Men and Women

I never realized how disparate the positions of men and women were as a child. I grew up in a household where my father and mother had equal authority; both of them worked regularly and took turns with household tasks. I became sensitive to any comment which stereotyped or looked down on either gender, but I wasn't really aware that gender inequality still existed until around high school. I think that men and women are different on the basis of biology and social conditioning. Men are conditioned to be physically stronger, women to be weaker. This social conditioning could clearly be changed over time, but it would take a great deal of effort (and women would have to stop complacently accepting the roles they are given, as Simone de Beauvoir points out). Biology is more difficult to circumvent because it is a concrete product of evolution which only changes over a period of thousands of years. (By the way, I do believe that the physical differences between men and women were also in part caused by gender roles; in ancient times, it became the prevalent trend for men to be dominant and women to be passive, so men evolved as stronger and women as weaker.) However, just because men have a penis and greater physical strength does not mean they are superior. It is a matter of what society values, and traits traditionally strong in women (emotion, intellect, conscience) are just as valuable. I would like gender roles to shift over time to become less polarized, but even as they are, it *should* be possible for society to view them equally. But many, many people will have to make an effort to do so.