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Female Subordination and Male Vulnerability: Abstract The universality of female subordination has been documented by anthropologists. Theories proposed to explain this phenomenon are reviewed. None of the theories adequately consider the data concerning the greater physical and psychological vulnerability of males when compared with females, e.g., the higher mortality rates for males from conception to old age, the greater vulnerability of boys to psychological, environmental and physical stressors, etc. This article asserts that this greater vulnerability may explain the universality of female subordination. Two tentative hypotheses are suggested, (a) in response to male vulnerability, the boy and later the man projects his powerlessness onto the "other," the female and (b) culture, in order to preserve itself, offers compensatory preference and privilege to males. Among others, social scientists in diverse disciplines have increasingly focused attention on the overwhelmingly negative impact of sexism on the individual, culture and society. Clearly, the cost of sexism is great, e.g., the price paid is measured in terms of lost creative resources, curtailment of potentials and possibilities for both males and females, impairment and rigid constriction of self image, etc. Given these costs, it is surprising to discover that anthropologists have concluded that female subordination is a pancultural fact, a true universal. How can one explain this? It is our contention that change toward a more egalitarian society can happen only if social scientists begin to recognize the universality of sexual inequality and develop an appreciation of its causes. This article reviews the anthropological data demonstrating the universality of female subordination, discusses the major theories that have been proposed to explain this phenomenon and offers a review of data related to the differential vulnerability of the sexes to support alternate hypotheses. Many students of legend and social science have postulated that matriarchy, a society in which women hold power, is a historical fact. The earliest study of this question was done in 1861 by Johann Jakob Bachofen (1967). He concluded that matriarchy was the norm for many primitive societies. However, Bamberger (1974), in her discussion of Bachofen's study, concludes that he confused the myth and the historical reality of matriarchy. She argues that the myth, however, merits study in its own right. She offers the analysis that the content of matriarchical myths involve not only the possession of political and military power by women in a particular culture, but also, the losing of that power because of misuse or incompetence. Ortner (1974) developed criteria to define female subordination in her multicultural analysis. She defined female subordination as being evident when the cultural ideology or the informants (a) explicitly devalued women and their roles and products, (b) used symbolic devices such as the defilement of the female body or (c) employed socio-structural arrangements that excluded women from participation in or contact with the realm in which the highest authority or authorities reside. (p. 69) On the basis of these criteria, Ortner concludes, "The search for a genuinely egalitarian, let alone matriarchical culture has proved fruitless." (p. 70) "The secondary status of women is one of the true universals; a pancultural fact." (p. 67) This position is also supported by Goldberg (1976) who discussed the universality as well as the inevitability of patriarchy. The manifestations of the subordination of women are more obvious in traditional cultures. In our culture, the most important manifestation of this phenomenon is the "outsidedness" of women. Simone de Beauvoir (1952, p. 35) describes the "outsidedness" of women in her phrase, "woman as other." One of many reflections of woman as other in our present society is psychological theorizing. Gilligan (1979), in her paper "Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle," criticizes psychological developmental theory because of its use of the critical developmental issues of men as the norm for all humans; emphasizing autonomy and achievement and de-emphasizing attachment and intimacy. The male-oriented nature of psychological theory is also uncovered in a study of mental health professionals. Broverman et al. (1970) distributed questionnaires to male and female practicing psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers in order to analyze attitudes that these mental health professionals held concerning the psychological healthy male, female and adult. The researchers found that both male and female clinicians described the healthy male and healthy adult with similar attributes. The healthy female, according to the description of the subjects, was seen as an "other," clearly different from the healthy adult person. One can conclude that female subordination is universal and that the "otherness" of women has significant implications. What are the major hypotheses offered to explain the universal subordination of women? These group into three categories, (a) the male's neurophysiology offers him an advantage that translates into interpersonal dominance and achievement on the social hierarchy, (b) females are symbolically associated with nature, while males are associated with culture, and culture subordinates nature and (c) female subordination can find its roots in universal family structures, i.e., the social context in which most boys and girls are reared. Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) conclude their comprehensive review of the psychology of sex differences by saying, "We have seen that the greater aggressiveness of the male is one of the best established and most pervasive of all psychological sex differences. We have also seen reason to believe that there is a biological component underlying this sex difference." (p. 368) Some have looked at this finding and seen it as an explanation for universal female subordination. Given the usefulness of aggressiveness for domination and the greater quantity of aggressiveness within males, men will dominate women and acquire the social positions of power and status (Goldberg, 1976). After reviewing the animal and human research on this topic, Goldberg concludes that the testicularly-produced hormones cause changes in the central nervous system of the male neonate. It is this difference in the central nervous systems of males and females that explains the universality of patriarchy, i.e., the overwhelming predominance of males in positions of power and status throughout the world's cultures. The second theory proposed to explain the universality of female subordination hypothesizes that women are closer to nature. This closeness to nature has its origins in the women's body and particularly the procreative powers. According to this symbolic analysis, men are seen as representing culture. "...woman's body seems to doom her to mere reproduction of life. The male, in contrast, lacking natural creative functions, must, or has the opportunity to assert his creativity externally, artificially through the medium of technology and symbols. In so doing, he creates relatively lasting, eternal, transcendent objects..." (Ortner, 1974, p. 75) In other words, females express nature, men create culture. Ortner suggests that just as it is culture's task to dominate nature, so too do males dominate females. "Their pancultural second class status could be accounted for quite simply by postulating that women are being identified or symbolically associated with nature, as opposed to men who are identified with culture. Since it is always culture's project to subsume and transcend nature, if women were considered part of nature, then culture would find it natural to subordinate, not to say oppress them." (Ortner, 1974, p. 74) Chodorow (1974), in an integration of psychological and anthropological data relevant to family structure and personality, offers a third theory to explain universal female subordination. The characteristics of the family structure, as it exists in most cultures, involves the young children, both boys and girls, almost exclusively reared in a feminine environment. The adult males are to a great extent absent from the young child's experience. Males in most cultures become more present when the son approaches puberty. The young girl therefore develops a sense of herself as a person and as a female in the context of what is often a multi-generational feminine environment. For the girl to develop a cohesive feminine identity, she need not reject an aspect of the self or her earliest human attachments. "Feminine identification is based not on fantasized or externally defined characteristics and negative identification, but on a gradual learning of a way of being familiar in everyday life and exemplified by the person or kind of people (women) with whom she has been most involved. It is continuous with her early childhood identifications and attachments." (Chodorow, 1974, p. 51) The boy, on the other hand, has a more difficult task during his early years. In order to develop a cohesive sense of his masculinity, he must become independent from the intense dependency on and identification with his mother and other women in his early environment. This often has to happen in a social situation in which the father and other men are essentially absent. This provides the boy with only the opportunity to identify with a masculine figure which is not the true male in his culture but a fantasy of that male. "A boy in his attempt to gain an elusive masculine identification often comes to define this masculinity largely in negative terms, as that which is not feminine or involved with women. There is an internal and external aspect of this. Internally, the boy tries to reject his mother and deny his attachment to her and a strong dependence upon her that he still feels. He also tries to deny the deep personal identification with her that has developed during his early years. He does this by repressing whatever he takes to be feminine inside himself and importantly, by denigrating and devaluing whatever he considers to be feminine in the outside world." (Chodorow, 1974, p. 50) These three explanations of universal female subordination are widely divergent. The biological theory makes the assumption that the difference of status between males and females is explained by the male's stronger physiologically-based motivation to dominate. The symbolic analysis of Ortner explains universal subordination of women based on their association with that which is natural and not cultural. In the third theory, Chodorow hypothesizes that the male need to subordinate the female serves the psychological function of bolstering a vulnerable masculine self representation. None of these theories consider the extensive body of literature which consistently reveals that males are, when considered as a group, physically and psychologically more vulnerable than females. This differential vulnerability is especially apparent in the prenatal and neonatal periods of development. This literature is reviewed. Prenatal, Neonatal and Childhood Vulnerability
