Educating Women

Photo courtesy of The New York Times

While reading “ Male and Female Created He Them,” I pondered a number of different ideas including religion and science.

In the text, the authors state that many people believed that women were the “tainted sex.” According to the New Testament, women were viewed negatively, and men needed to stray away from women in order to be truly close to God.

Many people looked at religion for guidance and authority. However, an apparent shift from religion to science changed the outlook of many people. 

Today, it is evident that science has bombarded the world, and many individuals look towards the “Gods of science” to answer many of the unsolved mysterious of the world. Even though science is though to be progressive and will help human beings make incredible advancements in the world, the authors point out the ways science has encouraged more female inequality.  The Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus proposed that there was some kind of essential inequality between males and females, and ultimately females were the lesser subspecies. The great philosopher Rousseau implies that women are just supposed to observe and men were the only ones that could reason. People accepted statements from both Linnaeus and Rousseau as natural facts and this mindset continued for ages to come. Also, how can anyone forget that men have dominated the science world for hundreds of years?

In this chapter, the authors cite Rousseau and write about Rousseau’s attitude toward education. He believed that women should be educated differently than men, but women should be given the opportunity to be educated minimally. Even though Rousseau may sound a little progressive because he thinks that women should be educated, nevertheless he still suggested that women are incapable of intellectual freedom. He thought that reasoning and higher thinking was beyond the capacities of women. Although Rousseau was a champion for human rights, he still entrapped women.

Luckily, this attitude towards women and education did not hinder many women from attaining college degrees today. In a recent report in Time Magazine, statistics show that women comprise the 57% of enrollment in American colleges. In the past, many women attended college to find a potential spouse, and often sought to obtain their MRS degree (which basically meant they came to college to find a husband). However, many women today want to attend college to earn a degree and are not concerned with finding their soul mate at college. In the article, the author focuses on the “new math on campus,” and describes how the number of females outnumbers males. The author goes into great detail about how women are now “forced” to have more girls’ nights because they are very few potential college males on campuses. The article embraces the fact that more females pursue higher degrees beyond college and achieve better academically than males, but still dwells on the fact that some females cannot find anyone to date on campus. Does that mean that we are less progressive than I initially thought? Why is it such a big deal if a young college female is interested more in academics than finding a potential lifemate?
-Nidhi