| Talk on the Role of Women - 1973 |
 |
| THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF A WOMAN�S ROLE By Frances D. Alleman-Luce I have been asked to talk about what psychology can tell us about who we are and why we act as we do. If you deal with psychology today � whether it�s running rats in a maze or dealing with juvenile delinquents or discussing the role of women � you are pretty well operating from a base of Freudian theory. It was Sigmund Freud who established the basic concepts of psychoanalytical theory and almost everyone today knows, and most people accept as gospel, many if not all of his discoveries. We are all well aware of such notions as repression, the �ego� and the �id,� or the strength of primitive urges in our lives. From Benjamin Spock�s famous baby book, which is firmly rooted in Freudian theory, to Ann Landers, who rather likes to dally in it, most of us have a general acceptance of such ideas as unconscious motivation � to forget appointments or to have one accident after another is an indication that inner motives and drives are influencing our behavior. Freud had a very powerful and influential insight into the human condition back there around the turn of the century, and most of what he said and wrote was completely valid and an enormous contribution towards our understanding of personality. But Freud, like all of us was not only a thinking, rational being; he was a product of his times. We are all products of our times. My grandfather was an American contemporary of Freud�s � his times were the Victorian postbellum South. Say what you will, I cannot conceive that my Grandfather could have anticipated, from his time, the dreams and options of my long-haired, hippie son in our time. Freud wrote from that same Victorian orientation, from the confines of the middle-class experience of Vienna in that day. I don�t know if he could have anticipated my son but he most certainly did not anticipate my daughter! Freud�s basic tenet, apart from his charting of the unconscious, was that sexuality is the driving force of human personality � that sexual biology determines the course of a person�s behavior � that anatomy is destiny. If you are biologically male, then you are destined to be strong, aggressive, single-minded and capable. If you are biologically female, then you are destined to be weak, docile, dependent and above all, passive. Listen to what he wrote his fianc�e, �Nature,� he said, �has determined woman�s destiny through beauty, charm and sweetness. Law and custom have much to give women that has been withheld from them, but the position of women will surely be what it is: in youth an adored darling and in mature rears a loved wife.� Now, even recognizing and acknowledging the Victorian bias of Freud�s day in this statement, that subtle blend of chivalry and condescension that Tovald portrayed towards Nora in Ibsen�s Doll�s House, the premise that nature has determined woman�s destiny is simply not true. A friend of mine does volunteer work in a veterans hospital where anatomy has certainly not proven to be destiny. A double amputee that she knows there writes poetry with his toes; amputate two more limbs and he would write with his teeth. His anatomy � the protuberances of his body � do not constitute his destiny, the engineering of his body is secondary to the creativity of his mind. The engineering of nature � anatomy � is not destiny. If it were, the first fish would have not crawled from the primal sea and adapted to land. If gills were destiny that fish would have perished when the water supply began to diminish with the breakup of the Ice Age. But there was something else � air. Rather than perish, that fish developed lungs as my friend�s friend developed prehensile toes. The study of psychology, as well as the study of evolution, shows us that anatomy does not determine destiny; rather, it conforms to its destiny by finding new ways of adapting � in a very real sense, destiny determines anatomy. Need or survival, dream or desire precede engineering. Face a shrinking ocean and aquatic creatures develop lungs; face an inability to write and human beings develop options; dream of feeding the hungry and the means of doing it follow. Freud, for all his genius, had it backward. A woman�s femaleness does not determine the inevitable events of her life, the inevitable events of her life determine a woman�s femaleness. Being born female does not destine passivity and docility, the expectations of passivity and docility determine the female�s role. Our society has, largely since the second world ~1ar, defined women in that sense and most women today equate �passivity� with �femininity� and �activity� with �masculinity�. Although society has changed drastically since Freud�s day his image of women as naturally inferior has been transposed verbatim from old Vienna to twentieth century America. The very real injustices life held for women a century ago have been dismissed as rationalizations. The very real opportunities life offers to women now are labeled �masculine� and are suppressed in our lives and in our daughter�s lives. Now I would not presume to suggest that the way Freud�s theories have been interpreted for the past twenty years has been in any way a conspiracy of psychology � male or female. I suggest that it was the great depression of the 30s and the great war of the 40s and more significantly the cessation of each that had the most significant influence on the role of women in America. Something very definitely changed in this country somewhere around the late 40s. The expectations for women changed. During the depression my mother walked the neighborhood, lugging a heavy suitcase, selling clothing door-to-door. I do not remember that she was considered �masculine� or that she was thought to be �competing in a man�s world� � she was filling in for my father who was out of a job. During the war I was young and healthy and if