The clearest evidence of differential vulnerability involves mortality rates throughout the life span. John Money reports that 140 males are conceived for every 100 females. Male fetuses are more vulnerable than female fetuses resulting in 105 boys born for every 100 girls. (Money & Tucker, 1975, p. 48) Males, in comparison to females, suffer more stillbirths, miscarriages, prematurity, prenatal anoxia and other birth complications. (Braine, Heiner, Wortis & Freedman, 1966) Once children are born premature, boys are more likely than girls to suffer ill effects of this condition. (Braine et al., 1966) This is also true for those children with prenatal anoxia. Again, boys are more likely to suffer ill effects of this condition. (Gottfried, 1973) During infancy and childhood, males are more vulnerable to a wide variety of illnesses. Data indicate that male infants are 37% more likely than female infants to die from illness. It is also reported that boys suffer and die from later childhood illnesses more frequently than girls as well. (Garai & Scheinfeld, 1968) There is data indicating that when both boys and girls are exposed to high amounts of radiation, boys will be more likely to die. (Rutter, 1972) Tanner (1970) reports a similar finding related to malnutrition. Even though 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, by the age of 40, the number of men and women are equal indicating the higher death rate from birth to 40. A significantly higher mortality rate is evident, as well, between 40 and 65 years of age resulting in the statistic that there are 70 men for every 100 women over the age of 65. (Money & Tucker, 1975, p. 48) These data indicate an extremely significant sex difference throughout the life span with males consistently demonstrating more physical vulnerability. Four explanations for this sex difference have been proposed. The most frequently cited explanation involves what John Money refers to as the "Adam Principle." (Money & Tucker, 1975, p. 48) According to Money and others, for a male to develop normally in utero, a number of active biological processes must take place at specific times. This is less characteristic of the prenatal sexual development of the female. For example, at six weeks postconception, the boy must be exposed to a hormone mix which is predominantly androgen (the male hormones) in order for appropriate sexual development to continue. The female fetus does not need to be exposed to the analogous female hormone (estrogen) at this time but rather, in order for her to develop normally, she must not be exposed to a mix predominantly androgen. Eme (1980) concludes from these data, "Thus in a dual system in which the female path automatically evolves and the alternate male path requires specific influences at specific intervals, more errors probably occur along the latter path," (p. 449) resulting in the differential vulnerability described. A second explanation proposes that the differential vulnerability of males and females can be understood as a result of differences between the sexes on biological maturity. Boys, especially during the preadolescent school years, have been found to be significantly more immature than their female classmates. Based on height and skeletal data, it has been estimated that the average boy is a full year behind the average girl in biological maturity. (Garai & Scheinfeld, 1968) Some have suggested that this relative immaturity interacts with environmental stress and causes higher mortality and morbidity rates for males than females in all of the preadolescent phases of development. (Gove & Herb, 1974) The final two explanatory theories involve the chromosomal distinction between males and females. Some researchers suggest that the higher mortality and morbidity rates of boys and male fetuses is due to chromosomally sex-linked disorders. (Garai & Scheinfeld, 1968; Lehrke, 1972) Another chromosomal hypothesis suggests that some mothers have adverse immunological reactions to the male's fetal tissue causing more vulnerability in the male organism. The presence of the Y chromosome (the male chromosome) causes a subtle rejection by the mother of the alien tissues. (Mussen, Conger & Kagan, 1974) The documented distinction between males and females in physical vulnerability before adolescence is replicated when reviewing sex differences in child psychopathology as well. Eme (1980), in his review of this literature, found that preadolescent boys were more represented in all of the major psychopathological categories including (a) the predominantly organic disorders of mental retardation, infantile autism and learning disorders, (b) the developmental disorders of nocturnal enuresis, clumsy child syndrome, adjustment reactions to childhood and hyperactivity, (c) gender identity disorders of childhood and (d) schizophrenia of childhood among others. The explanations offered for these well replicated findings group into two interdependent categories, i.e., biogenic and sociogenic theories. It has been suggested that boys and girls diverge in their level of maturity at any given age. As stated above, the average boy is biologically one year behind the average girl during this period. Bayley (1956) found that biological maturation was positively