Rationality And Feminist Thought Research Paper

In response to traditional dualistic notions of rationality and the implied devaluation of women’s rationality, some women have pointed to the fact that women traditionally were prevented from cultivating rationality (Hollingsworth 1926). Others have suggested that the traditional masculinist concept of rationality does not apply to women who utilize uniquely ‘feminine’ ways of knowing (Belenky et al. 1986, Gilligan 1992). Neither of these alternatives, however, transcends the traditional dualistic concept of rationality. Thus, a further suggestion has been that we move away from dualistic concepts of rationality altogether. Accordingly, concepts of reason are being transformed and new models are emerging that acknowledge that rational and nonrational processes mutually enhance each other and contribute in the process of knowing (Labouvie-Vief 1994).

1. Rationality And Women’s Mind In History

Concepts of rationality have been central to definitions of human nature. Often couched explicitly in terms of the mind and its relationship to emotions, social context, and culture, rationality was defined dualistically—as that which transcends these categories, i.e., as conscious thought, abstract thinking, and universal laws of truth (Labouvie-Vief 1994). Its relation to gender often was more implicit, but the rational being was a ‘man of reason’ (Lloyd 1993).

This association of reason with masculinity—and of femininity as a lack of reason—widely pervaded Western intellectual history and is visible not only in philosophy and science, but also in art and literature, myth and religion, and ultimately, the social structures and social regulation processes that have supported these representations.

1.1 The Gendered Mind In Philosophy

The dualistic theory of rationality and the mind became institutionalized when Greek philosophers began to speculate about human nature. These efforts culminated in the work of Plato, who proposed a twolayer view of human nature and reality to supplant more ancient views (Labouvie-Vief 1994). For more ancient views of the self as a collection of motor actions, bodily processes, or mythic–divine injunctions, Plato substituted a language of a self no longer identified primarily with its bodily processes and concrete actions, but of a mental agent different from its bodily manifestations. The new language was that of a self who was the author of those actions, of a psychological causal agent who was at their center and who was responsible for them.

Plato’s dualistic, two-layered conception of the individual contrasted a layer of mind, abstract thought, soul, spirit, or ideals to a layer of body, matter, and enslavement to concrete sensory and/organismic happenings. These layers were arranged hierarchically, with mind-spirit forming the superior pole, body, and senses the inferior one. That hierarchical worldview also became associated with gender. Thus, in the Symposium, Plato argued that the spiritual love between men who create ideas is more valuable than the physical and material love with women, since women’s creativity is merely one of bodily procreation rather than the creation of universal ideas in which men participate (Labouvie-Vief 1994).

1.2 Women’s Mind In Western Science

The association of the masculine with mind and spirit, and of the feminine with body and matter, widely came to characterize thinking about and representations of women. It has characterized not only the view of most philosophers but has also has remained basic to other theoretical accounts of human nature. For example, Aristotle (De Generatione Animalium) thought that women’s contribution to fertilization consisted of a passive and material principle rather than an active and spiritual masculine one (Lerner 1986). Freud proposed that women’s lack of phallic sexuality made their sexual and psychological orientations more passive and masochistic (Freud 1925). Others taught that the anatomy of women’s brains made them less capable of conscious, rational thought and of extraordinary creativity or achievement (Bem 1993, Labouvie-Vief 1994). Even in the twentieth century, the notion became popularized by de Beauvoir (1952), who argued that woman is closer to nature because physiology makes her so: Her mode of creating is by submitting to a natural bodily function, by remaining enslaved to her biological fate, while the man creates by ‘acts that transcend his animal nature.’ By creating culture, the man is thought to be involved in a new, freer form of creation, one that transcends what is given organismically and shapes the future rather than passively suffering it.

