‘Maybe Women Should Not Be Allowed to Go to University…’
This statement – unacceptable, not to say scandalous, in our Western context – was penned by none other than the world-famous feminist and literary author Margaret Atwood in her novel Edible Women published in 1969. The words are uttered by one of the male characters in the book. Not – surprisingly – by a macho man’s man, but by a caring loving husband, who alongside his job at the university does the housework, cares for the children, and fully supports the idea that his pregnant wife should simply stay at home, relax, and think about her condition. The character, Joe, continues: ‘I think it’s a lot harder for [my wife] than for most other women; I think it’s harder for any woman who’s been to university. She gets the idea she has a mind, her professors pay attention to what she has to say, they treat her like a thinking human being; when she gets married, her core gets invaded.’ It should be clear by now that Joe is showing genuine concern for the psychological wellbeing of his wife, whom he truly loves, rather than presenting a chauvinistic perspective on the general subject of women and education. On the contrary, Joe recognises the inner struggles of an educated woman whose identity and singularity are shaken when she marries and then conceives, carries, delivers and takes care of children.
A similar observation was made by the psychoanalyst, linguist and third-wave feminist Julia Kristeva, whose insistence on highlighting the differences between women and men has led many feminists to regard her as not a feminist at all. Kristeva insists that such an ‘invasion’ of one’s ‘core’, to quote Atwood, is unique to women who have experienced conception, pregnancy and delivery, and that to deny this is to commit a further act of violence on women. Kristeva speaks about this ‘invasion’ in terms of ‘sacrifice’, because in her thinking, the process of individualisation of the new life necessarily involves ‘abjection’ of the mother. Against the reality of women and mothers who get up night after night to soothe a crying baby or who stay at home with a sick schoolchild, Kristeva sets the ideal of the ‘archaic mother’ whom all women unconsciously want to come to terms with. The archaic mother is a ‘full, total, englobing mother with no frustration, no separation, with no break-producing symbolism (with no castration, in other words)’. It is impossible to come to terms with this person, however, as there has never been such a creature; she is a mythical figure. The archaic mother is not ‘sacrificing’ her wellbeing by staying up with the baby, or her career by staying at home with the sick child. Kristeva suggests that, ‘the eternal debt to the woman-mother … [makes] a woman more vulnerable within the symbolic order, more fragile when she suffers within it, more virulent when she protects herself from it’. Although this state seems unavoidable, any form of oppression of women that may result from it is nonetheless unacceptable. Twenty-first-century society should make every possible effort to address and remove this state of affairs, even at the cost of introducing special incentives to promote women in public sphere such as quotas.
In the scholarly language of the psychoanalyst, Kristeva describes the everyday experience of countless women, which Margaret Atwood depicted so graphically in her novel. Atwood rightly points out that educated women who are used to reflecting on their lives and experiences and, above all, on things which transcend everyday life such as art and philosophy suffer more when they lack the time, energy and opportunity to do so. Despite the noble attempts of both those in academia and those who influence public life, it is painfully and patently true that such an experience remains the norm.
We should of course acknowledge that many countries, especially in Europe, have made great strides in tackling gender inequality on the executive and legal levels (equal pay, equal access to education), but under the veil of the coronavirus crisis, much of this endeavour has been somewhat side-lined. In times of crisis (the coronavirus crisis included), it is primarily women who ‘retreat’ from the labour market. Any suggestion that this is because they prefer being at home with the children anyway would be a crass oversimplification. It is, rather, a practical outworking of the fact that women are still paid less than their male partners and that they therefore ‘voluntarily’ vacate their posts during times of high unemployment so as not to be in someone else’s (some male’s) way. Crises are, however, rooted in the policies implemented before the crises occur. Policies which relate to gender equality are not, it would seem, pushed with sufficient vigour. Those ‘conservative advocates of the empowerment of women’ who argue that no competent and fully qualified woman needs external incentives are misguided. Seen through the prism of Kristeva’s theory, it seems that what this band of ‘conservative feminists’, as they like to call themselves, want is not real women, with all the positive and negative aspects that make them unique and different, but women who are in fact ‘perfect men’ because they are free of the negatives of both sexes – what another feminist Alison Weir has called the ‘fantasy of patriarchy’.
Current gender equality policies are schizophrenic. They say: ‘We want more women in the public sphere’; but also: ‘We are not prepared to make the arrangements necessary for that to happen’. We need to be honest. Are we taking gender equality seriously, or is it merely the politically correct flavour of the month? If Western society is convinced that it will benefit from having more women of various socio-economic and cultural backgrounds in public life – even women who as a result of motherhood cannot at certain times compete with their male or childless female colleagues – it should also admit that the struggle for gender equality is due a much greater boost, including through the use of quotas. If, however, we are to go along with the creed of the conservative feminists and reject the option of incentives, we must admit that women in the public sphere will always be in a minority, as to succeed in a male-structured and male-dominated society while maintaining their role as mothers, women will need to be even more capable than their male colleagues. It is then only a matter of time before someone suggests that ‘Maybe women shouldn’t be allowed to go to university at all’.
