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The status of women

In a fascinating article over at Fairer Disputations, Louise Perry engages with the economist Bryan Caplan over the definition of feminism.

First the standard definition of feminism: “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”.
Then Caplan’s alternative: “the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women.”
Then Perry’s alternative (1.0): “the interests of women, particularly mothers, are less likely to be given voice in the corridors of power.”

Perry then goes on to argue that the reason that women are ignored in policy-making is that they have lower Status than men because they are too often (always) associated with a group that really do have no power: children.

Human beings have a persistent habit of regarding women as childlike, both as a result of their smaller physiques, and also as a result of their role as mothers. There’s a reason that “women and children” rolls off the tongue in a way that “men and children” does not. The mother-infant dyad comes as a package, for both practical and emotional reasons. And not unreasonably, in our efforts to make sense of the world, we tend to slot these two categories of people alongside one another. If men are at the top of the status hierarchy, and children are at the bottom, then women are always and everywhere positioned somewhere between the two—more or less adjacent to children, depending on the culture in question.

This then leads her to her definition of feminism (2.0): “the view that society unfairly regards men as higher status than women.”

Before offering her proposal on what should be done Perry explains why feminism, as most currently experience it, doesn’t work for her:

I make no secret of the fact that I oppose the kind of feminism that seeks to erase the differences between men and women in the hope of erasing the status gap. I reject the kind of feminism that insists on 50/50 representation in boardrooms while forgetting about 50/50 representation in waste disposal, since the goal is not “equality” per se, but rather masculine status. 

I oppose that project not only because it’s hopeless, but also because it doubles down on the disdain directed towards femininity and so ends up causing material harm to other women.

Drawing on the work of Will Storr about status, Perry argues that there is more than one way to play the status game and that is to have multiple arenas where status is at play. What she then proposes though is something that I suspect would be rejected by many Christian egalitarians because it sounds suspiciously like something that a complementarian might say.

My proposal, instead, is that feminists should play a different status game entirely by pugnaciously asserting the status of motherhood—a status no man can ever achieve, whether he be a CEO, an astronaut, or the President of the United States. Fairer Disputations contributor Helen Roy describes the self-sacrificial beauty of the maternal ideal: 

I don’t know a mother who would not die for her children. There is no greater love, and, speaking politically now, there is no greater responsibility. Contrary to the oft-parroted shibboleths of modern feminism, a mother’s role is not beneath her. It is actually above her, in the sense that motherhood inherently elevates women as cultivators of the gratuitous gift we know as life itself.

When I think about the debates within many churches I think it’s hard to deny that Perry’s insights about status haven’t also been at work here. Women have been treated as lower status within the church and they have been compromised by their association with children. It’s why it is common to see church leaders say something like, ‘women are not confined to teaching the children or making the tea’ as if those things are in of themselves low status activities. And of course they do seem to be of sufficiently low status for men to mostly not do those things.

As a result increasingly women have sought to attain status in the church the same way they have everywhere else, by aiming for position and whatever is top spot be it vicar, minister, elder, bishop or no doubt soon enough archbishop. This is makes sense enough because by and large men have afforded these positions with considerable status.

But I think Perry is on to something about the multiple ways to address the issue of status that churches can learn from. I think it is something that ‘soft-complementarians’ can do that the more American CBMW type cannot. All they will do is hold on hard to position and at the same time tell women to be happier with the mother position.

Instead I think we should elevate the status of motherhood, and we should elevate the status of teaching children and making the sandwiches and then go a few more steps further. The first is something that can be only be given to women and ways of making their voices heard, respected and insisted on so they become wholly integrated and not an afterthought would be a good first step. The second can be achieved by encouraging more men to get involved at all stages of caring for children and church hospitality. Then by creating genuine ways in which men and women partner, listen, pray, discuss, deliberate and disciple together affords the respect that women should have and shouldn’t have to ask or fight for. It might also mean that the eldership task of defining, defending and disciplining is neither seen as of a higher status but also seen as part of the humble contribution that qualified and godly men might make to the well-being of the whole.

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The status of women

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