This gendered dualistic notion of mind has been influential in shaping theoretical notions of development. Traditionally, development has been construed as an onward rush, a heroic and energetic striving for mental ideals and control, a triumph of conscious, abstract forms of thinking, a victory of rationality over emotions and the body. Since these features of the mind also are identified with masculinity, femininity was represented as an inferior and less developed state of being—a form, as it were, of mental and physical castration. Freud (1925) was most explicit in equating development of mind and identity with a progression from the domain of the castrated mother to the potent and genital father, but most major theories of development of the past followed this same pattern of the devaluation of the emotive, imaginative, and sensory aspects of the self (LabouvieVief 1994).

1.3 Women’s Mind In Myth, Art, And Religion

The notion of the masculine as identified with mind, spirit, and transcendence is also pervasive in mythology and religion, literature, and art (Labouvie-Vief 1994, Ortner and Whitehead 1981, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). In all of those, one polarity of human functioning tends to be idealized and even inflated as ‘masculine’: it is based on an imagery of rise, light, and sun, and it symbolizes such psychological qualities as leadership, rational self-control, self-assertiveness, individuality, and willfulness. The other polarity, in turn, is degraded and devalued: its imagery is based on falling, being conquered and surrendering, and engulfment in dark spaces, and it symbolizes suffering, powerlessness, and entrapment in unconscious processes. In mythology and religion, such imagery often occurs as the theme of the overthrow of original female divine figures by the male godheads or heroes who came to be the original creators, creating the world not organically but conceptually, by pronouncing a word (Lerner 1986). A well known example of this process of the replacement of the feminine principle is offered by the great Greek tragedies by Aeschylus and Euripides centering on the myths of Agamemnon and orestes. These myths address the question of which of two murders was a more heinous act. Was it Klytemnestra’s killing her husband Agamemnon to revenge his sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to the gods so as to secure a good wind for his war ships. Or was it their son Orestes’s killing of his mother to avenge the murder of his father? The answer was that Orestes could be forgiven because he represented a new masculine order that superseded an earlier feminine order—a new paradigm in which fatherhood was said to have replaced motherhood as a principle of creation (Labouvie-Vief 1994).

2. Explanations Of Dualistic Theories Of Mind

How universal is the equation of masculinity with mind and rationality, and of femininity with an ‘older’ emotional and organic order of being? Much writing has suggested that such patriarchal ideologies in actuality came to replace more women-focused ones of previous times. Originally proposed by Bachofen in 1861 (Duby and Perrot 1992 93), this ‘matriarchy’ thesis holds that there must have been, in prehistoric times and before the rise of the major patriarchal societies, the reign of a maternal principle. However, the historical accuracy of this thesis has recently been doubted. Instead, a number of anthropological, sociological, and psychological explanations have been proposed.

2.1 Anthropological Evidence

Most historical and anthropological evidence (Duby and Perrot 1992 94, Ortner and Whitehead 1981, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974) does not support the view that earlier and/or less civilized societies granted women more power universally. On the contrary, strong patriarchal systems in which women are devalued along a mind–nature dimension exist worldwide in preliterate societies. Often such societies also have myths of early matriarchies that eventually were superseded by the rule of man. However, such matriarchy myths can be part of an ideology that devalues women (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). Around the world, such myths often tell of the past bad behavior and evil of women that eventually was ended only when men overturned the power of women and took control. In this way, matriarchy myths can be used to justify the male order. They form part of a cultural code distinguishing men from women in terms of morality and authority, they incorporate the values that grant men more power in social life. Thus, even though they talk about a time before the current social order, they fix that order as legitimate and invariant.

2.2 Sociological Mechanisms

Although there is considerable variation in women’s behavior and activities across cultures and historical times, there are nearly universal differences in what is believed to constitute the nature of women (Brown and Gilligan 1992, Labouvie-Vief 1994, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974)—and, correspondingly, the nature of men (Gilmore 1990). In many cultures, women are held to be nurturers, to be gentle and concerned with caring for others rather than self-expression, they are considered passive and unaggressive and to readily subordinate themselves to those in power. They are felt to be closer to children—more emotional and expressive, less capable of rational decision-making and abstract thought. They are also believed to be poorly suited for positions of leadership and power (Bem 1993, Gutmann 1987, Ortner and Whithead 1981, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). Sometimes these beliefs are attributed to biological bases of gender, but many think they root in the social roles and realities of women’s lives.

