When Judith Gardiner's father died in 1963, her mother, a lawyer, took over their general patent law practice. Few women would have dared to do this in those days, but Gardiner's mother had her own ways to assert her authority. She raised her office desk so that its 150 cm frame rose slightly above the male visitors. She also always paid for a business lunch or dinner at her own expense. “She has invented many ways to dominate men on a daily basis,” says Gardiner, professor of English and gender studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. "She could show authority and competence in not always ordinary situations."
How would society change if women suddenly had greater power? Rachen Nieuver of the BBC interviewed scientists and gender experts about this curious thought experiment.
What would have happened if Gardiner's mother hadn't pretended to be taller? What if the physical dynamics of gender suddenly disappeared - and women inexplicably and suddenly became larger and stronger than men, without the help of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution?
Obviously, this is an unlikely event - but the experts interviewed can shed light on how gender dynamics are transformed in other ways in the real world, as well as what many people took for granted in the relationship between the sexes.
It is worth noting that in most species on the planet - from insects to frogs to oysters - it is quite common and normal for females to be larger than males because they are tasked with carrying hundreds or thousands of eggs in their bodies. Most terrestrial vertebrates, including humans, are the exception to this rule. Females grow to a certain extent and then switch to reproductive mode, investing in fat production rather than muscle and bone. Men, meanwhile, invest energy in traits that will best enable them to compete for women - size and strength, in the case of humans.
Although physical differences between the sexes are narrowing - women are catching up with men in a number of sports disciplines - there are still fundamental differences that have developed over the millennia. First, men remain, on average, larger and stronger than women; they have 40% more strength in the upper body and 33% more strength in the lower.
If women are suddenly stronger than men, they will have to get bigger because big muscles need big bones to support them (let's assume that Jessica Jones's scenario of superhuman strength in a small body is biologically impossible).
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Such changes will also necessarily be accompanied by a surge in testosterone and other hormones. If society were to adhere exclusively to the laws of nature, this would likely mean a shift from women to men as primary caregivers. “We would have a matriarchal society in which women competed and men looked after children,” says Daphne Fairbairn, professor emeritus of biology at the University of California, Riverside. At the same time, it would be more difficult for women to give birth. "If this change were due to an increase in female testosterone, it would have an obvious negative effect on the development of female reproductive functions."
Increased strength can also bring with it psychological consequences, similar to those already experienced by men, regardless of whether they use their muscles day in and day out. For example, according to a study by Michael Bang Petersen, professor of political science at Aarhus University, men with a strong upper torso were more likely than weak men to favor policies that benefit them. Strong rich men, for example, oppose the redistribution of money in favor of those who are poorer. Petersen suggests that these people operate from ancient principles by which physically strong individuals took most of the resources for themselves. Strong big men can also maintain hierarchy and are more competitive, Petersen argues.
We can at least partially thank natural selection for these traits. As Petersen says, "Men are not more violent because they are strong, but strong because they have to be violent throughout evolutionary history, and this shapes male philosophy in many different ways."
Despite the ongoing debate about the extent to which nature and nurture affect aspects of human nature such as dominance and aggressiveness, it is possible that women who become suddenly strong will experience a surge in these aspects as well. In addition, self-sufficiency, anger tendencies, and confidence in bargaining in women tend to be associated with physical attractiveness, so strength may simply replace appearance as the stimulus underlying these personality traits.
All of these changes can affect some heterosexual relationships. Fairbairn argues that some women who need to "play the victim" in order to attract unsafe men will no longer need to do this. In some cases, this scenario is already being played out. Her 30-year-old daughter, for example, was on disastrous dates in which the man was definitely looking for something to amuse his pride. But she was quite active, confident and with a doctorate, so she “refused to pretend to renovate the house and regularly run 80 kilometers just for the guy to find she was sexy,” says Fairbairn.
Strength is one of the few aspects in which men tend to outperform women - but changing it will be a continuation of how masculine identity and traditional masculinity are challenged in the real world. Over the past 50 years, women have become more independent and in many cases have overtaken men in income, achievement and success. Technology has also silenced gender differences, historically opening up "masculine" areas such as manufacturing and warfare for women who can rely on intelligence and visual acuity rather than strength, for example, to collect cars and engage in combat.
As a result, some men cling to the power of their gender as an excuse that “somehow, men still have more power to rule,” says Jackson Katz, writer, lecturer and president of MVP Strategies, a company that provides training and education on prevention of gender-based violence. "As women began to compete with men in areas in which people have historically pushed them aside, some men have moved into areas where size and strength still matter, because in those areas they continue to hold an edge over women."
Katz argues that this may help explain the popularity and growth of American football, boxing, MMA, and other violent sports. “It's hard for a man to understand or articulate, but the general idea is that“yes, a woman can make more money than me, my boss can be a woman, my wife can have a better job than me, but none of them won't be able to play football,”notes Katz. And he also says that the obsession with masculinity of the gladiatorial type tends to be a predominantly American phenomenon.
On the positive side, if women were stronger, they immediately became less susceptible to harassment and violence from men, and the number of rapes would have dropped by an order of magnitude,”says Katz.
However, it might be wrong to assume that the superior strength of women will be better than the opposite. Women are still prone to violence: 17-45% of lesbians report physical violence by a female partner, for example, and in heterosexual married couples, 19% of men say they have suffered from partner attacks at least once. So while domestic violence among men and women will decline, clashes between men and women are likely to increase. “Men put pressure on women because they can - it happens when you have an affair (or even a deal) with someone who is stronger,” says Fairbairn. "I really love women, but I don't think we're perfect."
It is not entirely clear how inequality and gender discrimination in the workplace could change. Men have indeed long been associated with positions of power - think, for example, Margaret Thatcher, who practiced speaking in a deeper voice to sound more authoritative, for example, or distributing trousers among business women of the 1970s as a means of seeking respect and approval from male colleagues. If women no longer need to use fashion, body language and voice training to become more masculine in order to equal or rise above their male counterparts, then gender discrimination will begin to disappear.
But Gardiner doesn't think it will be that simple. She notes that physical size and strength do not necessarily remain factors in maintaining inequality. “White people weren't bigger and stronger than black people,” he says. "Nevertheless, white supremacy was established without any obvious physical background."
The arguments for why men should dominate women in the work environment will simply shift, as have shifted all these years, from the fact that God ordered a woman to serve a man to the fact that women are too emotional to serve in power. “These arguments are not based on fact, but on male superiority,” says Gardiner. "Those in power will always try to maintain power at any cost." In other words, even with masculine power, women will have to fight their way through the glass ceiling into the masculine areas.
Some of the empowered women may try to keep things as they were. As Katz notes, the most vocal opponents of feminism were women. Instead of fighting the system, they might find a way to work with it to their advantage.
On the other hand, when a society becomes more complex, democratic and peaceful, violence and aggression as instruments of maintaining control come to naught. This is facilitated by the rise in the number of women political leaders like Angela Merkel.
So even though a thought experiment allows us to make women stronger than men overnight, they may not need it at all. As Fairbairn says, "I would prefer women to just rule the world like they do now."
Ilya Khel