The Natural Superiority of Women (34 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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What we see in intuition is not a logical concatenation of impressions; on the contrary, in each intuitive experience, the other person's mental state is emotionally and unconsciously reexperienced, that is, felt as one's own. The ability to do this will naturally depend on one's sympathy and love for a spiritual affinity, with the other person; and the extent of this spiritual affinity, for which the German language has the term
Einfühlung
(sometimes translated as
empathy),
depends on the richness of one's own emotional experiences, which underlie the "inner perception" or the ability to understand one's own feelings and psychologic relations and, by analogy, those of others.

23

I subscribe entirely to Dr. Deutsch's admirable description of feminine intuition, and I agree when she says that women are able to identify themselves with other persons more effectively than men and that they are able to do so because of their more profound feeling for people. I do not know whether there exists a fundamental difference between the sexes in inborn potentiality for the development of intuition; I suspect there may be such a difference. I know quite a number of men who possess this quality, but they do not possess it in so highly developed a degree as most women. In any event, in men the capacity seems to become progressively atrophied so that by the time they reach adult age there is, in most of them, very little of it left. Women, on the other hand, receive every assistance for its development, for sensitivity to human relations is woman's special domain.
Not so long ago men had little difficulty in believing that witchcraft was largely a feminine accomplishment. Thousands of women were hung, drawn, quartered, and burnt at the stake. The average male, when he first encounters woman's intuition, is astonished; it seems to him like magic. After all, he hasn't said a word or in any way indicated to her where he has been and what he has done; yet she knows, and pierces his thin disguises with appalling accuracy! How can one keep anything secret from her? Well, just as gamblers will go on believing that they can win at their gambling, so will men continue to believe that they can keep secrets from their wives. But few men have secrets that their wives do not know. Woman's intuition is clearly a valuable trait, and its possession gives her a great advantage in the pursuit of life, liberty, and a reasonable

 

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facsimile of happiness. The great superiority it confers upon females can no longer be disputed by anyone. To be jealous of woman's intuition, and even afraid of it, is understandable; but it is to the advantage of everyone concerned to understand that the depreciation of the good qualities of others is not the best way of acquiring them oneself.

 

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8
Was It True About Women?
When this chapter was originally written in 1945 as an article for
The Saturday Evening Post
(24 March) it was written in the historic present. The myths held about women then are no more true today than they were then. In other words, there were a large number of entrenched myths in circulation concerning women's driving and financial capacities. I have retained the chapter to some extent unaltered because it is revealing of the general atmosphere and falsity of the beliefs that were held about women in matters that men claimed added to proof of the inferiority of women. Prejudice was all. Perhaps no other beam in the structure of the male ego was so solidly mortised in place as the myth about women drivers. The mythology went: It's a woman driverand if it wasn't that time, it was the last, and the time before that, and it will almost certain be the next time. Why were women believed to be bad drivers? Probably because, among many other myths, women were held to be incompetent at things mechanical.
In August 1938, the Keystone Automobile Club of Pennsylvania presented facts and figures to show that the woman driver was competent, careful, and less liable to accidents than the male. In that year women drivers in Pennsylvania numbered 492,934, or nearly one-fourth of the state's total of 2,086,127 registered drivers. In the six-month period for which motor fatalities were checked, it was found that the ratio of women

 

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drivers to fatal accidents was 1 to every 1,724 operators. On carrying the analysis further, the figures show 8.9 as many men as women drivers involved in fatal accidents in Pennsylvania. By 1951 these figures had risen to 8 percent and 12 percent respectively. In 1962 the crude death rate per 100,000 from automobile accidents was 31.5 for males and 1.2 for females. In 1966 this rose to 39.9 for males and 14.7 for females.
Men tend to drive a car as a means of self-expression, and tend to aim it rather than drive it, they tend to be competitive, and on occasion reckless, and are likely to take a dim view of the more careful manner in which women drive. Men tend to regard women's circumspection in driving as evidence of their lesser competence. It all depends upon the angle of vision. Most of us would prefer to ride with the careful driver rather than with the competitive one.
Women, on the whole, are thoughtful drivers. In a difficulty they will not hesitate to ask for help. Men are disinclined to do so, and rather than ask directions prefer to blunder on. Today when more than half the work force is made up of women, and many of those drive to and from work, there is no evidence that women are greater hazards on the road than men.
In April 1963, the executive officers of the American Automobile Association, who, according to the
New York Times
of April 19, 1963, said they were "tired of hearing long-disproved cliches" about women's driving abilities, came to their defense: Gilbert B. Phillips, executive vice president of the Automobile Club of New York, said that AAA data showed the average woman driver to be no better and no worse than the average man.
From time to time it is a very healthy practice to hang a question mark on some of the things we take most for granted and to take another look at the facts. The myth about the woman driver is generally cited to reinforce the argument that women are temperamental and emotionaltoo much so to make good drivers. Well, we have hung a question mark on this dearly cherished belief of the superior male, and we have found evidence that leads us to believe that the woman driver is largely a creation of the "superior" male or rather of the male who wants to feel superior; for males, let us remember, are concerned not so much with woman's inferiority as with their own superiority.