I could lift and carry and work alongside, man in the crisis I was not considered �unfeminine� � I was doing my bit for the war effort. But the war ended and prosperity returned, along with the men, and the need no longer existed for the economically responsible woman. The men came home yearning, with good reason, for warm homes and secure relationships and they married and started families and the jobs, with good reason, belonged to them. As the need for women in the work force no longer existed; it became the prerogative of society to lure her back to the home. All of which was very well and good. Most of us were delighted with the role � we married and had babies and read Spock and took pride in our homes and our families � and never thought a thing about it. We were housewives, and if we never thought to question the predetermination of our role it was because the concept of our role was presented, in all areas of our lives, with such force and such missionary zeal that there was little room to recognize, much less consider, any options. Freudian, and pseudo-Freudian, theory, once a model for human behavior, became, in this country, an ideology, almost a religion. It filled the need for a goal or a purpose that paying the rent or serving the flag no longer filled. Girls who grew up playing baseball or acing algebra were told by the mass media, by the advertising agencies, by the schools and colleges who taught ourselves on marriage and family life, to go back home, back to the doll�s house� of Victorian days, and to find self-fulfillment through the role of supportive wife and nurturing mother. And so we got the Super-mom, the woman who�s life was defined by the accomplishments of, her husband, the achievements of her children and the organization of her home. And for two decades no one thought to question that smoothly cunning idol of �togetherness.� Women accepted, again, passivity and docility as their natural lot in life. No one, that is, until the early 60s when Betty Friedan shook the hand that rocked the cradle with her put down of the Feminine Mystique. Political events are often likened to the swinging of a pendulum � from the radical one-side we swing to the radical other. Hopefully things eventually center down to a happy medium. I believe that the woman�s liberation movement, so dramatically ignited by Miss Friedan, is beginning to do this. I welcome the relief from the extremes of bra- burning and man-hating because I believe that the movement, in it�s calmer moments, has a lot to teach us about how human beings can celebrate their humanness and how we can avoid confining one half of the human race to half of their human potential. Are Women Human Beings? Charlotte Perkins Gilman asked that question back in 1912 when she recounted the scientific opinion of the day; �Women are not the human race, they are not even half the human race but a subspecies set apart for the purposes of reproduction merely.� That was sixty one years ago, my mother was twenty four. Here is a quote from Astronaut James Lovell: �Well, we�ve never sent any women into space because we haven�t had any reason to. We fully envision however that in the near future we will fly women into space and use them the same way we use them on earth � for the same purpose.� That was two years ago; my daughter was twenty. Apart from any moral or philosophical questions, it is an axiom of history that when any subgroup of a culture is set apart, is compelled to question it�s own self-worth, that culture suffers. When individual humanity is identified as being different in some way from standard humanity, the general culture is debased to the same degree as the object of it�s debasement. When we equate �feminine� with �submissive,� where we accept as truth the premise that our psychology is a result of our physiology and, thereby, set the stage for sex role stereotyping, we diminish not only ourselves but the whole human race. And to the extent that we, as women, shy away from experiencing our own humanity as standard humanity, we transmit our prejudices to our children and compound society�s sexism. How do we hand down our preconceptions of stereotyped sex roles? Well, first of all, with pink and with blue. Then with the way we hold and fondle an infant � you coo and cuddle a girl, you toss and rough-house a boy. The child�s room further defines the child�s role � pink and ruffly and no-place-to-finger-paint for a girl, stark and simple and no-cozy-p1ace-to-read-a-book for a boy. Sex role stereotyping in the home teaches the child the definition of male and female roles. If the father spends his time before the television and behind the evening paper, his son is not likely to surmise that the time for meal preparation can be a time for the sharing of anything more than food. If the mother�s sole interests are domestic activities, her daughter is not likely to assume that women are capable of having other interests. Toys also define a child�s role � blocks and trucks and model kits for boys; Barbie dolls, tea sets and sewing kits for girls. And, later, he goes camping, hiking and plays football with Dad; she goes shopping, to ballet class and bakes cupcakes with Mom. And they both get the message � that he can act-out, solve problems and take risks; that she is domestic, cultured and cautious. When they get to school these prejudices are perpetrated by the school system. Some of the most obvious methods are textbooks with stereotyped sex roles� � here is an analysis of a fifth grade math book published by Scott Foresman: -- Page 65 � Problems dealing with club activities: girls are shown making sandwiches, while boys build dividers. -- Page 154 � Father takes boys on camping trip. Mother. stays home and bakes. -- Page l83 � Boy goes out planting with father while mother stays home and bakes. -- Page 220 � Problems deal with women cooking and sewing, men driving cars and hiking. -- Page 264 � Women and