Is Woman an Incomplete Man?

In examining woman's position, one may look at it from several sides, among them her political, economic, and literary position. This article has been devoted to her position among the scientists of evolution, for these look upon man and woman alike as they look upon organic things, and study them as they study the peacock and the peahen, the gazelle and his doe, the lion and the lioness, the ring-necked dove and his mate — all of them creatures of flesh and blood with bodily characteristics.

Every animal and its female resemble one another while still in the stage of development. Through the chemical changes in their two bodies the differentiation of the sexes begins to do its work, determining either maleness or femaleness. Yet the female changes less than the male while in the state of development, and this difference in her bodily apparatus is fundamental, and upon it rests the difference in her future function.

Science remains to this day unable to discover the mark of sex in the egg. It will become either a rooster or a hen. The microscope cannot see the difference between the two eggs, and does not know the secret of the influences that work to distinguish between the two eggs, and does not know the secret of the influences that work to distinguish finally between the two sexes. Indeed, it does not know whether the cause of this differentiation results from the influence of heredity, or whether it is a chemical process that increases the father's influence or the mother's in the egg and determines for it the kind of its habits and its constitution.

The difference between the sexes is visible even in a man's blood, which is heavier in weight than a woman's and richer in red corpuscles. It continues to do its differentiating work from childhood to old age, and its sign remains manifest. The difference between the rooster's comb and the hen's, in the shape of their tails, their gait, their behavior, and their fighting, is exceedingly clear — so clear that it has been said that in this difference man is male down to his fingertips, and woman remains female down to the sole of her foot.

Science has investigated these characteristics and concluded that they are natural and deep-rooted, neither moral nor acquired. It has said that to change them quickly is impossible, that every attempt to soften their manifestations will meet with no success, and that even if some of them are of little use or of great danger, they are interdependent and mutually supporting, no one of them dispensable to the others.

After failing to grasp the essence of the difference between the sexes, science arrived at some certainty in describing the differences between their characteristics. It observed that a man's body after the age of puberty differs more from what it was before, and that the cause of this does not arise from the labors he performs, but is a constant rule which decrees that the period of maturation in man is longer than in woman.

Then the scientists said that woman is longer in trunk and shorter in arm, leg, stature, and foot, relative to what these members ought to be. Woman is therefore weaker in movement and in muscle. What analysis has established, anatomy confirms: that muscular tissue in man is stronger than in woman — on condition that this comparison be made between two groups of men and women brought up in the same way. Indeed, judgment in this comparison, for all its apparent simplicity, is by no means easy: the speed shown by Japanese women in filling a ship with coal exceeds the speed of their male counterparts. Likewise, a woman is stronger in endurance than her strong husband with his sinewed forearms when it comes to carrying her sick child in her arms through two whole consecutive nights. What, then, is the answer of those who pride themselves on the fact that locomotive drivers and railway workers have never been women?

Still, the statement that woman is weaker than man in muscle is closer to the truth, particularly when skill is measured separately from muscular contractions.

It was commonly held among them that the number of geniuses among men exceeds their counterparts among women, and that man is more liable to certain forms of insanity, crime, abnormality, and instability. They consider that woman in her constitution is more stable and more conservative than he is in his. Then they said that man expends more oxygen and burns up more elements — in short, that he is more active and more vital. The biologists insisted on these statements because they saw no harm in them. Of the same kind is the statement that long life is the portion of women: from childhood to old age they are more resistant to disease. It is established that in every stage of life, except the period between the fifteenth and the twentieth year, they possess stronger bodily immunity, because their constitution has characteristics arising most probably from their femaleness. It is then said that the bodily differences must inevitably extend to the mental in both sexes, since it is impossible to separate mind from body, each being subject to the influences that befall the other. And it has been said that we inherit our parents' temperaments, their shyness, their capacity, and the degree of their traits, such as the length of their statures, their arms, and their spans.

Belief in these biological statements brings no harm whatever upon society. But to say that woman is a deformity relative to man, and that man is quicker to fear and sooner to trembling and old age; or that woman is an incomplete man who halted at a certain limit of evolution, and that man is an evolved woman —

All these statements are not only outside science but incline toward injury. Of the same kind is the statement that man is more variable than woman, and that the raw materials in the process of evolution are more abundant in man than in her.

Indeed, all these statements are idle nonsense with no trace of truth in them, for a body of scientists carried out an experiment upon seventeen groups, in which they compared the organs of their individual members, and the conclusion they reached was that the female is more variable than the male.

They noticed that the differences in the occurrence of these variations between the two sexes are slight, particularly among individuals of a single species living different lives. From this they deduced that this factor, too, may have formed an origin for those variations, and that some hereditary variations are more manifest in man, just as some are more manifest in woman than in him.

As for the mental differences between the sexes, they have found difficulty in determining them, and they are waiting until sufficient proofs are gathered in their hands to pronounce this determination and declare its characteristics. The source of this difficulty is that some mental traits may be acquired from some external accident, while others are created in man's innate nature.

It used to be said that men's brains are more capable of change and better able to generate and to create, and that women are stronger in constancy and possess a finer and deeper social sense; that women's minds penetrate more readily to soundness and correctness, while man is more capable of discrimination than they; and that women's steadiness arises from their great endurance in patience, the minuteness of their observation, and their pursuit of elaborate, minute details — all of which is expressed by the name of intuition; and that man is more capable of bearing mental effort, keener-sighted for scientific facts, more inclined to join reason with the emotions, and more desirous of concision, of design, and of the derivation of rules.

Pronouncing such judgments is easier than confessing incapacity, as the saying goes. We thank God that their time has passed and that they do not accord with reality and with the results of investigation. For Helen Thompson conducted an experiment in the high schools and found that boys are more capable of precise movements, this being the result of their training in the use of knives and other tools; but induction established that the girl students' capacity to perform rapid movements of a single pattern or a single class, under the influence of a hidden impulse, is more clearly manifest than in the boys.

In another experiment the girl students showed superiority in distinguishing tones when the fork was struck, this being the result of their early training in playing the piano or other instruments. It then appeared to her that the male student's eye is more sensitive to light and to distinguishing faint rays. But is there not in this an indication that it is the result of the male's living in the open air?

And it was established to her that women are stronger at distinguishing colors. But can it not be said that the source of this power of theirs is abundant practice?

As for what remains of their statements on the mental differences between the sexes, we shall summarize it in the coming issue.