correlated with cognitive maturation as well. While one can not conclude from this correlation anything meaningful concerning individual differences, differential cognitive immaturity is significant when comparing the sexes as a group. It is the interaction between the psychologically more immature organism with psychosocial stressors that some have suggested results in higher rates of psychopathology among boys. (Gove & Herb, 1974) Others (Bardwick, 1971; Eme, 1980) have suggested that such temperamental factors characteristic of boys, e.g., increased aggressivity and increased irritability may also predispose boys to psychopathology. Many writers agree that the social environment for the boy is more stressful than it is for his female agemate. Bardwick (1971), Eme (1980, Gove and Herb (1974) and Hoffman (1977) suggest that social expectations to perform and to be independent often have significant consequences causing achievement stress. In addition to this, boys have the additional disadvantage, evident in most cultures, of being reared for large segments of their preadolescent lives in a predominantly feminine environment with minimal healthy male role models. (Bardwick, 1971; Chodorow, 1974) It is clear that there are significant differences between male fetuses and children and their female counterparts. The males are uniformly more vulnerable than are the females. This vulnerability takes the form of both physical and psychological disorders as well as higher mortality rates. Some of the explanations for greater male vulnerability in childhood are sociocultural. This may imply that the male vulnerability described is a culturally specific finding. However, the differential mortality rates, even before birth, lead to the conclusion that male vulnerability, especially in the preadolescent period of development, is a cultural universal. Adolescent and Adult Vulnerability
It is clear from the research that there is a shift in the comparative vulnerability of males and females beginning in adolescence and continuing into adulthood. Gove and Hughes (1979) and Nathanson (1975, 1977) have found a consistent result in relation to physical disorders and the sexes. Women have consistently higher rates of physical illness with the exception of one category of illness, i.e., the chronic life threatening disorders. For these disorders, males predominate. For physical illness as well as psychopathological conditions, rates for females rise during adolescence when compared to male age counterparts. Gove (1980) in his analysis of these data concludes that this sex difference is a real difference, i.e., not an artifact of response bias, patient behavior or the clinician's prejudiced judgment. While psychiatric treatment rates do not prove this point, Gove and Herb (1974) review these data for confirmation. They found that psychiatric treatment was more common for males in the five year old to adolescent age groups. During late adolescence and adulthood, the number of females undergoing treatment equals and surpasses their male counterparts. It is generally accepted that the psychopathological disorders in which women are more prevalent include the majority of the anxiety disorders and the unipolar affective disorders (depressions without manic episodes). (American Psychiatric Association, 1980; Eme, 1980; Radloff & Rae, 1979) Men are seen to be more prevalent in the disorders of gender identity and the personality disorders especially antisocial personality. (American Psychiatric Association, 1980; Eme, 1980) It is interesting to note that the disorders more prevalent among women are disorders of excessive impulse control and intropunitiveness, while the disorders that reveal a higher prevalence for men are characterized by impulsivity. What factors could explain the significant shift described? Four explanatory theories have been suggested. It is important to emphasize hat these explanations are not mutually exclusive. The greater instability of the woman's endocrine system is seen as a possible explanation for increasing psychopathology in the postpubescent years. In a review of the influence of menstruation on psychopathology, Asso (1985) concludes that there is evidence that the period around menstruation (the paramenses) is associated with increased psychopathology. She cites research in which paramenses is related to increased (a) psychiatric hospitalization especially for depression, (b) suicidal threats and completed suicides and (c) acts of crime. It is not that menstruation and the resulting turmoil in the endocrine system causes, for example, suicidal behavior in a well integrated woman, but rather that the endocrine instability acts upon an already vulnerable psychological field resulting in the increase in psychopathology. Research also indicates that motivational differences may be related to the increase in stress and psychopathology for women in late adolescence and adulthood. Pollak and Gilligan 1982) administered TAT tests to male and female college students. They found that men and women significantly differed in their reactions to specific stimuli. The men wrote violent stories when responding to cards that indicated dependency and relationship, while the women wrote violent stories in response to cards that indicated isolation and achievement. They concluded from this that men feared intimate involvement, while women feared isolation from relationships. Perhaps this motivational difference explains the differential data concerning psychopathology. In