The Value of a Woman

I am a mother who has worked outside of the home by necessity. Part of me has resented the fact that I've not had a choice. As I look at the current climate of women's issues, an intriguing thought occurred to me.

Historically, there has been an undeniable lacuna between the value of a man and the value of the woman. Men have been valued by how robust they are, by how much money and how many decisions they can make. Women have been valued by their domestic skills, taking care of others. By their very natures, both have ideally been about putting others needs above their own, but for men that means being assertive, even aggressive to protect the interests of his family, for women it means being passive, yielding and gentle. For ease of reference, I'll call the stereotypical male values as "hard" and the stereotypical female values as "soft".

Over the course of time, intelligent women have looked around and noticed that soft values allowed those more "assertive" to take advantage of them, leading to abuse. Whenever someone is of a giving nature, there is always someone else waiting to push the boundaries of that giving, to strip as much advantage out of it as possible. So, those intelligent women saw a need to become more assertive, to adopt the harder qualities and prove that they, too, could be hard.

As a result, they have elevated the worth of those values even further. By looking at the difference in perceived value, and deciding that in order to become more valued, they must adopt hard qualities, they have essentially bought into the myth that the hard qualities are of more value than the soft ones. In a way of speaking stereotypically, women have sought value by becoming more like men.

I think this is addresses the symptoms of the problem, and ignores the real problem, which is that historically speaking, women do not feel valued.

Interestingly, the gospel teaches us the exact opposite: that the softer qualities are more valuable.

We see in scripture, however, that there are times which softer qualities are in danger of being completely wiped out by those willing to take advantage of them. In such cases, it is appropriate to take a stand. In other words, when abuse threatens, those harder qualities of assertiveness and even aggression have value.

So my thoughts are summed up like this: I think that women (and men) will be more benefited by lifting the value of softer qualities, rather than continuing to support the value of the harder ones. Let submission be seen as praiseworthy, let avoidance of the limelight be valued. Let those who sacrifice their own interests to clean house, take care of kids, serve in the community behind the scenes, be honored equally with those who gain educational achievements or business success.

The trick is knowing how to do it without being condescending. They have to be honored with more than lip service.

And, of course, by honoring those values loudly and publicly, perhaps their worth would be compromised.