Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
~ 145 ~
animals are unusually aggressive as long as they
live, even if they are never again exposed to
androgen. According to some experts, this long-
lasting effect of hormones administered or secreted
before birth may help to explain why boys are more
aggressive than girls even during their early years
when both sexes appear to produce equal amounts
of male and female hormones.
Will there some day be a “unisex” society, with no
differences between men and women except
anatomical ones?
Time
magazine asked. It seems
unlikely. According to psychoanalyst Therese
Benedek: “Biology precedes personality.”
“Nature has been the oppressor,” observed
psychologist Michael Lewis. Women’s role as
caretaker was the evolutionary result of their
biological role in birth and feeding. The baby bottle
may have freed women from some of the tasks of
that role, but, says University of Michigan
psychologist Judith Bardwick, “the major
responsibility for child rearing is the woman’s, even
in the Soviet Union, the Israeli Kibbutz, Scandinavia
and mainland China.” Furthermore, though