the phases of childhood, dependency and intimate relationships are expected. It is this period which is less stressful for girls than boys. Their personalities do not conflict with the social expectations. In adulthood, the situation changes. This is the time when autonomy is expected, a characteristic that is more typical of males and more feared by females. Therefore, the stress for females due to conflict between personal motivation and social expectations increases. Gove (1984) also offers an explanation of the increased prevalence of psychopathology among women as a function of male and female sex roles. He theorizes that the social roles of men are structured and fixed, while those of women are less structured and characterized by nurturant role obligations. It is his thesis that good mental health is positively associated with structured roles and negatively associated with nonstructured and nurturant role obligations. In a study of the differential physical morbidity of males and females, Gove and Hughes, 1979) found that if one controlled for nurturant role obligations among other variables, the difference between males and females disappeared. A final explanation mirrors one offered for the prevalence of male vulnerability in the preadolescent period. Just as boys live in a social milieu which is largely populated by women, so too do adult women live in a social milieu in which the role models and the figures of authority are, most frequently, men. The discrepancy between social environment and sex of subject may add to the other factors already described and increase the sense of alienation and stress leading to psychopathology-- for boys in the feminine environment of childhood and for women in the masculine environment of adulthood. The increased stress evident for the adolescent and adult female coincides with a reduction of stress for her male peer. Sherman (1978), in her review of cognitive differences between the sexes, concludes that it is during adolescence and adulthood that males exhibit a "maturational catch-up." While rates of psychiatric disorders do increase in females in the postadolescent period, mortality remains higher for males throughout the life span. This fact, coupled with the sociocultural nature of most of the explanations offered for this phenomenon leads to the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence to support the finding that greater female vulnerability in adolescence and adulthood is pancultural. Discussion The following three findings emerge from this review:
What could be the impact of the greater male vulnerability in early life? It is our contention that this finding has two possible implications, both important for the understanding of universal female subordination. First, in response to the greater male vulnerability, there is a psychological reaction. Chodorow (1974) as described above relates the vulnerability of masculine gender identity with the need of the male to devalue the female and what is feminine. She traces differential vulnerability of boys and girls on this dimension to the family structure. The data reviewed indicate that the masculine vulnerability that the boy and man reacts to is even more basic and has its origins earlier than the consolidation of gender identity argued by Chodorow. This vulnerability includes a higher mortality rate even before birth as well as less ability than females to cope with stressors, physical, environmental and psychological. In response to this basic vulnerability, the boy and later the man tries to distance himself internally from his own vulnerability and powerlessness. The typical psychological mechanism for such distancing involves projection. That is, disowning of the internal vulnerability and viewing it as possessed by others. Through this projection of his vulnerability, he can imagine that it is not he who is vulnerable or powerless but the "other," the female and female subordination results. The second possible implication of the differential vulnerability of males and females involves the impact of these data on culture itself. Given that it is the role of every culture to preserve itself, to survive the limitations of generations, and given that males, who are necessary for the attainment of this goal demonstrate greater physical and psychological vulnerability, how can a culture increase the likelihood of its survival? Could cultures, in response to this long standing universal sex difference have developed elaborate systems of sex preference to insure the survival of the physically and psychologically weaker sex to perpetuate the culture? Data are clear that preference for males exists within every culture. This is described by Williamson (1976). She found that the strength of the preference for sex of offspring varies from culture to culture, but that, in every culture, the male child is preferred over the female. Do cultures give privilege to males as a way to compensate for vulnerability? If so, this cultural process, evolutionary in nature, may also explain the universality of female subordination. It is hoped that this article will stimulate increased discussion and research into the reasons for the cultural omnipresence of the female as the "second sex." Only by understanding this pancultural process will we be in a position to develop social structures that lead to a more sexually egalitarian society. References
Other sample published articles by Dr. Shulman:
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