May 092010
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church (then the only Christian church in western Europe) — which was dominated by men — held that women were inherently bad and sinful creatures. They were temptresses and tools of the devil. All were Eves in the garden luring men to sin. Males were the more virtuous sex. They were also the more intelligent and logical sex. This was due to the fact that, unlike women, they did not have free-floating uteruses moving about their bodies. It was the instability of this mobile organ that caused women to be hysterical (a word from the same root as uterus in the Greek).
Thankfully, the Age of Enlightenment brought new insights — not the least of which was related to the new practice of the autopsy (leading to the discovery that the uterus does not, in fact, roam). Women were still considered the less intelligent sex though, which apparently demonstrates a continued belief in a correlation between muscle and mental ability. Enlightenment thinkers also believed that, unlike men, women were prone to imbalances of the humors causing emotional fits and impairing rationality — making them essentially valueless in a society that worships the rational. Time and effort were not to be wasted on the education of women and morons then. The idiots were locked away, and the women married off to a legal master.
But, a funny thing happened on the way to industrialization. The invention of time-saving devices and development of a middle class allowed women the luxury of spare time for a change. To the people of that age, a proper use of this time was studying religious texts and nurturing children. These activities seemed harmless enough — even virtuous. The young American republic was in need of such nurturing and a new notion of womanhood developed that fit the bill. So, women who now had means and opportunity to have influence outside of their homes spent their time on moral causes and religious activities that were considered appropriate for their sex. As the nineteenth century dawned female devotion to religion (in a time when enlightened men’s religiosity waned) led to a new view of women: now they were considered the more inherently moral sex and men were brutes that needed saving. As mothers with biological urges to nurture, women were endowed by God or nature with the traits necessary to prepare the next generation of citizens for their civic and moral duty. Thus, women became the champions of virtue and the voices of righteousness.
Capitalizing on this belief, women continued their activism as the nineteenth century wore on. They were ardent abolitionists, reformers, and advocates of education, healthcare, and later, birth control. They sought to wage war on war, and germs, and male lust. They moved into professions for which they were believed to have a natural inclination: social work, nursing, teaching. Opening higher education to women in these fields eventually led to opportunities for them to move into other fields like history, science, and law. With their natural talents and their educations, they continued their march into productivity outside the home — sometimes at the request of their government (to aid in war efforts) and other times to help themselves (in advocating for the vote or simply to support their families). Many of these women became convinced that they were men’s equals in their abilities to reason, work, and lead. Increasing affluence in the United States as the twentieth century unfolded meant even more opportunity for women to become educated and find ways of working outside the home. These growing opportunities inspired women to push for even more, and a new movement for women’s rights was born. This time, they managed to get legislation passed to protect them from discrimination in the workplace and politics.
But there were those, ideologues wedded still to the nineteenth century notion of women’s worth being tied to their roles as wives and mothers, who fought the march of feminism. Some of these were women themselves. Most notably, Phyllis Shlafly became an author, activist, and agitator working against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the feminist movement. Shlafly argued that a woman’s proper role was to care for her family. So, in between conventions and interviews and speeches, she raised her six children and cared for her husband. After Mr. Shlafly’s death in 1993 and after her children were grown, Shlafly continued in her conservative activism…as a single woman. Today, at eighty-five years old, she remains a vocal and fiery force in politics, if not quite the visible figure she was at a younger age. Still, she remains an important ironic figure for American women.
So, today — on Mother’s Day: a holiday that celebrates the value of women as mothers (and note that we still don’t get days to celebrate our value as contributors to society in other ways) — it is worthwhile to honor the contradiction that is Shlafly and so many women in the United States. While defining her value as a wife and mother, she made a career in the public sphere. She was well-educated, smart, and driven. She wrote books and gave speeches and became active in causes that took her outside of her home and away from her family many a time. She was and is essentially an anti-feminist feminist. But, every time she railed against equal rights and got on her nineteenth century soapbox, she participated in the chipping away of the notion that the value of women is solely in their ability to incubate and nurture the next generation. Yes, they have a biological purpose, but clearly, they have the will and ability to do other things as well. Women in the twentieth century redefined their roles, and women will continue to do so in the coming century. On this day, a throwback to older notions of the value of women, it is useful to recognize the irony that being virtuous mothers has brought and how even today, we still so often define our worth in society this way.
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