girls are shopping and cooking. Problems dealing/with men have them building, repairing and earning money. School history courses and textbooks are almost exclusively dominated by males � we all know that Betsy Ross sewed on a star but who can call the contributions of Marie Curie, Jane Addams, Mary Cassatt, Emily Dickinson, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubbman, Jeanette Rankin or Golda Meir � and what does this ignorance say to all our children about a woman�s options? In the upper grades sexism pervades the entire system, not just the textbooks. The National Organization for Woman�s Report on Sex Bias in the Public Schools holds that girls are banned from 85% of the play areas, from several gym activities, from many field and track sports and from most school teams. They are directed, instead, to volley ball courts, dancing and cheerleading. Girls are barred from shop mechanics and printing courses. This data certainly does not apply to all schools but it is a rare school, indeed that has no sex segregated special classes whatsoever. What effects do these attitudes and standards have on girls? An article in the Journal of School Psychology on �The Onset of Academic Underachievement in Bright Children� states that: �There is evidence to suggest that girls who are under-achievers in high school usually begin to be so at the onset of puberty; while for boys, underachievement in high school usually has an earlier onset. This contrast is a further indication that the achievement drop-off among girls as they reach maturity is linked to the adult female sex role.� Career aspirations die down even before high school. One study by Hartley showed that girl�s intentions to work after marriage declined with age, beginning, with eleven year olds. What happened to those bright-eyed sixth graders who were going to law school and be senators? If it was a girl, society told her that she had to choose between that dream and marriage. But even the option of a choice was really a hollow promise. All the pressures � from parents from peers, from the schools, from the media � push the girl towards the traditional role for women as defined by her biological potential. Boys grow up to be �men,� girls grow up to be �Mrs.� Boys are not taught to see themselves as husbands and fathers first and business or professional men second. Their success is never defined by their role of parent and spouse as a girl�s is. They are encouraged to see themselves as fully operative fully human contributors to the total fabric of society. Girls get a largely one-dimensional picture of their role. And what happens? Studies show that girls do not reach out towards the occupational, world or towards higher education the way boys do. 33% of the National Merit finalists in high school who plan to go to medical school are women but only 8% of applicants to medical school are women. This is true of nearly all professions and the loss of talent is society�s loss. Because girls are encouraged to limit themselves � �be practical, dear, choose an occupation that requires a minimum of training, that can be stopped and started according to the demands of motherhood� � they are reinforce in the image of women as helpmate, supporter, cheerleader �basically inferior to men. Because these �helper� jobs are generally poorly paid, any options to the traditional role of the man as sole provider are virtually ruled out. Thus the girls start to think of themselves in terms of the role they were born to. First in terms of their attractiveness to the man they must win and hold, and secondly in terms of their ability. They soon learn that it is smart to play dumb. Studies have documented a strong motive in women to avoid success, a phenomenon that is known as �the will to fail.� This characteristic does not appear younger than high school age and would certainly indicate that as males and females learn more about the roles in life that they are expected to fill, personality adaptations are made accordingly. Femaleness does not determine the events of a girl�s life, the events of a girl�s life determine her femaleness. How can you raise children, boys and girls, to be whole human beings? The answer is, you can�t. Emancipation from sex role stereotyping is not possible in a society where women are depicted as keeping their men by the coffee they serve or the cleanliness of their laundry, where gifted female biology students are programmed as science teachers while bright male students are directed into medical careers, where men are not encouraged to be caretakers of the young and women are not encouraged to be respected authority figures. There is little one person can do to counter the subtle force of sexism in society. There is more you can do in your own home and your own life. Home environments tend to set the stage for sex role stereotyping � go home and restage some of it. Challenge the roles that you and the members of your family are locked into � have your husband play with your daughter on a gridiron while you introduce your son to a steam iron, let the boys play with dolls and the girls wrestle, teach your husband to make an omelet while you go out and stack the cordwood. Adults, as well as children, must be allowed to develop and achieve their full potential. We should all have free access to human endeavors, books, games and emotions � all of them free from sex stereotyping. Maybe the next generation of parents will be freer to let people be people, meanwhile, those of us raising children, nor or just living with ourselves, must face our own prejudices and search honestly and openly for ways to minimize sex differences and to find comfortable common areas of communication. If we can do it, human liberation is the prize, our daughters and our sons gain the freedom to develop as persons, not as role players, and the experience of one�s own humanity as standard humanity can be the birthright of every child. |
|