Does Man's Mentality Differ from Woman's?

Thinkers, from the earliest ages until now, have long been occupied with what is said of woman and man and the differences between their psychological conditions. It appears to me that science is still in need of further precise researches to establish for investigators the truth of what is said about the existence of these differences, or their non-existence.

Many people incline to affirm the divergence between the mentalities of the two sexes, each of which completes the other, and which together make up the history of man.

To set down the most important of what has been said on this subject is of use to whoever takes up in study the question of the joint education of men and women, and likewise to those who take up the social questions that concern woman's work and her rights and duties in life.

Several tests have been carried out on the boy and girl pupils of the primary schools, those between the ages of six and ten; the aim of these tests is to know what passes in the minds of these little ones, of the male sex and the female, as regards each sex's estimate of the other, its opinions of it, and its judgment upon it.

The result came out that the boys see in their little girl schoolmates the trait of timidity and fear; that the girls are much given to complaining and anger, weak in courtesy, stingy in lending what may be lent, that they spy so as to carry tales to the teachers, weep for the flimsiest of reasons, and that they are chatterboxes, and extravagant in adorning and prettifying themselves.

The little girls, for their part, reproach the little boys with noisiness where no necessity calls for it, with roughness and harshness, with making light of order, with carelessness of dress, and with heedlessness and indifference. From these innocent judgments it appears that the rougher sex holds, from earliest youth, that woman's mentality and her psychological states differ from man's mentality. And so it is likewise on the side of the fair sex, which may see in man's psychology what differs in turn.

As for the age of adolescence, tests and experiments have established that the field of the emotions belongs more particularly to woman than to man — so much so that the fair sex has been described as intense in feeling, and the other sex as strong in will; and that the settled life which generally falls to woman, her bodily constitution, and the soft nature of her nerves have a notable part in her susceptibility to impressions; and that the virtue of self-denial stands loftier in woman than in man; and that abstract reasonings and the intellectual sciences are nearer to man's soul than to woman's — unlike the affairs of social life and their application, such as the sense of right, the performance of duty, and the love of truth, in which the superiority goes to women over men; and that woman is more careful in keeping traditions and customs and more inclined to religion and to what touches the life of the heart; and that man has a stronger sense than woman of the composite sensations that bear upon practical life.

There exist, besides, psychological differences between the two sexes which there is no room to mention here. But neither of the two sexes is stripped of every quality of the other sex, or of every one of its dispositions.

The summary of the foregoing is that there exist no differences in the aptitudes of the two sexes, man and woman, in facing the matters and affairs of life. The least that may be said is that these differences give woman the ampler portion in the fold of the feelings and emotions and what attaches to them or follows from them, and that man has the larger portion as regards logic and what attaches to it and follows from it. Woman may perhaps have the greater portion of patience and endurance, and man the stronger portion as regards the firmness of the muscular tissues and their elasticity.

To affirm these differences is not such as to secure for either of the two sexes an absolute superiority, or to set one of them in a lower place before the other; nor are these differences such as to narrow or widen the circle of all rights and duties for one sex rather than the other. Nor, again, are they such as to lay down in life divergent or discordant paths for the works of the two sexes in social affairs. But these differences may at times serve the educator, that each sex may take the road toward the perfection prepared for it according to its aptitudes, so as to be the more productive and fruitful; and at other times the educator may profit from knowing these differences to strengthen, by his craft, the points of weakness in each of the two sexes, so that all the powers of the soul may be brought into proportion so far as possible. And as the educator profits from such study, so too may the student of society profit, in judging how the works may be distributed between the two sexes in the best manner.