 

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Many men are ready to admit that, as drivers, their wives are as good as, or better than, themselves. Though they are glad to admit that their own wives are practical, wise, and levelheaded, the same men persist in thinking that the opposite is true of women as a whole. They say that women can never balance their checking accounts, that they are as blind as bats in matters where money or common sense is involved, and that shopping with them is an agony because they are indecisive and can't make up their minds.
What men so often take to be feminine indecision and an inability to make up their minds is in reality an inverse reflection on the trigger thinking of men. Women, for example, tend to take time to think about what they want to buy; they are more inquisitive about the quality of the goods they purchase than men; and they are much more likely to engage in comparative shopping in an effort to obtain their money's worth. Women are aware that it is around them that the family is built and that the practical economic situation of the household is determined by the woman who runs it.
Women often handle the family finances. This should constitute a sufficient commentary on the rather moth-eaten myth that women are no good at managing the finances of the household. Few men would ever have yielded the management of household finances to their wives had they not been convinced that their wives could manage better than themselves, even though there may still be some men who ungratefully rationalize away this fact with the explanation that to yield is easier.
In the
Life with Father
era, the bills for drygoods, groceries, and clothing were supposed to be as unintelligible as Sanskrit to Mama and were paid by Papa as a matter of course. Nowadays, in millions of families, the woman pays all the household expenses including her husband's allowance. Out of the household expenses money the "financial lightweight" who shares her husband's bed and board is often still expected to see to it that the dry cleaning is regularly dropped off and retrieved; that the children get not only to the doctor and dentist for regular examinations, but to an ever-expanding array of enrichment activities; and that several palatable meals are available in a continuously changing delectable variety for man, child, and

 

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dog. She is expected to keep on hand a complete supply of light bulbs, to make sure that ginger ale and soda are always on tap, and to keep herself and the children as well clothed as the family next door, who may have twice the income.
Men joked in days past about chuckle-headed women who thought that banks used red ink because it's such a pretty color. Such jokes indicated what men thought about women's ability to keep on the right side of the ledger. Many a man even today has an exaggerated notion of the number of times his wife's checks rebound from the bank; perhaps hazarding that his wife's checks bounce ten to a hundred times more frequently than his own. Yet, while in the years after the turn of the century men did the bookkeeping for the banks of the country, nowadays women have largely replaced men as our banks' bookkeepers. Throughout the country, thousands of women bank officials are acting in a supervisory capacity, and the figure is growing. Their jobs range from chairing the board to heading departments.
It is inevitable that women play an ever larger role in banking and in the investment world, since they have long been up to the tops of their pocketbooks in ownership: In 1952, according to a survey made by the Brookings Institution, women owned almost half of all privately owned stock in large corporations. Of the 6,490,000 owners, 3,260,000 were men and 3,230,000 women; men owned an estimated 1,763,000,000 shares, while women owned 1,308,000,000. Fifteen years later, in 1967, these figures had almost trebled in favor of women. Of the 18,490,000 shareowners, 9,430,000 were women and 9,060,000 were men; as of January 1967, 51 percent of individual shareholders were women; 3.2 billion shares, or 17.8 percent of the total, with an estimated market value of $119 billion, were registered in the names of women. Sixteen percent of the total adult female population were shareholders, and of those 6.4 million women shareholders, more than half were housewives. This same year Muriel Siebert became the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. She was the nation's first discount broker, and the first woman to serve as Superintendent of Banks for the State of New York.
By 1990 the change in the representation of women in every branch of the world of finance was dramatic. For example, in a field that was virtually completely closed to women, namely,

 

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