In most societies women are subordinated socially or, at least, they do not hold publicly recognized power and authority surpassing that of men (Ortner and Whitehead 1981, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). In some societies, individual women may have achieved considerable power and recognition, but in general all societies tend to exclude women from certain crucial economic, political, and intellectual activities. Even in societies where women exert considerable power by doing much productive work and controlling resources, their activities are not associated with the same social status as those of men. Their roles as wives and mothers are associated with fewer powers and prerogatives than are the roles of men (Bernard 1987, Duby and Perrot 1992 93, Ortner and Whithead 1981, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). In turn, this social devaluation is often attributed to some major biological deficiencies (Bem 1993, Labouvie-Vief 1994). These same ‘lacks’ also were thought to make women eminently suitable to take on positions subservient to men.

2.3 Psychological Mechanisms

The near universality of the devaluation of women’s mind also has suggested that the construal of women as mentally inferior and nonrational may be rooted in psychological processes through which gender is defined. Psychoanalyst Stoller (Herdt and Stoller 1990) and sociologist Chodorow (1978) suggested that these processes render the gender development of boys particularly vulnerable. This vulnerability results from the mother’s role in early development. For both boys and girls, the mother defines an early core of identity, which in the case of the boy’s development becomes problematic. He, unlike the girl, needs to change his core identity from ‘feminine’ to ‘masculine’, a change that leaves a life-long vulnerability of self. As a result, men may defensively devaluate women as shown in cultural practices (usually, related to initiation rites) aimed at defining the unique nature of the ‘masculine’ as a way of creation unique to men and ‘better’ than the ‘feminine.’ Complementary to the definition of manhood, womanhood in many cultures is defined by practices aimed at creating a sexual and social object to the action of men—whether it is direct genital mutilation or isolation from participation in public life through withholding education and high status work (de Beauvoir 1952, Labouvie-Vief 1994, Ortner and Whithead 1981).

However, such mechanisms may be themselves relative to the family structure that operates in a society strongly divided along gender lines and devaluing women (Bem 1993, Labouvie-Vief 1994). But with family structure and gender roles changing to create more shared and equitable activities among men and women, these domains are becoming less clearly related to gender, per se.

3. Rationality And Women’s Minds

Traditional dualistic theories of rationality, with their devaluation of femininity and inflation of masculinity, have influenced deeply women’s process of growing up. Whereas masculine development is associated with increases in abstract thought, in individuality, independence, and self-confidence, women often have experienced their development as renunciation, surrender, and victimization—a loss of voice, a blunting of mind, a process of silencing (Bem 1993, Brown and Gilligan 1992, Labouvie-Vief 1994). Such struggles of women with their own sense of creativity is expressed very poignantly in the lives of many writers of the twentieth century, such as Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf.

As educational and employment opportunities have opened up for women and as women have begun to participate in defining themselves, research has upheld few objective differences in intellectual status between men and women. Although women tend to score somewhat higher on verbal and men on mathematical abilities, these differences are overall small (Linn and Hyde 1989). Moreover, since Hollingsworth’s (1926) pioneering work showing that gender differences in intellectual can be explained usually in terms of differences in educational opportunities, research has documented that over time, as disparities of opportunity are declining, gender differences in intellectual functioning are becoming smaller, too (Linn and Hyde 1989).

