Sells that mathematics is a 'critical filter' tending to eliminate women from many fields, from chemistry, physics and engineering, to architecture and medicine. This conclusion lends greater import and urgency to this study.
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With the advent and growth of the women's movement, and the entrance of so many women into the workaday world and the professions, a revolutionary change has occurred in the outlook of women. Today women are freely entering virtually every field that was formerly closed to them. The accomplishments of women in these fields have given young women the confidence and motivation to go out and do likewise. One of the results of this is to be seen in the decreasing differences in conventional IQ test scores, the best scores being shared equally between boys and girls, and the frequency with which girls are graduating at the top of their high school, college, army and naval academy classes.
In conclusion, it needs to be said that there are many intelligences that constitute the mind of every normal person, and that under an optimum life experience and education the quality of these intelligences would develop to a degree which is seldom reached today in a world in which most of us are more or less the wreck of what we ought to have been. It is not geniuses in a technologic-scientific and socially cubistically dilapidated world, but people who exhibit the highest form of intelligence whom we should most value, those who are able to love, to work, to play, and to use their minds soundly. Finally, let us remember

 

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that it is not statistical averages that should immediately concern us, but individual human beings who, whatever their sex, ethnic group, or religion, constitute the wealth and signature of humanity. Like the concept of race, the concept of IQ is a snare and a delusion which narrows the definition of humanity.

 

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Women and Creativity
Why is it that there have been no great composers among women, no great logicians and philosophers, so few great poets, musical instrumentalists, painters, scientists, inventors, technologists? Have not women, from the earliest timesor at least during the last few hundred yearsbeen employed in kitchens to which they have not, by their own invention, contributed (so it is usually said) a single gadget? Is it not because they are lacking in the kind of genius that appears to be more abundantly distributed in the male sex?
This sort of reasoning constitutes a begging of the question, for it implies that there is an inborn kind of genius that probably occurs more frequently among men than among women. There exists no evidence for such an inborn limitation of the potentialities for genius in women. There is not the least reason to suspect that the genes for genius are in or limited to the Y chromosome.
Indeed, it is very much more likely that if such genes exist (which is extremely doubtful), they are present on the X chromosome, and that a female, because of her two X chromosomes, would be likely to receive a double dose of such genes; whereas a male, because of his single X chromosome, would receive but a single dose of them. Brain research seems to show that women do receive a double dose of such genes.

 

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Every dispassionate investigator of the subject has agreed that woman's comparative lack of accomplishment cannot be entirely due to her not having enjoyed such opportunities, as in music, the arts, philosophy, spiritual leadership, invention, and science; yet until recently their accomplishments in these fields have been far from startling. Why have there been so few outstanding representatives of the female sex in these fields? There are many reasons.
The tradition that women are unable to do as well as men in anything requiring the use of the mind is a very ancient one
Seek to be good, but aim not to be great,
A woman's noblest station is retreat .
These famous words, written by Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773) in his poem
Advice to a Lady
represented the kind of debilitating pabulum that women were sedulously fed by almost everyone, virtually all the days of their lives. The truth is that if it is continually being reiterated that the individual belongs to a group that has never achieved anything and never will, and that everything ever achieved in the world has been accomplished by persons of another kind; if you tell that person that it is useless to attempt to provide an education, or more than the rudiments of one, because she wouldn't be able to take advantage of it; if you make laws that prevent her from owning property, as well as laws that assign her to an inferior position in the hierarchy of statuses; if you exclude her from all activities except those limited to the menial tasks of domesticity and executing the will of her superior in looking after children; and if you conduct yourself as if you were her natural lord and master, you will succeed, have no doubt of it, in convincing her that such is the natural order of things. You may, in fact, succeed to such an extent as to engender a doglike fidelity and an utter devotion to the principle that dog is dog and master is master, each occupying the station to which God and nature have called them. As Rousseau aptly remarked, "Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them; they love their servitude as the companions of Ulysses loved their brutishness."
We shall not ask the question: What does one expect of dogs other than complete loyalty? But we shall ask: What does one expect of any person under such conditions? Does one expect sights set as high as the privileged ones of society? What should

 

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this person aim to achieve? At what level should her aspirations operate? What goals does she set herself? Obviously, her sights are not set because she isn't permitted the instrument; or if she is, it has no sights, and her goals and aspirations are focused almost exclusively upon pleasing her master. Since the master is so much concerned with superiority, the diminished stature of the menialwho is always at his serviceis very satisfactory, especially when the menial acknowledges her inferiority in innumerable subtly flattering ways; and come weal or woe, the inferior will help to maintain the
status quo .
And although the menial may sometimes experience the goadings of doubt and occasionally feel dissatisfied with her lot, so to think and feel is to partake of forbidden fruit, to eat of the tree of knowledge, which is prohibited.
Master and menials. Men and women. It is written in Genesis 3:15-17, that the Lord God said unto the serpent:
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and
thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto
the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I
commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is
the ground for thy sake.
In I Corinthians 11:3 it is written: "And the head of the woman is the man." And again in I Corinthians 11:7-9:
For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as
he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory
of the man.
For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.
Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman
for the man.
And finally I Corinthians 14:34:
Let your woman keep silence in the churches, for it is not
permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be
under obedience, so also saith the law.

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