Differences Between Men and Women
According to Schlafly’s social policy writings, “men and women are different, and…those very differences provide the key to…success as a person and fulfillment as a woman”. Schlafly’s stance was a reaction to feminist proponents of the ERA, who argued that men and women should be treated equally in all circumstances, from employment to home living, and that they should be referred to using gender neutral terms. Schlafly, however, exalts the differences between men and women: “Feminine means accentuating the womanly attributes that make women deliciously different from men. The feminine woman…knows that she is a person with her own identity and that she can seek fulfillment in the career of her choice, including of traditional wife and mother”.
Schlafly holds the position that men and women are fundamentally different, and resists what she terms the “feminist ” assertion that “we must redesign society to become gender neutral and that men must shed their macho image and remake themselves to become househusbands”. Instead, she believes that nothing can eradicate the differences between men and women. She says in The Power of the Positive Woman, “It is self-evident…that the female body with its baby-producing organs was not designed by a conspiracy of men but by the Divine Architect of the human race” Furthermore, “the Positive Woman looks upon her femaleness and her fertility as part of her purpose, her potential, and her power. She rejoices that she has a capability for creativity that men can never have”. Schlafly argues that although her feminist opponents seek to minimize the differences between men and women, “they will have to take up their complaint with God,” because “no other power” can alter the fundamental and necessary differences between men and women.
Read more about this topic: Phyllis Schlafly's Social Policies
Famous quotes containing the words differences between, differences, men and/or women:
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.”
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“I don’t know what immutable differences exist between men and women apart from differences in their genitals; perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both men and women, our answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices.”
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