Yet despite evidence that female intellectual endowment does not lag behind that of men, women on average continue to lag in achievement behind men. Moreover, this gender lag increases in the course of development. Indeed, in early childhood, girls surpass boys on most measures of school achievement. However, as they grow older, girls often are found to retreat from achievement-related challenges; standing out for women becomes a source of conflict and shame, and they attempt to hide their excellence (Brown and Gilligan 1992, Labouvie-Vief 1994). Thus, women’s feelings of shame and discounting of their achievement persist well into the present day. However, in many cultures women’s transition into later life is often characterized by a degree of freeing from the cultural constraints of ‘womanhood.’ No longer defined as sexual objects, women often move from a world of confinement to one of daring openness, of a release from their earlier interiority. Thus, from young adulthood to midlife, women have been found to become less traditionally ‘feminine’ but more dominant, independent, objective, and intellectually oriented. In many societies this figure of the older woman emerges as the woman of power who holds authority over the family and who can control healing, magic, witchcraft, and other powerful (and often dangerous) resources (Gutmann 1987, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974).

4. Transforming Concepts Of Mind And Gender

This review has shown that traditional concepts of rationality have implied a strong gender bias, one that has corresponded with the stereotyping of women as nonrational and more closely bound to nature and their bodies. Such a feminist critique ultimately does more than restore to women the claim to be rational, or to claim for them a unique form of knowing that is different from the rationality of men. Rather, the intricate association of traditional concepts of gender and rationality reveals that the very claim that women lack rationality is problematic, since it was on a narrow concept of rationality in the first place. Thus, the association of mind and gender indicates the need to reorganize the very meaning of ‘rationality’ in theories of mind and knowledge. A transformation of the concept of rationality is not just a feminist enterprise. Criticisms of traditional views of rationality have been a mainstay of the intellectual history of this century, which systematically has eroded beliefs in dualistic concepts of rationality (Baynes et al. 1987). The mind and knowledge are no longer believed to stand secure above nature and human foible. Instead, we are witnessing a growing belief that the dimensions of the mind and self that were abandoned in the classical view must in fact be included in a viable theory of mind and knowledge. Emotion and intuition, time and process, variability and disorder—all the elements previously devalued as feminine have taken a forefront place in philosophical discussions, and are being incorporated into new theories of the mind. Thus, reason also has an immanent pole and must be explained through the emotional propensities, cultural scenarios, linguistic practices, and narrative and symbolic structures of meaning.

Freud’s (1925) original proposal that rational processes are built upon nonrational processes was one early voice warning that rationality ultimately must include a balance between our biological nature and our strivings for transcendent realities. It was he who pointed out the paradox that ‘rationality,’ when one- sided and unbalanced, in fact is a sign of the defensive break through of ‘irrational’ processes. However, Freud’s very concept of ‘irrational’ processes still implied remnants of a dualistic and oppositional view, since it relegated these processes to a problematic status. Instead of such dualism, notions of balance and exchange have been carried forward into modern theories of the mind. In those theories, a tremendous part of knowledge is, in fact, based on processes that are profoundly adaptive, yet nonrational. Such theories follow Darwin’s insight that biology provides the basis for the behavioral patterns—such as emotions—that are of the most urgent adaptive significance. More generally, we are realizing that an important contributor to knowledge are other nonrational decision systems or ‘heuristics’ that allow us to deal with information processing in situations where time and resources are limited (Gigerenzer et al. 1999, Labouvie-Vief 1994).

Sometimes the revaluation of the nonrational is taken as a dethroning and destructive critique of rationality. Instead, calling for a transformation of the concept of rationality implies that it merely constitutes one important pole or function of the mind. Thus body, nature, emotions, and concrete existence vs. mind, culture, reason, and necessary, deductive law no longer are considered in hierarchical terms. Instead, the mind becomes a cooperative interplay of these two sets of processes, rational and nonrational. Such dual processing theories of the mind are, in fact, proliferating and becoming the standard in theories of the mind (Chaiken and Torpe 1999, Gigerenzer et al. 1999, Labouvie-Vief 1994).

Such a reorganization of theories of the mind inevitably also involves a reexamination of the role of gender in the order of things. Indeed, such a re-evaluation is visible in many strata of contemporary thought and life, visible not only philosophy and scientific theory, but also religion, literature, and art. These efforts allow us to acknowledge that rationality and non-rationality are processes of a mind that is, at last—and at least theoretically—part of nature and independent of gender.

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