Gender, Education, and Careerism

Abstract

The statuses of women as intellectuals and political agents have been devalued due to the ancient prejudice that, because women are able to bear children, they are unsuited for the rigors of professional and/or public life. Arguments made for the subordination of women included natural or divine law, moral necessity, and economic realism; in addition, biologically essentialist reasons suggested that women were physically unable to handle the strain of the man's world of work, both due to their overall constitution and to their presumed “delicate” reproductive functions. It is this last concern, the physiological argument, that the authors study in this chapter, as it is one that people still make today—albeit more subtly; they argue, therefore, that there is a deeply ingrained belief in Western society that there is some sort of natural “conflict” between ovaries and brains, that is, between male and female nature, that makes women less qualified than men for certain jobs or to serve certain roles in society.