When the father of Judith Gardiner died in 1963, her mother, a lawyer, took their General practice of patent law. In those days, few women would dare to do so, but his mother Gardiner had his own ways to assert his authority. She raised her office Desk so that its frame (150 cm) slightly above the guys. She always paid for the business lunch or dinner at your own expense. “She invented many ways of everyday domination over men,” says Gardiner, Professor of English and gender studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “She was able to exercise authority and expertise in not always ordinary situations.”
How would society be like if women suddenly became available to big power? Recen n’yuver with the BBC interviewed scientists and gender experts on the subject of this curious thought experiment.
What would have happened if the mother of the Gardiner did not pretend to be higher? What if the physical dynamics of the floor suddenly disappeared and women inexplicably and suddenly would become bigger and stronger men, without the aid of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution?
Obviously, this is an unlikely event — but the interviewed experts can shed light on how gender dynamics transformirovalsya in other ways in the real world, and that many people considered self-evident in the relations between the sexes.
It should be noted that in most species on the planet, from insects to frogs and oysters — is quite usual and normal that females are larger than males because they are mandated to carry hundreds or thousands of eggs in their bodies. Most terrestrial vertebrates, including humans, are the exception to this rule. Females grow to a certain extent, and then switches to reproductive mode, investing in the production of fat, not muscle and bone. Men, meanwhile, invest energy into traits that best allow them to compete for women size and strength, in the case of people.
Although the physical differences between the sexes is narrowing, women are catching up with men in some sports disciplines remain fundamental differences that emerged over the millennia. First, men are on average bigger and stronger than women; they have a 40% greater strength in the upper body and 33% in the lower.
If women will suddenly become stronger than men, they have become more, because to support big muscles need big bones (let’s assume that the scenario Jessica Jones, when a small body is superhuman strength, biologically impossible).
Such changes would also necessarily be accompanied by a surge of testosterone and other hormones. If society adhered exclusively to the laws of nature, it probably would have meant the transition from women to men as main carers who care for children. “We would have a matriarchal society in which women would compete, and the men looked after the children,” says Daphne Fairburne, Emeritus Professor of biology at the University of California in riverside. At the same time, women would be difficult to bear. “If this change occurred due to the growth in the female testosterone, this would have obvious negative consequences for the development of female reproductive functions”.
Increased power can bring and the psychological consequences similar to those already experienced by men, regardless of whether they use their muscles every day. For example, according to a study conducted by Michael Benham Petersen, Professor of political science at Aarhus University, men with strong upper body is often weak men spoke in favor of the policy, which is to their benefit. Strong rich men, for example, oppose the redistribution of money in favor of those who are poorer. Petersen suggests that these people are from the ancient principles according to which the physically strong individuals took a lot of resources themselves. Strong big men can also maintain the hierarchy and more inclined to rivalry, says Petersen.
Can we at least partly to thank natural selection for these traits. Says Petersen: “Men are more violent because of the strong, and strong because they need to be brutal throughout evolutionary history, and this forms a masculine philosophy in a variety of ways”.
Despite an ongoing discussion about to what extent nature and nurture affect such aspects of human nature as dominance and aggression, it is possible that suddenly become strong women will experience a surge in these aspects as well. In addition, self-sufficiency, tendency to anger and certainty in trading in women, usually associated with physical attractiveness, so the power can simply replace the appearance as the stimulus underlying these personal qualities.
All of these changes may affect some heterosexual relationships. Fairburne claims that some women who need to “play the victim” to attract insecure men, no longer need to do that. In some cases, this scenario has played out. Her 30-year-old daughter, for example, have been on disastrous dates in which the man was definitely looking for something to amuse your self-esteem. But she was quite active, self-confident and with a doctorate, therefore, “refused to pretend that does home repairs and regularly runs 80 miles only to have the guy find it sexy”, says Fairburne.
Power is one of the few aspects in which men tend to outperform women, but if you change it, it will be a continuation of how male identity and traditional masculinity are contested in the real world. Over the past 50 years women have become more independent and in many cases surpassed men in income, achievements and success. Technology also ignore gender differences, historically, discovering such “masculine” areas as trade and military, to women, who can rely on intelligence and visual acuity, not on force, for example, to build cars and participate in the battle.
As a result, some men clinging to your sex as an excuse that “one way or another, men have far more right to rule,” says Jackson Katz, a writer, speaker, and President of MVP Strategies, a company that provides training and education on the prevention of gender-based violence. “Since women started competing with men in areas in which people historically they were pushed back, some men went into areas in which physical size and strength still have some value, because in these areas they continue to hold an advantage over women.”
Katz argues that this may help to explain the popularity and growth of American football, Boxing, MMA and other violent sports. “The man is difficult to understand or articulate, but the General idea is that “Yes, a woman can earn more money than I do, my boss can be a woman, my wife may be working better than mine, but none of them can play football,” says Katz. And also says that the obsession with masculinity Gladiator style tends to be a predominantly American phenomenon.
On the positive side, if women were stronger, they become less vulnerable to harassment and violence from men, and the number of rapes has fallen to,” says Katz.
However, perhaps it would be wrong to assume that whatever the power of women will be better nasty. Women are also prone to violence: 17-45% of lesbians report physical violence by a partner were women, for example, and in heterosexual married couples 19% of men say they suffered attacks by the partner at least once. Thus, although domestic violence among men and women will be reduced, clashes of men and women are likely to grow. “Men put pressure on women because they can — this happens when a deal (or a deal) with someone who is stronger,” says Fairburne. — “I love women, but I don’t think we are perfect.”
It is not clear how it could change inequality and gender discrimination in the workplace. Men are long been associated with the power position — recall, for example, Margaret Thatcher, who was trained to speak in a deep voice to sound more authoritative, for example, or the spread of the pants for business woman of the 1970s as a means of finding respect and approval from male colleagues. If women no longer need to use fashion, body language and voice training, to become braver, to catch up or to rise above the male counterparts, then gender discrimination will begin to disappear.
But Gardiner does not think that everything will be so easy. She notes that physical size and strength do not necessarily remain factors of inequality. “White people were more and more black people,” he says. “However, white supremacy was established and without any obvious physical background”.
The arguments in favor of why men should dominate women in the work environment, simply move, as he moved all these years, starting with the fact that God ordered the woman to serve the man, and ending with the fact that women are too emotional to serve in the government. “These arguments are not based on fact, and male superiority,” says Gardiner. “Those who are in power will always try to retain power at any cost.” In other words, even if the male power women have to break through the glass ceiling in “men’s” area.
Some of a strength of women can try to keep everything as it was. As noted by Katz, the loudest opponents of feminism were women. Instead of fighting with the system they might would have found a way to work with it to their advantage.
On the other hand, when a society becomes more complex, democratic and peaceful, cruelty and aggression as tools to maintain control come to naught. This contributes to the increase in the number of female political leaders like Angela Merkel.
So even though a thought experiment and allows us to suddenly make women stronger than men, perhaps they do not need it. Fairburne says, “I’d prefer if women just ran the world like now.”
What if women were stronger than men?
Ilya Hel